Pub Date : 2016-12-07DOI: 10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.05
Omer Majeed
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Pub Date : 2016-12-07DOI: 10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.06
Michael Palmer
Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality(Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2013)Professor Deaton's qualification for tackling this ambitious subject is acknowledged by his award of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics. There is perhaps no better authority to bring together the wide branches of health, wealth and inequality, which he does so masterfully in this book. It bespeaks a writer who says it all as he sees it; and not from the vantage of a Princeton ivory tower, but as someone who has spent a career thinking about how to measure and improve the lot of the world's worst off. In closing its pages, there is the sense that there is not much more left to say. It is the story of some of humanity's great escape from deprivation beside the inevitable remaining gaps in global wellbeing.This is, overall, an optimistic and uplifting read. The past 250 years have witnessed the most spectacular increase in human wellbeing in history. The economies of China and India, accounting for one-third of the world's population, have seen growth rates that are unparalleled in any country or time in history, supporting recent expansions in global living standards. Life expectancy in most parts of the world has soared on the back of achievements in child mortality (for example, a child born in sub-Saharan Africa today is more likely to live to the age of five than a child born in the UK just a century ago). However, it is a dual story of the 'dance between progress and inequality' where almost a billion people still live in destitution and countless children still die from the same diseases that killed European children in the 17th and 18th centuries.There are many books that tell separate stories of wealth and health inequality but in this book both stories are told at once. Wealth and health, it is argued, are each central parts of the story of human wellbeing. The merit of the book lies not in the telling of each story but in its attempt at weaving health and wealth as a self-reinforcing whole. Gaps in income, both between and within countries, correspond to gaps in health. The intriguing part of the story is the claim that income explains less about health than we would think ,which Deaton attributes (p. 97) to advancing knowledge and technology, human capital accumulation, and government capacity and institutional quality across countries:Turning the germ theory into safe water and sanitation takes time and requires both money and state capacity; these were not always available a century ago, and in many parts of the world they are not available today.While written by a self-professed economist, The Great Escape explores an impressive collection of writings on the subject, from demography, public health, anthropology and history. The book is written for a general audience in a style that is far from that of his earlier works such as An Analysis of Household Surveys. To ease digestion the core contents of the book are summ
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Pub Date : 2016-12-07DOI: 10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.07
S. Cornish
Alan Bollard, A Few Hares to Chase: The Life and Economics of Bill Phillips(Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2016)Thomas Carlyle called economics 'the dismal science'. Some aspects of economics may fairly be described as 'dismal'. But it would be a particularly harsh judgement - and an inaccurate one - if that description were applied to the discipline as a whole. If the increasing size of biographies (and autobiographies) of economists is used as the measure, it would appear that economists are anything but dismal. Take John Maynard Keynes, for example. Robert Skidelsky's life of Keynes covers three volumes, totalling some 1,758 pages; Donald Moggridge's single-volume biography of Keynes is 941 pages in length. And Keynes was only 62 when he died! Susan Howson's life of Lionel Robbins is 1,161 pages; Peter Groenewegen's life of Alfred Marshall is 864 pages; and Marjorie Harper's biography of Sir Douglas Copland, The Australian National University's first Vice-Chancellor, is 548 pages. These economists must have been doing some interesting things to warrant such prolonged