Growth In Australia Research Articles

Bringing Scholarship and Judgement into the Australian Population Debate

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Reconstructing the dynamics of ancient human populations from radiocarbon dates: 10 000 years of population growth in Australia.

Measuring trends in the size of prehistoric populations is fundamental to our understanding of the demography of ancient people and their responses to environmental change. Archaeologists commonly use the temporal distribution of radiocarbon dates to reconstruct population trends, but this can give a false picture of population growth because of the loss of evidence from older sites. We demonstrate a method for quantifying this bias, and we use it to test for population growth through the Holocene of Australia. We used model simulations to show how turnover of site occupation across an archaeological landscape, interacting with erasure of evidence at abandoned sites, can create an increase in apparent site occupation towards the present when occupation density is actually constant. By estimating the probabilities of abandonment and erasure from archaeological data, we then used the model to show that this effect does not account for the observed increase in occupation through the Holocene in Australia. This is best explained by population growth, which was low for the first part of the Holocene but accelerated about 5000 years ago. Our results provide new evidence for the dynamism of non-agricultural populations through the Holocene.

China’s Fiscal Stimulus and the Recession Australia Never Had: Is a Growth Slowdown Now Inevitable?

China's timely and well-targeted two-year fiscal stimulus was particularly effective in stimulating growth in Australia's commodity exports. Using a constructed series of export volumes to China, this paper finds that the post-stimulus GDP growth contribution from export volumes to China is significant. Had growth in export volumes to China been commensurate with pre-stimulus rates, Australia would have experienced three consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth - a technical recession. China's gradual and uniquely revenue-based unwinding of fiscal stimulus reduces the risk to Australia of an imminent growth slowdown.

Exploration in Australia 2000–2010: reviewing a decade of growth

Oil and gas exploration in Australia, both on and offshore, has been centred on a small number of proven petroleum provinces and—given the extent of prospective basinal area that exists—it remains relatively under-explored to this day. Since the 1970s, companies have progressively spent a smaller proportion of their exploration budgets on onshore and shallow water targets, where discoveries have been regular yet unspectacular, in favour of the deeper waters, where higher risks are involved but the potential exists for significantly higher returns. This activity has led to the discovery of more than of 150 Tcf of gas in the North Carnarvon, Browse and Bonaparte basins, the majority of which sits in deepwater areas. An absence of infrastructure and a lack of an adequate market meant that these huge discoveries lay undeveloped; however, with developments in technology and demand for gas in Asia set to surge into the next decade, these previously stranded fields are set to move into development, underpinning economic growth in Australia and ensuring that the country moves to the forefront of the LNG industry worldwide. This paper will examine upstream activity, both on and offshore, in Australia since 2000, a decade in which the country has become one of the most prominent destinations for exploration expenditure in the world. Following the exploration cycle from acreage release through to discovery, it will look at how trends and activity have changed over time and examine how successful the industry has actually been. It will explore the factors driving activity and the effects external forces such as regulatory changes, oil price and prevailing economic conditions have had on activity levels. No post-Conference paper is available for this presentation. No post-conference paper is available for this presentation.

Trapped in Jobless Household Areas: the spatio-temporal dynamics of children in jobless households in metropolitan Australia

Child disadvantage is an important issue in Australia today and is one of the key policy target areas of the Federal government. Child disadvantage not only affects child wellbeing in the present time but can also inhibit their future achievements. As well as individual- and family-level effects, there is growing evidence that child wellbeing and achievement is highly affected by the environment in which children grow up, and what resources and role models are available to them in their surrounding areas. In this paper, we examine the spatial clustering of children in jobless households through the computation of the Global and Local Moran's statistics, for the Sydney and Melbourne metropolitan regions, and observe how these clusters have changed between the 2001 and 2006 census years. We find that there are significant spatial clusters of children in jobless households in both periods, suggesting that ‘place’ is a driver of this particular phenomenon. Further, we observe an expansion of ‘hot spots’, in both Sydney and Melbourne, suggesting that areas with high proportions of children in jobless households have both persisted and increased despite the sizeable economic growth in Australia over the same period.

The future of the research workforce: estimating demand for PhDs in Australia

As the developed world becomes more reliant on knowledge as a vital part of economic growth and development, the importance of highly skilled workers who can create, disseminate and use new knowledge becomes integral. Within Australia, recent policies relating to higher education and research have prompted new thinking about the extent to which the research training in Australia is able to facilitate growth, given the economy's current reliance on natural resources is unsustainable (Cutler, 2008). This paper draws on work undertaken for the Australian Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research specified to examine issues relating to the research workforce. It focuses on estimating the extent of workforce demand for the PhD in Australia between now and 2020. The research presented here is intended to stimulate further thought and research about these issues and the extent to which policy can be created to facilitate the sustainable growth of Australia's knowledge economy.

