A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON INDIGENOUS SOCIOECONOMIC OUTCOMES IN AUSTRALIA, 1971–2001

Current debate in Indigenous affairs in Australia often involves the assertion that the last 30 years has been a period of policy failure. This article examines trends across a number of socioeconomic outcomes for Indigenous Australians from the 1967 referendum to the present, using census data. Overall, there has been steady, although not spectacular improvement in outcomes over time. These improvements are especially marked for education, which was coming from an exceptionally low base. This finding is somewhat at odds with the common perception of the 'failure' of Indigenous policy.     

A simplified approach to modeling the co‐movement of asset returns

The authors propose a simplified multivariate GARCH (generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity) model (the S‐GARCH model), which involves the estimation of only univariate GARCH models, both for the individual return series and for the sum and difference of each pair of series. The covariance between each pair of return series is then imputed from these variance estimates. The proposed model is considerably easier to estimate than existing multivariate GARCH models and does not suffer from the convergence problems that characterize many of these models. Moreover, the model can be easily extended to include more complex dynamics or alternative forms of the GARCH specification. The S‐GARCH model is used to estimate the minimum‐variance hedge ratio for the FTSE (Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange) 100 Index portfolio, hedged using index futures, and compared to four of the most widely used multivariate GARCH models. Using both statistical and economic evaluation criteria, it was found that the S‐GARCH model performs at least as well as the other models that were considered, and in some cases it was better. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 27:575–598, 2007     

The ‘greening’ of tourism micro‐businesses: outcomes of focus group investigations in South East Cornwall

The response of micro‐businesses to sustainability issues, and their use of environmental management tools and systems, are often presented as simply scaled‐down versions of those of larger businesses in the small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) sector as a whole. This paper presents the findings of a series of focus groups with the owners of tourism micro‐businesses in South East Cornwall about their awareness, understanding and adoption of sustainable tourism practices. The results reveal a complex and diverse response to the concept that resists such generalizations. A genuine need for measures to increase awareness and integrate sustainability issues within business practice is highlighted. Initiatives that do not account for the heterogeneity of the sector are likely to have only limited success. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.     

Creative teachers and creative teaching strategies

The purpose of this study is to explore the factors that influence creative teaching and to find out what effective strategies are used by three award‐winning teachers in the learning area of Integrated Activities. As creative thinking is crucial for the knowledge economy, it is essential that education serves its purpose in improving this important aspect. The methods used for data collection include in‐depth interview, focus group interview, classroom observation and content analysis. Three teachers with a GreaTeach Creative Instruction Award for creative teaching in the Integrated Activities field were selected as subjects. Results were acquired by analysing the interview content, the teaching plans, teachers’ reflection and the classroom observation videotapes. The study found that: the factors influencing creative teaching in Integrative Activities are (a) personality traits: persistence, willingness to develop, acceptance of new experiences, self‐confidence, sense of humour, curiosity, depth of ideas, imagination, etc.; (b) family factors: open and tolerant ways of teaching children, creative performance of parents, etc.; (c) experiences of growth and education: self‐created games and stories, brainstorming between classmates, etc.; (d) beliefs in teaching, hard work, motivation and (e) the administrative side of school organization. Among these factors, beliefs in teaching, hard work and motivation are the main aspects. The effective teaching strategies used by the awarded teachers are: student‐centred activities, a connection between teaching contents and real life, management of skills in class, open‐ended questions, an encouragement of creative thinking and use of technology and multimedia. Integrated Activities are closely connected to life experience and a basis for the development of creative thinking within education.     

Transparency,Information Shocks,and Tax Avoidance

This study helps provide clarity to the prior mixed findings on the association between financial reporting transparency and tax avoidance by studying the effect that transparency has on tax avoidance in a cross‐country sample through aggregate‐ and firm‐level tests. Results using firm‐ and country‐level (aggregate) measures of transparency and tax avoidance show that countries and firms with greater levels of transparency exhibit lower levels of tax avoidance and that the effect of country‐level transparency is incremental to firm‐level transparency. Furthermore, results of difference‐in‐difference tests using the adoption of IFRS and the initial enforcement of insider trading laws around the world as exogenous shocks that increase transparency find that transparency has a statistically and economically significant effect on tax avoidance and address empirical concerns regarding endogeneity and reverse causality not fully addressed in the prior research. The results of these tests as well as tests that address potential correlated but omitted variables suggest that financial transparency is an important tool which regulators can use in battling tax avoidance.     

Innovation management tools: implementing technology watch as a routine for adaptation

Innovation management (IM) is a multidisciplinary field which has been growing for the past few decades. However, the management of innovation is often considered equivalent to technology management or the management of research and development. By focusing on a set of small- and medium-sized enterprises operating in a medium-high-tech industry, the paper intends to determine the characteristics of IM tools. In particular, we address one of these tools, technology watch (TW), and define a set of generic stages to introduce the most relevant roles for its implementation. TW consists of the systematic observation, analysis and use of technological information, allowing companies to be aware of their external environment and learn from it. Through the implementation of TW processes, companies are able to assess and adapt their current technological base and the fit of their internal competences to the signals coming from the external environment.     

Early Warning for Currency Crises: What Is the Role of Financial Openness?

The paper explores whether financial openness—capital account openness and gross capital inflows—makes countries vulnerable to currency crises. A quarterly dataset on 46 advanced and emerging market economies (AEs and EMEs) during 1975Q1–2011Q4 is used, with the period after Q2 2007 used for out‐of‐sample testing. The key findings are: (1) capital account openness is associated with lower probability of currency crises, but less so for EMEs; (2) surges in gross capital flows are associated with increased risk of currency crises; and (3) the model performs well out‐of‐sample, confirming that early warning models are helpful in judging relative vulnerability.     

Raw materials price and technological uncertainty in a small open economy

This paper examines the implications of raw materials price uncertainty for capital allocation and compares the impact of production uncertainty and raw materials price uncertainty. It shows that the economy may avoid risk by allocating more capital in a sector using an input (for example, raw materials) which has a random price. This contrasts with multiplicative production uncertainty case, in which the economy avoids risk by allocating less capital to the risky (uncertainty) sector. Input efficiency uncertainty and materials input price uncertainty have the same implications for a raw-materials-importing economy, but quite opposite implications for a raw-materials-exporting economy.     

Results of a Delphi survey in drawing up the input-output tables for Catalonia

This work presents the results of an ambitious and innovative use of the Delphi technique in supplying a quantitative economic model, specifically in the preparation of the Input-Output Tables for Catalonia (TIOC 2001). Using this technique for obtaining subjective information from experts comes forward as a valid and reliable option for improving the quality of the data with which the Input-Output tables are constructed, also providing further economic and social advantages. The application presented thus opens up an interesting field of development for this technique and also gives several contributions for appraising the execution of a Delphi exercise of this type.