The impact of SARS on China's human resources: implications for the labour market and level of unemployment in the service sector in Beijing,Guangzhou and Shanghai

In this paper, we examine the effects of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) on China's human resources, its labour-market and its level of employment and unemployment, looking specifically at what was one of its economically most vulnerable points, the hotel industry. The paper hypothesizes that the greatest impact would be on human resources in the service-industries and on particular sub-sectors, such as employment in hotels, located in three main cities in the PRC, in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, catering to both overseas as well as domestic tourism. It tentatively concludes that the almost dramatic demand and supply ‘shocks’ may have directly affected both the demand for and the supply of labour in the sub-sector, with discernable employment consequences.     

The Motivation and Effectiveness of Gas Industry Economic Regulation in New South Wales, 1912–39

The oldest industry in Australia subjected to economic regulation is the gas supply industry in the state of New South Wales. In this paper the aims and motivation of the New South Wales Government in establishing the regulatory regime in 1912 and the subsequent effectiveness in achieving them are determined. Initially the regulatory regime was based on ad hoc arrangements, but eventually a more permanent structure was devised that effectively defused political controversy over gas market pricing and stabilised prices rather than substantially lowered them.     

A framework for evaluating CDT practice with respect to the ethos of CDT

The increasing pressures of account-ability faced by schools have been the application of various adaptations of self-evaluation methods. However, charges of lack of objectivity (Simons in Skilbeck, 1984 p. 52) have been directed at such responses, and these were fuelled by observations that teachers lack the skills and understanding to undertake evaluation (Mathias, 1983).These pressures are intensified for Craft, Design & Technology as a result of its youth and the nature and brief existence of the subject. As a curriculum area it is different from its forerunners, yet most CDT teachers were not purposefully educated to teach it. The centralist nature of its introduction together with a misunderstanding of CDT and the skills demanded produced varying degrees of support and interpretation. This was compounded by the lack of CDT research and literature (Toft in Cross & McCormack, 1987 p.298).     

Tourism and the Australian economy

Consideration of the economic significance of tourism requires synthesis of a discrete tourism ‘industry’ from selected sectors of the economy and identification of its component activities which may then be used to relate expenditure by tourists, sectorally and spatially, to other elements in the economy. This approach is applied to create a profile of the Australian tourism industry at a national level and shows that tourism contributes a significant proportion to GDP and employs at least 3% of the labour force. This is comparable with the UK and other developed countries.     

The life and death of the Australian permanent building societies

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries permanent building societies have been important providers of housing finance in Australia. Despite their long history Australian building societies have been disappearing at a steady rate since the early 1980s as they have converted into banks or become involved in mergers. The purpose of this paper is to give a background account of the history of Australian building societies and put forward explanations for their past popularity and more recent disappearance from Australian housing finance markets.