An Empirical Examination of the Market Returns and Financial Performance of Entities Engaged in Sustainability Reporting

The importance of sustainability reporting to external stakeholders is reflected in the advent of various reporting guidelines and government inquiries. However, evidence of the inadequacy of such reporting, coupled with limited evidence of its use by market participants (such as investors and creditors) for resource-allocation decisions, raises questions about the overall value-relevance of sustainability reporting. This study seeks to identify, in the Australian context, whether the level of sustainable reporting is associated with a range of financial and market performance attributes of the firm.     

THE ENVIRONMENTAL KUZNETS CURVE: A LITERATURE SURVEY

Literature on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is examined, focussing on the possibility that the EKC may be explained by trade patterns. If significant, this trade effect would cast doubt on the oft‐stated conclusion that economic growth automatically leads to environmental improvement. Research has been insufficient, although a number of promising approaches have been developed. Although evidence on the pollution‐haven hypothesis is mixed, there is enough to suggest that the EKC development path may not be available to today's developing countries. Other problems cast doubt on whether the EKC exists in any relevant sense at all.     

A MACROECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE ON SKILL SHORTAGES AND THE SKILL PREMIUM IN NEW ZEALAND*

Qualification and occupation‐based measures of skilled labour are constructed to explain the skill premium – the wage of skilled labour relative to unskilled labour in New Zealand. The data exhibit a more rapid growth in the supply of skilled labour than the skill premium, and a very large increase in the real minimum wage over the period from 1986 to 2005. We estimate the rate of increase in the relative demand for skills and the elasticity of substitution. The data are consistent with skill shortages and a skill‐bias technical change. We examine the effects of the minimum wage, capital complementarity, and the exchange rate on the skill premium. We also test whether the demand for skills and the elasticity of substitution varied across industries and over time.     

Agricultural Policy Debate: A Survey*

A survey is provided of writings between 1978 and 1985 on or directly relevant to Australian agricultural policy. The areas covered are: background and overview; industry policy, including tariff compensation, home consumption price schemes. quotas, input subsidies and futures trading by marketing boards; stabilization; adjustment and the capital market; and macroeconomics and agriculture. An increasingly critical approach has been taken in identifying sources of inefficiency in agriculture and in considering ways of reducing them. Private interest explanations of policy descisions have received serious study and macroeconomic issues have received increasing attention.