What Prospective Franchisees Are Seeking

A shortage of suitable franchisee applicants has been identified by franchisors as a major hindrance to franchise sector growth in Australia. However, there has been little investigation into this issue within organizational choice research. This represents an important gap in the literature. To explore the issue of franchisee shortage it was first necessary to determine what prospective franchisees are seeking from franchisors. Prospective franchisees considered a return on investment, provision of training, and being their own boss as being the most important attributes that franchisors could provide. These findings also indicate that attendees saw trade shows as an important means of gathering franchising information. Further, respondent's attributes generally aligned with what franchisors believed they supplied, and though possessing entrepreneurial tendencies, they desired ongoing support from franchisors.

Is there a cointegrating relationship between Australia's fossil-fuel based carbon dioxide emissions per capita and her GDP per capita?

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emission per capita of Australia, a high-income economy with a fossil fuel-rich fuel-mix, is proven to have a strong cointegrating relationship with her gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. A conditional equilibrium correction model (ECM) has been developed to quantify the relationship between the two variables by employing the autoregressive distributed lag bound-testing approach to cointegration. ECM reveals that 1% growth in Australia's GDP per capita induces 0.7% growth in her CO2 emission per capita in the long-run. The short-run dynamics are such that 1% growth in the previous year's GDP per capita leads to about 0.33% growth in current year's CO2 emission per capita. Moreover, any deviation from the long-run equilibrium is corrected in about two years and nine months. The conditional ECM developed is robust against functional form misspecification and have stable regression coefficients over the sample period studied. Thus, it could be used to reliably predict the future CO2 emissions in Australia. [Received: July 15, 2009; Accepted: December 17, 2009].

National Housing Policy in Australia: Are New Initiatives in Affordable Housing Sustainable?

AbstractHouse price growth in Australia has outstripped income growth to the point where more than one million low and middle income households are now experiencing housing stress. Moreover, social housing provision has been gradually wound back in Australia since the 1980s in favour of a residual model based on tax concessions and subsidies, that has exacerbated the problem. However innovative policies introduced in 2009 by the Australian Government in response to the global economic crisis suggest a change in direction that might offer new, affordable social housing in a difficult economic climate. This paper critically reviews affordable housing policy in Australia and new initiatives such as the National Affordable Housing Agreements. We conclude that current initiatives remain constrained by hastily implemented policies, a ‘rush to build’ and a reluctance to provide an ongoing commitment to social housing.

Popularize or publish? Growth in Australia

While the community of life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners in Australia has developed relatively recently and is naturally smaller than in Europe or the United States, it is a vibrant community. The idea for this article was to examine the contribution made to LCA development by Australians, the rate of growth of this work, and its industry sectoral focus by quantitative analysis of publication data from four key LCA journals. Although these data suggest that the country’s publication rate has not changed much in the last 8 years and fallen relative to the international rate, applied LCA is playing an increasing role in the work of Australian industry and government. Current efforts of the Australian LCA Society are focused on the renewal and expansion of available inventory resources, standardization of life cycle inventory methodology, and improvement of impact assessment processes.

Models of Labour Services and Estimates of Australian Productivity

Abstract This paper examines the manner in which labour services are modelled in the aggregate production function, concentrating on the specification of the relationship between the number of persons employed and average hours worked. We argue that, given the presence of quasi‐fixed costs of employment, hours of work and the number of employees cannot be perfect substitutes. We then show that estimates using total hours worked as the measure of labour input implicitly assumes that they are perfect substitutes and this false assumption results, inter alia, in biased estimates of the rate of labour and multifactor productivity growth in Australia.

The Term Spread and GDP Growth in Australia*

This article analyses the significance of the spread between short‐ and long‐term interest rates for predicting GDP growth in Australia, and whether the predictive relation deteriorates, as theory suggests, with the adoption of a credible inflation‐targeting regime. We test whether the significance of the term spread is sensitive to the inclusion of other conditioning variables which may be useful in forecasting GDP growth, and whether forecasting significance is due primarily to the expected change in short‐term interest rates, the term premium, or a combination of the two. There is some support for the proposition that the rationally‐expected term spread has become less significant with the adoption of inflation targeting.

The Economic Impacts of a New Dam in South‐East Queensland

Abstract South‐East Queensland has combined the most rapid population growth in Australia with rainfall that has persisted below average for many years. The Queensland Government has responded with a number of plans to supplement existing water supplies in the region. This paper uses a multiregional, dynamic CGE model to estimate the regional impacts of construction of Traveston dam. The magnitude of net welfare benefits of the project depends on underlying assumptions concerning future rainfall patterns. All the mainland state governments are proposing water supply augmentation measures. It is probable that a number of these projects are not justifiable on economic grounds.

