The New Economy and the Dollar Puzzle: the Case of Australia

The revolutionary changes in information technology (IT), globalisation and financial innovation have overturned the Solow productivity paradox and spawned a New Economy (NE) in Australia in the late 1990s. Both growth accounting estimates and the use of the information superhighway ranks Australia next to the USA as a NE. Australia is an avid user but not a producer of IT that propels the NE. The debate on the need for a new paradigm for the new economy on the grounds that key mechanisms of the old paradigm have become obsolete is reviewed. The breakdown of the short-run Phillips curve tradeoff and the redundancy of the long-run speed limits to growth are examined and dismissed as poppycock both on theoretical and empirical grounds. The IT technology because it is subject to severe diminishing returns and problems of information overload fails to rank with the great inventions of the past and will not be a harbinger of the Third Industrial Revolution. Nonetheless, on the basis of the 'delay hypothesis' the dismissal of the case for a new paradigm for the NE may be premature at this stage. The paper also examines the puzzling nose-dive of the dollar during the first half of the year 2001. This occurred despite the strong macroeconomic fundamentals and the emergent NE. The paper concludes commenting on the policy reaction function for a small open NE committed to inflation targeting.

Information systems evaluation: Mini-track introduction

abreast of technological innovations. Yet, companies are becoming more aware that a competitive advantage can not be achieved, or even maintained by utilizing the latest technology. Indeed, it is becoming more apparent that a strategic competitive advantage will not be achieved through embraced technology alone but, in the way companies approach the evaluation, management and exploitation of their human, organizational and technology based assets and infrastructure. In support of this, Sohal et al. (2001) reported the results of a large-scale survey that demonstrated the limited Information Technology (IT) enabled business benefits resulting in service and manufacturing sectors. The survey highlighted that many of the benefits achieved through adopting IT/IS were limited to improvements in productivity and cost alone. Clearly, such results are surprising given the emphasis the normative literature has placed on the strategic benefits achievable from IT/IS. As a result of the far reaching conclusions reported by Sohal et al. (2001), many organisational have begun to question the scope and depth of those IT-enabled business benefits that are not achieved by those companies proactively adopting IT/IS

Changing technology and the payment system

On September 11, 2000, Jamie B. Stewart, Jr., First Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, delivered the following remarks at Sibos 2000, the international banking operations seminar sponsored by the payment network SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications).Payment systems ; Technology ; Banks and banking - Customer services ; Bank competition ; Electronic funds transfers

Transfer Pricing and Tax Havens: Mending the LDC Revenue Net

The paper deals primarily with the use of transfer pricing and tax havens by multinational businesses to defer, avoid, or (depending on whether one views manipulation of transfer prices as involving avoidance or evasion) evade taxes levied by the country of residence. Thus it pays relatively little attention to the use of tax havens by wealthy individuals to evade taxes in their countries of residence. Nor does it consider preferential tax treatment for selected non-financial sectors, perhaps limited to foreign investors, in order to attract real (non-financial) activities. Such countries are not ordinarily called tax havens, and these policies are best covered by a paper on tax incentives. Finally, it does not consider headquarters havens, except in passing, in the brief discussion of corporate inversions.Working Paper Number 04-45