Model of Welfare Capitalism? The United States Rubber Company in Southeast Asia, 1910-1942

Welfare capitalism, the management ethos adopted by Americanbusiness leaders in the early twentieth century, emphasizesthe role of business rather than trade unions or governmentin taking care of its workers. This article focuses on the reasonswhy the United States Rubber Company (USRC), one of the fourlargest U.S. rubber manufacturers, promoted welfare capitalismat its rubber plantations on the east coast of Sumatra and Malayabetween 1910 and 1942. In addition, this study assesses thedevelopment of USRC's system of welfare in the areas of housing,profit sharing, pension plans, health care, and recreation.This article argues that USRC's intention was not to forestallunionization (the intention of U.S.-based companies in adoptingwelfare capitalism), as union formation in Southeast Asia duringthat period was very unlikely, but to overcome labor shortagesand high turnover rates and to ensure labor stability. Withreduced labor costs, the availability of financial resourcesallowed for technical innovations and R & D, which ultimatelywould lead to increased productivity.     

A Perspective on Modelling the Australian Real Trade Weighted Index since the Float

Since the deregulation of the Australian dollar market in December 1983, considerable effort has been devoted by the central bank to understanding movements in the value of the currency. As the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has a pivotal role to play in currency markets, attention has been focussed on the modelling techniques used by the Bank's researchers in this process. This paper examines the ancestral development of the current model of the Australian Trade Weighted Index ( rtwi ) used at the RBA, as specified in Beechey et al. (2000). Estimates and forecasting evaluations of the various models imply that only the relationships between the rtwi , the terms of trade and interest differentials hold consistently, providing the empirical foundation for the current RBA model.