Economic Record最新文献

This study examines the effects of technological capability, technological spillovers, and technological gap on firm-level productivity growth in the Korean pharmaceutical industry over the period 2000-2023. Utilizing the generalized true random effects (GTRE) stochastic frontier analysis, this article estimates technical efficiency to serve as a proxy for the technological gap. The results indicate that technological divergence is the primary driver of inter-firm productivity polarization, with limited evidence of technological spillovers from frontier firms to laggards. These findings support the low technological capability hypothesis over the Schumpeterian catch-up hypothesis, which posits convergence through innovation diffusion. The study further highlights that, even at the frontier, intra-firm technological diffusion can be sluggish under conditions of rapid technological change. It underscores the importance of intra-firm diffusion, characterized by distinct mechanisms from inter-firm diffusion, as a key determinant of productivity growth alongside inter-firm technological divergence.

What is happening now? The onset of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 highlighted the importance of having timely data on the economy to help policy-makers make more informed decisions. However, the most comprehensive measure of activity, GDP, is published with a long lag, limiting its value to policy-makers as a measure of the current state of the economy. To overcome this information deficiency, we develop a monthly activity indicator (MAI) for Australia. The MAI provides policy-makers with a more immediate snapshot of prevailing economic conditions. We achieve this by using a dynamic factor model to summarise the information content from a curated list of 35 monthly predictors selected for their ability to explain movements in quarterly real GDP growth. We undertake a pseudo out-of-sample nowcasting exercise using the MAI in an unrestricted MIDAS model and find that nowcasts based on the MAI significantly outperform standard benchmark models. Crucially, outperformance is largest during the COVID-19 crisis, emphasising the benefit from considering timely data. Our results demonstrate that the MAI is a useful tool for policy-makers to gain a better understanding of current economic conditions in Australia.

Do higher skills help mitigate the negative impact of economic crises? We study the effect of two major economic setbacks—the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2007–09 and the COVID-19 period from early 2020—on wage progression for New Zealanders with different skill levels. For our analysis, we link the PIAAC survey data on literacy and numeracy skills with the Inland Revenue's tax records that document the entire workforce's monthly labour market information. During the GFC, the adverse impact of the economic shock on wage progression appears to be significantly lower for the higher-skilled population. Moreover, those in the low-skilled group who changed employers during the GFC experienced the largest wage drop. However, during the more recent period of COVID-19 restrictions, we find little evidence of skill-based differences in wage progression. In some years, low-skilled workers even experienced slightly faster wage growth than high-skilled workers.

In Australia, where voting is compulsory, around 5 per cent of votes are informal, not counting toward the outcome. Between 2004 and 2016, 32 per cent of electorates reported more informal votes than votes in the margin between the winner and runner-up. Using exogenous changes in electorate boundaries, we test two hypotheses from the literature. We find the pivotal voter theory unsupported, except that better-educated voters respond to the margin more strategically. However, we do find that more candidates cause more informal votes. This choice-overload effect is observed regardless of voters' education, indicating the role of time and effort cost rather than cognitive difficulty.

The State Savings Bank of Victoria (SSBV) played a pivotal role as the first public bank to offer financial services, including deposit banking and agricultural loans, across rural areas in Victoria. This study investigates the spatial distribution and activities of the SSBV within rural municipalities between Federation and World War I. The SSBV's presence exhibited a nuanced interplay between population density and spatial coverage but was primarily associated with its deposit banking services. Agricultural loans demonstrated a correlation with both population patterns and agricultural suitability of each municipality, while deposit banking volumes at SSBV locations closely tracked local economic activity reflected by the revenues of corresponding local post offices. Furthermore, despite losing its post office distribution network to the newly established Commonwealth Bank in 1912, the SSBV successfully attracted additional new customers in locations where it created new full branch offices in response.

This paper investigates the effects of discretionary tax changes on economic activity in Australia. Using official records, including Budget Reports and Election Speeches, I construct a narrative-based dataset that identifies the revenue impact, timing and motivation of all major Commonwealth tax policy changes from 1983Q4 to 2018Q4. This approach enables the identification of legislated tax changes that are unrelated to contemporaneous economic conditions. To estimate their macroeconomic effects, I use unanticipated exogenous tax changes as an instrument for tax revenue. The results indicate that tax cuts stimulate economic activity in the short run through consumption and investment; however, these gains are offset within 2 years due to contractionary monetary policy and a deterioration in the trade balance.

RETRACTION: A. Aldi and N. Hamid, “The Remnants of Race Science: UNESCO and Economic Development in the Global South, by Sebastián Gil-Riaño (Columbia University Press, New York, 2023), pp. 392,” Economic Record (Early View): https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4932.12854.

The above article, published online on 9 December 2024 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, James Morley; The Economic Society of Australia; and John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd. The retraction has been agreed due to a lack of proper peer review and failure to adhere to the journal's submission guidelines. Therefore, the article must be retracted due to the editor's loss of confidence in the validity of the content. The authors have been informed of this decision.