GROWTH,COMMODITY PRICES,INFLATION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME

A primary commodity price boom is underway. Given the role of internationally traded primary commodities as inputs into the productive process in the industrialized world, an important question arises: namely what effects will this price‐boom exert upon wage and price inflation in industrialized countries? In order to address this question, we specify and estimate a system of equations in which the key dependent variables are world commodity prices, the domestic inflation rate for finished goods and the rate of domestic industrial wage inflation. This model is estimated against data for each of three major industrialized countries: Japan, the UK and the USA and the implications of the results thus obtained are explored.     

The Impact of Children on Australian Couples’ Wealth Accumulation

Existing estimates of the cost of children focus on what parents spend on their children, which has limited relevance to parents’ financial capacity to meet those costs. An alternative indicator of the affordability of children, their impact upon couples’ wealth accumulation, is estimated using the lifecycle model and Australian household panel data. The results suggest children have a very small impact upon wealth accumulation, seemingly at odds with the large ‘costs’ implied from expenditure‐based estimates. In reconciling these highly divergent estimates we argue that the net‐wealth approach is an intuitively more appealing indicator of the financial impost of children.     

Testing for efficiency in the Saudi stock market: does corporate governance change matter?

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We study the informational efficiency of the Saudi stock market (SSM), while accounting for corporate governance change, based on single, multiple,...     

The Social Return to Apprenticeship Training

This paper draws together findings from a recent program of research to estimate the social rate of return to apprenticeship training and how the costs of training are distributed. It is estimated that 53 per cent of the costs of training an apprentice are borne by the employer, 28 per cent by the public sector and 19 per cent by the apprentice. This is in sharp contrast to the prediction of economic theory that trainees pay for general training. The social rate of return to male apprenticeships is estimated to be 12.8 per cent. This is in line with previous estimates of the social rate of return to university degrees and supports the case for policy measures to increase the level of apprenticeship training. Reforms taking place under the New Apprenticeships Systems are intended to shift the distribution of costs in line with that predicted by theory by placing a greater cost burden on apprentices for general training and increasing the specificity of training. If employers' willingness to offer apprenticeships has been a constraint, then these changes should stimulate apprenticeship training.