Creating a Master's Degree in systems integration: capturing and embedding industry knowledge

Australia has a skills shortage in the defence industry. Growing demand for complex defence systems highlighted the need for additional systems engineers and systems integration specialists. This is compounded by sustained growth in Australia's resources sector, and competition for engineering professionals. The Skilling Australia's Defence Industry (SADI) initiative provides significant funding for new skills activities. This paper describes one such activity; the creation of a Masters degree in Military Systems Integration (MSI). Designing and implementing the program required some novel educational approaches, to capture the value of industry experience, and integrate critical but elusive aspects that require tacit knowledge transfer.

Determinants of Australian Rail Productivity in the 20th Century

Productivity growth in Australia's railways through the 20th Century was neither smooth nor uniformly positive. It was static or falling for much of the century, before increasing rapidly with dieselisation and the rise of minerals traffic. This paper uses regression analysis to develop an understanding of the factors which drove productivity growth throughout the 20th Century, using a unique dataset developed at the Centre for Research in Applied Economics at Curtin University. It aims not only to understand the growth of rail in the 20th Century, but also to provide lessons for policymakers about what can assist it in continuing to grow in the 21st.

Fostering ICT Development for Growth: Measuring the Payoffs for Australia and the Asean-5 Countries

Over the past few decades the brisk development of information and communication technologies (ICT) has had a phenomenal impact on the economic stability and development of many countries. Empirical studies show that most developed economies have gained significant payoffs (in terms of economic growth) from their ICT investments. This study investigates the hypothesis that ICT-based investment has paid off for Australia and the ASEAN-5 countries (Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines) between 1992 and 2006. Applying a new cointegration technique[12], which takes into account the presence of a potential structural break, shows that ICT investment has had a positive and significant long-run relationship with economic growth in Australia, Malaysia and Singapore. However, in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand ICT investment did not contribute significantly to economic growth during the same period. These three countries have yet to reap the benefits of ICT. Our empirical results suggest that the three lagging ASEAN countries should increase their ICT investment in order to achieve sustainable economic growth in the new knowledgebased economy.

Privatization and economic growth in Australia: the shorthand of a long process

The impact of privatization on economic growth has been little investigated relative to disaggregated approaches. A growth accounting framework is used here to investigate the impact of privatization on growth for the Australian economy. The contribution of public capital to the private sector and whether the growth process is endogenous or Solow is evaluated. Separate measures of public and private capital are computed in order to estimate their impacts with labour on Australian gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the period 1960 to 2003. A simple growth rates version is found preferred by stationarity and other tests. Labour growth appears to strongly positively influence the growth of GDP. In contrast, public capital growth has no statistically significant effect on GDP growth, or on private capital productivity. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that the coefficients of the growth equation are the same before and during privatization.

Meeting the Need for Defence Systems Engineers

AbstractAustralia is entering a period of forecast skills shortages in defence industry. The growth in demand for new complex defence systems, stimulated by Federal Government spending, has highlighted the need for additional systems engineers and systems integration specialists. At the same time, the size of many companies in the Australian defence industry mitigates against strategic investment in programs to address their skills needs. This situation is compounded by strong growth in Australia's resources sector, fuelled by high prices for minerals, and the consequent competition for the same engineering professionals. This impacts on Australia's capacity to achieve self‐reliance in defence capability.Concurrent to this skills shortage, however, is a widespread recognition by all levels of government that action needs to be taken. The Skilling Australia's Defence Industry (SADI) initiative will inject approximately A$200 million over the next 10 years into programs to address the skills shortage. The initiative, run by Australia's Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO), has already allocated significant funding to companies that are engaging in new activities to address their skills requirements. This paper describes one such activity – the creation of a new Masters degree in Military Systems Integration.

INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: THE EVOLUTION OF WATER RIGHTS IN VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA 1850–1886

This paper provides a preliminary exploration of the role of adaptive efficiency and institutional learning as the basis for long‐run economic growth in Australia by means of an analysis of the institutional changes in water rights between 1850 and 1886 in the colony of Victoria. It is argued that the effects of adaptive efficiency and institutional learning led to the replacement of growth‐hindering institutional arrangements in water supply in favour of growth‐enhancing frameworks that provided the basis for better economic performance over the long‐run. The analysis presents evidence that suggests that in addition to the colonial experience, adaptive efficiency embedded in the inheritance of British culture rather than institutions has played an important role in Australia's economic performance.

IS CREDIT GROWTH SUSTAINABLE?

This paper examines recent trends in credit growth in Australia and the potential risks implied. Even though household debt to income ratios are high, it is argued that changing employment trends, such as the growth of dual income households, reduce the resulting risks.