engagement by their biographers - and most assuredly they did.Bill Phillips, the author of the eponymous 'Phillips Curve', and the subject of A Few Hares to Chase, was many things: modest, sober, unpretentious, imaginative, inquisitive and a genius; but rarely, if ever, dismal. Alan Bollard, the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and the author of this biography of Phillips, refers to his subject as 'remarkable'. And so he was. Here was a man born on a small dairy farm in 1914 in an obscure part of New Zealand, who went to local schools, qualified as an electrician after serving an apprenticeship with a local hydro-electric authority, worked for some years in the back blocks of New South Wales and Queensland, crossed Asia and Europe on the trans-Siberian railway before the outbreak of the Second World War, enlisted in the RAF in London, was captured by the Japanese while trying to escape at the fall of Singapore, spent the rest of the war in appalling conditions in prisoner-of-war camps at various locations on the island of Java, returned to London via New Zealand after the war, enrolled for a degree in sociology at the London School of Economics (LSE), successfully completed a PhD in economics at LSE, was appointed to one of the most prestigious chairs of economics in the world (the Tooke chair, which had previously been occupied by Friedrich Hayek), wrote one of the most cited articles in economics, accepted a research chair in economics at ANU and died in 1975 at the of 60, lecturing, at the University of Auckland, until the day before he died.Bollard has written a superb biography of the man, at once concise, elegant and extensively researched. The essential biographical details of Phillips's life are told against the backdrop of local and world history, with the contemporary events linked to the personal story in such a way that the two appear to be sea
艾伦·博拉德，《几只野兔可追:比尔·菲利普斯的生活与经济学》(奥克兰大学出版社，奥克兰，2016)托马斯·卡莱尔称经济学为“沉闷的科学”。经济学的某些方面可以用“令人沮丧”来形容。但如果这种描述适用于整个学科，那将是一个特别苛刻的判断——而且是不准确的判断。如果以经济学家传记(和自传)的数量不断增加作为衡量标准，那么经济学家似乎一点也不令人沮丧。以约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)为例。罗伯特·斯基德尔斯基(Robert Skidelsky)的《凯恩斯生平》(life of Keynes)有三卷，共计约1758页;唐纳德·莫格里奇(Donald Moggridge)的单卷本凯恩斯传记长达941页。凯恩斯去世时才62岁!苏珊·豪森的《莱昂内尔·罗宾斯的一生》有1161页;Peter Groenewegen的阿尔弗雷德·马歇尔传记有864页;玛乔丽·哈珀为澳大利亚国立大学首任副校长道格拉斯·科普兰爵士撰写的传记长达548页。这些经济学家一定做了一些有趣的事情，才有理由让他们的传记作者如此长时间地参与其中——而且他们确实做了。比尔·菲利普斯是同名“菲利普斯曲线”的作者，也是《追逐几只野兔》一书的主人公，他具有许多特质:谦虚、冷静、朴实、富有想象力、好学，是个天才;但很少是令人沮丧的。Alan Bollard，新西兰储备银行前行长，也是菲利普斯传记的作者，称他的主题是“非凡的”。他确实是。就是一个人出生在一个小奶牛场1914年在新西兰的一个不起眼的一部分,谁去了当地的学校,后合格的电工学徒服务与当地水电权威,工作了几年在新南威尔士和昆士兰,穿过西伯利亚铁路亚洲和欧洲在第二次世界大战爆发之前,加入了英国皇家空军在伦敦,被日本人在试图逃跑的新加坡,度过剩下的战俘集中营骇人听闻的战争条件在爪哇岛上的不同位置,通过新西兰战争结束后返回伦敦,报名参加了一个社会学学位在伦敦经济学院(LSE),成功地完成了在伦敦政治经济学院经济学博士学位,被任命为一个世界上最著名的椅子的经济学(男女椅子,以前被弗里德里希•哈耶克),写了一个经济学的最常被引用的文章,他接受了澳大利亚国立大学经济学研究主席的职位，并于1975年去世，享年60岁，生前一直在奥克兰大学讲学，直到去世前一天。博拉德为他写了一本极好的传记，既简洁、优雅，又研究广泛。菲利普斯生活的重要传记细节是在当地和世界历史的背景下讲述的，当代事件与个人故事以这样一种方式联系在一起，两者似乎天衣无缝。成功地完成这一壮举而不显得做作是一种非凡的技能，它确实增加了阅读这本书的乐趣。在他的社会学本科学习期间，菲利普斯开始考虑经济学——他对这门学科几乎没有兴趣或天赋，结果只得了可怜的三分之一。在另一位在伦敦政治经济学院攻读经济学学位的归国军人沃尔特•纽林(Walter Newlyn)的帮助下，菲利普斯利用有机玻璃水箱和抽水管道，建立了凯恩斯宏观经济的流体力学模型。该模型通常以首字母缩略词MONIAC(货币国民收入自动计算机)而为人所熟知，它经历了许多越来越复杂的版本，证明了如果总需求发生变化或政策改变，产出和就业可能会发生什么。伦敦政治经济学院的高级经济学家，包括詹姆斯·米德和莱昂内尔·罗宾斯，很快就看到了它作为一种教学设备的潜力，大学(墨尔本大学获得了一台)、政府和央行的订单也很快涌来。．．．
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Pub Date : 2016-01-01DOI: 10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.01
C. Berg, S. Davidson
The paper examines two Australian freedom-of-speech controversies between 2011 and 2013 – the debate over section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and the debate over the Gillard Government's print media laws. These controversies featured rhetorical and ideological debate about the limits of free speech and the nature of human rights. The paper applies a subjective political economy framework to these debates in order to trace the effect of increased perceived disorder costs and dictatorship costs of freedom-of-speech restrictions. The paper concludes that policy change is driven by exogenous changes in perceived institutional costs. In the case of the Gillard Government's media laws, those costs were borne by the Gillard Government, and one would not expect print media laws to be a major political issue in the absence of a further exogenous shock. In the case of section 18C the revealed dictatorship costs of legislation, which includes the words 'offend' and 'insult', suggest the section 18C controversy will endure.
