Information technology and its changing roles to economic growth and productivity in Australia

In this paper we describe our investigation of the role of investment in information technology (IT) on economic output and productivity in Australia over a period of about four decades. The framework used in this paper is the aggregate production function, where IT capital is considered as a separate input of production along with non-IT capital and labour. The empirical results from the study indicate the evidence of robust technical progress in the Australian economy in the 1990s. IT capital had a significant impact on output, labour productivity and technical progress in the 1990s. In recent years, however, the contribution of IT capital on output and labour productivity has slowed down. Regaining the IT capital productivity therefore remains as a key challenge for Australia, especially in the context of greater IT investment in the future.     

Asymmetric impact of oil prices,exchange rate,and inflation on tourism demand in Pakistan: new evidence from nonlinear ARDL

This study scrutinized the asymmetric impact of oil prices, exchange rate, and inflation on tourism demand in Pakistan using [Shin, Y., Yu, B., & Greenwood-Nimmo, M. (2014) Modelling asymmetric cointegration and dynamic multipliers in a nonlinear ARDL framework. In Festschrift in honor of peter schmidt (pp. 281–314). New York, NY: Springer] nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model. The NARDL bounds test examined the existence of cointegration in study variables, including CO₂ emissions, institutional quality, oil prices, exchange rate, inflation, and tourism demand. The evidence proposes that disregarding the intrinsic nonlinearities may misinform inference. The estimated NARDL model affirmed long-run negative and significant effect of CO₂ emissions on tourism demand, while institutional quality was positively associated with tourism demand. Furthermore, the findings of the study also suggested long-run asymmetric relationship between oil prices, exchange rate, inflation, and tourism demand.     

Does financial cooperation agreement improve the cointegration among ASEAN+3 money markets?

This paper aims to empirically examine the degree of cointegration among ASEAN+3 money markets in order to determine and adopt remedial actions pursuant to vulnerabilities in the region’s money markets that indicate an inability to prevent possible financial crises. In order to validate vulnerabilities, this paper investigates the degree to which money markets are integrated. Inter-bank lending rates are divided based on agreement periods as well as on income levels of regional economies. The VAR-based Cointegration test and the VECM have been applied in the investigation process. The findings are: (1) weak integration during the pre-agreement period; (2) substantial progress toward the post-agreement period; (3) both high- and low-income markets integrate in a cooperative way; and (4) the agreement produces an impact that is incomplete in so far as integrating the region’s money markets. The finding of this study offers implications for the regional makers.     

Understanding Conflicting Interests of a Government and a Tobacco Manufacturer: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Rice is the staple food of nearly half of the population of the world, most of whom live in developing countries. Ensuring a domestic supply of rice from outside sources is difficult for developing countries as less than 5% of the total world’s production is available for international trade. Hence, in order to ensure domestic food security, e.g., food availability and access, governments provide subsidies in agriculture. In many occasions, public money used for the subsidy goes toward promoting undesirable crops like tobacco. Although the strategic interaction between governments and manufacturers is critical, it has not been studied in the literature. This study fills this gap by considering a game between a government (of a developing country) and a tobacco manufacturer in which the government decides on a mix of subsidies and the tobacco manufacturer decides on declaring a purchasing price of tobacco. We provide a numerical study to show that controlling the output harvest price is more effective in reaching the desired end result for both the government and the tobacco manufacturer. A subsidy in fertilizer results in the measurable increase in the government spending but does not have significant effect in reaching the production target. The fertilizer subsidy should be provided only when the output price is too high to be affordable for the population.     

Director Tenure Diversity and Board Monitoring Effectiveness

This study examines the impact of director tenure diversity on board effectiveness. We find that tenure‐diverse boards exhibit significantly higher CEO performance‐turnover sensitivity and that firms with tenure‐diverse audit committees are less likely to experience accounting restatements. Furthermore, we document that tenure‐diverse compensation committees also award less excess compensation and are less likely to overcompensate. Even though tenure‐diverse boards seem to exhibit superior monitoring performance, there is limited evidence that their firms exhibit superior financial performance. The findings suggest that recent calls for board renewal, to the extent that it would increase tenure diversity rather than just decrease average board tenure, may help enhance board monitoring.     

