Towards Economic Literacy

Following Fred Hankins's initial article on the approach to economics teaching in schools, two educational specialists involved in the 14—16 Project for school economics curricula, outline their approach to the fostering of economic literacy.     

The tyranny of distance—domestic and international carriers changing policies, problems and solutions

The issues of deregulation and privatization are examined as are the operating tactics and strategies of the Australian domestic in their approach to a new era of unregulated competition. The impact of personal management styles is observed and the impacts of equipment choices are noted. In the international context the difficulty of seasonal traffic boosts together with unexpected growth rates in inbound tourism have had major impacts on bi-lateral relations. Qantas has attempted to constrain the growth in both the capacity of existing foreign carriers and the introduction of new carriers. Particular emphasis is given to the U.S.-Australian bi-lateral agreement.     

SELECTIVITY,MARKET TIMING,AND RANDOM BETA BEHAVIOR OF MUTUAL FUNDS: A GENERALIZED MODEL

This paper presents a generalized varying parameter model to investigate the performance of mutual funds. The model allows beta nonstationarity to include both market timing and random beta behavior; therefore, it can be regarded as a general case of previous research. Forty-three funds with a wide range of objectives are examined. The generalized varying parameter results indicate that about 30 percent of the funds show selectivity, 19 percent have random betas, and 14 percent indicate significant, yet negative, market timing performance. Therefore, mutual funds, as a group, show no market timing ability. The apparent ability to select undervalued securities, however, seems to conflict with the efficient markets hypothesis.     

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT: A STATISTICAL INVESTIGATION*

Some writers have emphasised the adverse environmental and social effects of economic growth, while others have claimed that countries with higher levels of social well-being also tend to enjoy higher levels of per capita output. The aim of this study is to see what statistical light can be thrown on these issues by collating and comparing seventeen different social indicators for twenty countries in two bench-mark years, 1951 and 1969. Two methods of analysing data are employed. First, all the countries are ranked for each indicator in turn for a particular year. Each country is then given a score ranging from 1 to 20 for each indicator, and the scores aggregated over the indicators to obtain an overall ranking score for every country. Secondly, the data are subjected to a principal components analysis to examine the correlation between the indicators. The first principal component is a potential candidate for use as a social index number. Changes in these social variables are then related to the rate of economic growth, and no evidence is found of a negative correlation between economic growth and social development. On the contrary, the results suggest a positive correlation between the two, although the strength of this relationship may be diminishing. It is not claimed that the results are in any sense the most preferred test of the form of the relationship between economic growth and social welfare, which must be a matter for subjective evaluation; rather they are seen as a contribution to the body of empirical evidence on this subject.     

Employee empowerment in manufacturing: a study of organisations in the UK

Based on a postal survey and interviews, this paper analyses employee empowerment in the UK manufacturing industry, including how it is pursued and perceived, and the key factors that determine success. Success seems to depend on far-reaching changes in procedures, hierarchies and reward structures. This need to mobilise individual agents and structure reconfirms the agency-structure duality.     

Penalty Rates and Enterprise Bargaining

Industrial relations procedures in both Australia and New Zealand are changing from a system based on centralised arbitration towards enterprise level negotiation. This article considers how this change will affect overtime and other penalty rate payments. In particular, we show how, despite the existence of a legislative ‘safety net’, enterprise level negotiations can lead to the widespread removal of penalty rates, possibly to the detriment of both employees and employers. Such changes will, however, enhance competition and benefit consumers.     

Pure Altruism,Consumer Behavior and Choice Modeling*

An important assumption underlying non‐market valuation is that it is not the environment but the human preference that is valued. This paper attempts to test whether individual consumer behavior is influenced by a purely altruistic motive, examining the attitude of hikers towards the hypothetical removal of the Muju ski resort from the Mount Togyu National Park in South Korea. Data were collected from samples of hikers and skiers who visited the national park. The respondents were forced to consider trade‐offs between the recovery of the lost environmental assets in the Muju ski resort area, skiers’ additional travel time, and willingness‐to‐pay amounts for the hypothetical environmental improvement. It was found that hikers did not take into account skiers’ disutility represented by additional travel time.