{"title":"Section 18C, human rights, and media reform: An institutional analysis of the 2011-13 Australian free speech debate","authors":"C. Berg, S. Davidson","doi":"10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.01","url":null,"abstract":"The paper examines two Australian freedom-of-speech controversies between 2011 and 2013 – the debate over section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and the debate over the Gillard Government's print media laws. These controversies featured rhetorical and ideological debate about the limits of free speech and the nature of human rights. The paper applies a subjective political economy framework to these debates in order to trace the effect of increased perceived disorder costs and dictatorship costs of freedom-of-speech restrictions. The paper concludes that policy change is driven by exogenous changes in perceived institutional costs. In the case of the Gillard Government's media laws, those costs were borne by the Gillard Government, and one would not expect print media laws to be a major political issue in the absence of a further exogenous shock. In the case of section 18C the revealed dictatorship costs of legislation, which includes the words 'offend' and 'insult', suggest the section 18C controversy will endure.","PeriodicalId":41700,"journal":{"name":"Agenda-A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform","volume":"11 1","pages":"5-30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85698007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-01-01DOI: 10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.02
P. Abelson
The paper discusses the major criteria for determining the optimal size of local government, and advances an evidence-based critique of the New South Wales Government's program to reduce the number of local councils.
{"title":"The Optimal Size of Local Government, with Special Reference to New South Wales","authors":"P. Abelson","doi":"10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.02","url":null,"abstract":"The paper discusses the major criteria for determining the optimal size of local government, and advances an evidence-based critique of the New South Wales Government's program to reduce the number of local councils.","PeriodicalId":41700,"journal":{"name":"Agenda-A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform","volume":"10 1","pages":"31-46"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79630274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-01-01DOI: 10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.03
Ruth F. Williams, D. Doessel
This paper applies some simple analytical tools from the economists' toolbox to shed some light on a sleeper issue in Australia's mental health sector. The problem is that there are large numbers of people with no diagnosed mental health condition who consume mental health services. Simultaneously, there are large numbers of people who have very serious mental health problems who receive no mental health services. This untreated group is often referred to as those with ?unmet need?, a much-heard term. We refer to the first group as people with 'met non-need', a term hardly ever heard. Although the solution to the unmet-need problem is the oft-heard call for increased government expenditure, no attention is directed to the wasted expenditure associated with the 'met non-need' group: the met non-need issue is 'the elephant in the room'. We point to an alternative policy response; that is, a reallocation of resources from the met non-need group to the unmet need group. To achieve this, we direct focus upon a structural reform in the processes of supplying mental health services.
{"title":"Reallocating Australia's Scarce Mental Health Resources","authors":"Ruth F. Williams, D. Doessel","doi":"10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.03","url":null,"abstract":"This paper applies some simple analytical tools from the economists' toolbox to shed some light on a sleeper issue in Australia's mental health sector. The problem is that there are large numbers of people with no diagnosed mental health condition who consume mental health services. Simultaneously, there are large numbers of people who have very serious mental health problems who receive no mental health services. This untreated group is often referred to as those with ?unmet need?, a much-heard term. We refer to the first group as people with 'met non-need', a term hardly ever heard. Although the solution to the unmet-need problem is the oft-heard call for increased government expenditure, no attention is directed to the wasted expenditure associated with the 'met non-need' group: the met non-need issue is 'the elephant in the room'. We point to an alternative policy response; that is, a reallocation of resources from the met non-need group to the unmet need group. To achieve this, we direct focus upon a structural reform in the processes of supplying mental health services.","PeriodicalId":41700,"journal":{"name":"Agenda-A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform","volume":"109 1","pages":"47-72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80793209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2016-01-01DOI: 10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.04
Bala Ramasamy, Matthew C. H. Yeung
If it eventuates the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) will include major economic powerhouses like the US and Japan, but China - the elephant in the room - has been excluded. Our evaluation of how China might fare in the TPP finds that the agreement would be a poor fit at the current stage of China's economic development. Although China would gain both in terms of trade and a reform timetable, some features of this 21st-century agreement - the assistance given to state-owned enterprises, the standards for labour rights, protection of multinationals against the state and competition laws - would be stumbling blocks in the negotiation process. Thus, being left out of the TPP is no big loss for China.