Does the financial cooperation agreement increase the interdependency among ASEAN+3 equity markets? A Markov switching approach

International Economics and Economic Policy - This paper aims to investigate the degree of interdependence among ASEAN+3 equity markets by employing Markov Switching approach and Johansen...     

Evaluation of Target Area Concentration (TAC) Programme in Malaysia’s Integrated Cattle and Oil Palm Farming

Malaysia’s beef production falls under three types of production methods: traditional system, intensive system of cattle feedlots, and integrated farming system. The objective of this study is to investigate and evaluate the effectiveness of the target area concentration (TAC) programme conducted by the Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) that focuses on the integrated farming system between cattle and oil palm plantation. This study intends to identify the programme’s achievement through context, input, process, and product (CIPP) analysis. The analysis reveals that the real needs of the programme context are being met by TAC; the provision meets the needs of inputs but there are some constraints; the implementation of the TAC programme is running well and receives good cooperation from farmers, but there are some constraints; and there is a positive impact of the programme in terms of production, income, employment, changes in knowledge, skill, attitude, and practice. Overall, the TAC programme has thus far achieved its objectives, but it needs some improvements.     

Using GIS to visualise and evaluate student travel behaviour

Using GIS to evaluate travel behaviour is an important technique to increase our understanding of the relationship between accessibility and transport demand. In this paper, the activity space concept was used to identify the nature of participation in activities (or lack of it) amongst a group of students using a 2 day travel-activity diary. Three different indicators such as the number of unique locations visited, average daily distance travelled, and average daily activity duration were used to measure the size of activity spaces. These indicators reflect levels of accessibility, personal mobility, and the extent of participation, respectively. Multiple regression analyses were used to assess the impacts of students socio-economic status and the spatial characteristics of home location. Although no differences were found in the levels of accessibility and the extent of participation measures, home location with respect to a demand responsive transport (DRT) service was found to be the most important determinant of their mobility patterns. Despite being able to travel longer distances, students who live outside of the DRT service area were found to be temporally excluded from some opportunities. Student activity spaces were also visualised within a GIS environment and a spatial analysis was conducted to underpin the evaluation of the performance of the DRT. This approach was also used to identify the activity spaces of individuals that are geographically excluded from the service. Evaluation of these results indicated that although the service currently covers areas of high demand, 90% of the activity spaces remained un-served by the DRT service. Using this data six new routes were designed to meet the coverage goal of public transport based on a measure of network impedance based on inverse activity density. Following assessment of public transport service coverage, the study was extended using a spatial multi criteria evaluation (SMCE) technique to assess the effect of service provision on patronage.     

Vertical Integration,Foreign Multinationals and Stigler's Hypotheses: An Empirical Test Using Malaysian Data*

In this paper the hypotheses on motives for vertical integration as proposed by Stigler are empirically tested using a panel dataset from Malaysian manufacturing under both fixed‐effects and random‐effects specifications. Because the degree of multinational participation is expected to influence the results of the regression estimates, empirical tests are conducted with and without controlling for the effect of foreign firms’ participation. Depending on model specifications, evidence is found in favor of Stigler's hypotheses where vertical integration is positively related to demand growth and industry concentration. This result is generally consistent with those found in other vertical integration studies. Significantly, the coefficient estimates of the growth variable are not significant and biased downwards if there is no control on the effect of foreign multinationals in the estimation process.     

What drives sustainable student travel? Mode choice determinants in the Greater Toronto Area

Examination of mode choice behavior is an important step in accurately predicting future travel demand. Despite having somewhat unique travel needs and challenges, there is a lack of knowledge in understanding the mode use behavior of university student population. The existing studies on university populations relied on a relatively smaller sample in investigating the behavior. Therefore, using world's largest university student's travel database, this study examines the factors affecting the mode choice behavior of a diverse university student population with student samples from four universities and their seven campuses located across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Canada. Additionally, stratifying this diverse population using their attitudinal responses towards numerous travel modes, this study also estimates three additional mode choice models to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of how students in different markets, with different latent attitudes towards transportation, vary in terms of sustainable mode choice. A cluster analysis based on fourteen attitudinal responses, was conducted to stratify the sample whereas the popular multinomial logit approach was used to estimate the mode choice models. This study finds transit pass and bike ownership as important determinants that govern sustainable mode choice among the students in the region. The findings of this study could facilitate the sustainability offices at the four universities in making an informed policy decision in shifting the mode use behavior of students towards sustainable modes.