{"title":"China and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement: Misfit or Missed Opportunity?","authors":"Bala Ramasamy, Matthew C. H. Yeung","doi":"10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AG.23.01.2016.04","url":null,"abstract":"If it eventuates the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) will include major economic powerhouses like the US and Japan, but China - the elephant in the room - has been excluded. Our evaluation of how China might fare in the TPP finds that the agreement would be a poor fit at the current stage of China's economic development. Although China would gain both in terms of trade and a reform timetable, some features of this 21st-century agreement - the assistance given to state-owned enterprises, the standards for labour rights, protection of multinationals against the state and competition laws - would be stumbling blocks in the negotiation process. Thus, being left out of the TPP is no big loss for China.","PeriodicalId":41700,"journal":{"name":"Agenda-A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform","volume":"19 1","pages":"73-88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87210607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-12-07DOI: 10.22459/AG.22.01.2015.04
D. Merrett
IntroductionI started my Bachelor of Economics at Monash University in 1963. My arrival intersected the publications of Noel Butlin's two seminal pioneering works, Australian Domestic Product (1962) and Investment in Australian Economic Development, 1861-1900 (1964). Of course, I had no idea at the time how Noel's work, and the discipline of Australian economic history he created almost single-handedly, would shape my professional life. I was one of the lucky ones who found gainful employment in the burgeoning departments of economic history that sprang up in so many universities. While I never worked at ANU, I met Noel on many occasions. All of us in the field were drawn to Canberra for conferences and seminars, and to use the wonderful collection of records at the Noel Butlin Archives Centre (NBAC).The question I want to explore is the future of archives, such as the NBAC and the one at my own university. My broad point is that the supply of business history and the demand for it by corporates have changed significantly in the past few decades. The most pessimistic interpretation is that the changing practice of business history within universities and the increasing reluctance of business to permit independent 'outsiders' access to their records bodes ill for specialist archives.Let me start with a paradox. More and more is being written about 'business', but the work of researchers, whom we might describe as business historians drawing on archival material, is situated on the margins of this avalanche. What scholars write tends, with some notable exceptions, to be read only by other business historians. Telling stories about business that reaches a mass audience is done by others, most notably by journalists and critics of various hues, and this information reaches its audience through a variety of media. Archives holding extensive records relating to individual firms will be less useful to those current and future scholars working in a shifting paradigm of 'business history'. A recent paper by de Jong, Higgins and van Driel in Business History showed that only around 20 per cent of the articles published in the leading business history journals from 1970 to 2012 were written about a firm! Moreover, I fear that in the current climate and foreseeable future it will be harder to persuade companies to donate their records to archives that mandate the independence of scholars using them.My argument progresses in a number of steps. First, I want to discuss the changes in what I call the 'practice' of business history that lessen the demand from academic practitioners for access to comprehensive archival material. Second, I want to suggest that firms today are less likely to make over their records for scholarly analysis than they were a generation or so ago. I will conclude by suggesting that the tide may yet turn back to the commissioning of full-blown histories.The practice of business historyThe practice of business history - the questions rais
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Pub Date : 2015-12-07DOI: 10.22459/AG.22.01.2015.05
L. Dobes, J. Leung
Proponents of transport infrastructure have in recent decades sought to augment the estimated benefit of major projects beyond conventional cost-benefit analysis. Improved transport links are claimed to increase Marshallian external economies of scale; to reduce transport costs experienced by imperfectly competitive industries, and so induce them to increase their output; and to increase supply of labour, in response to lower transport costs, and thereby increase GDP and tax receipts. Estimates of the value of these three additional effects have resulted in multipliers and 'uprate factors' that appear to be applied by some government agencies to transport sector benefits calculated using conventional CBA. However, empirical estimates of these effects are likely to be exaggerated.
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Pub Date : 2015-01-01DOI: 10.22459/AG.22.01.2015.03
J. Laurenceson, Paul F. Burke, Edward Wei
This paper estimates a model of how the Australian public's preferences over foreign investment in agriculture are determined. The results show that the attributes of foreign investment of greatest concern to the public are not the same as those used by the foreign investment approvals regime to flag proposals for scrutiny.
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