Ideas and Education: Level or Growth Effects?

This paper examines theory and evidence from recent studies into the contributions to economic growth of expenditure on education and on research and development. Investment in human capital has fundamentally different economic attributes to physical investment - exhibiting complementarity, positive feedback and non-rivalry - implying the potential to enhance economic growth over a long time period. In the case of education, there are debates over whether changes in educational attainment ultimately affect the long-run growth rate of the economy, or only the long-run level of output. The macroeconomic evidence on level effects is consistent with microeconomic estimates of private rates of return to schooling. It appears, however, that there are also significant long-term growth effects the more educated is the workforce, the better is it able to implement technological advances. There is consistent evidence of high social rates of return on research and development in both commercial areas of research and in more fundamental research, implying that R&D is under-resourced. A number of studies have emphasised the importance of international technology spillovers, particularly for smaller economies such as Australia.

International Business Visits and the Technology Frontier

This paper studies the impact of international business trips on the stock of knowledge available to an economy. It develops a theoretical model to analyse the possible effects, and presents an empirical application using productivity data for a panel of twelve Australian industries during 1991/2-2005/6. Business trips emerge as a significant source of productivity growth. As the knowledge transferred through business visits is non-rival, both countries of origin and destination can gain from the human capital of travellers. As a result, even countries traditionally disadvantaged by geography, size, or level of economic development have the opportunity to access the latest technology and information to stimulate growth.international labour movements, face-to-face meetings, business trips, growth, productivity

Institutions and Trade: Competitors or Complements in Economic Development?

A recent paper by Dowrick and Golley (2004) finds that the impact of trade on growth varies with income. In particular, during the period 1980-2000, trade is observed to yield larger benefits for the more advanced economies. This result is backed up by Dejong and Ripoll (2005) who show that the richer countries benefit more from tariff reduction than the poorer countries. These findings raise the question, what is it about high levels of per capita income that enable richer economies to take better advantage of trade? It appears that the reason behind the success of the high income economies is the high quality institutions. These institutions not only boost growth directly but they impact economic performance indirectly by improving trade. We capture the complementarity between institutions and trade by estimating an empirical growth model which includes an interactive term involving these two variables. Better quality institutions are indicative of lower transaction costs which facilitates trade. It also ensures better distribution of the gains from trade paving the way for further trade and growth.

Insights into the impact of clinical encounters gained from personal accounts of living with advanced cancer.

Aim To describe the impact of interactions with health care professionals revealed by people’s accounts of living and dying with cancer; to explore reasons for the observed effects; and thus, to consider the implications for practice. Background The importance of practitioner–patient interactions is enshrined within professional values. However, our understanding of how and why the consultation impacts on outcomes remains underdeveloped. Stories recounted by people living and dying with cancer offer important insights into illness experience, including the impact of contact with health services, framed within the context of the wider social setting in which people live their lives. From our recent study of distress in primary palliative care patients, we describe how people’s accounts revealed both therapeutic and noxious effects of such encounters, and discuss reasons for the observed effects. Method A qualitative study with a purposive sample of 19 primary palliative care patients: (8 men, 11 at high risk of depression). In-depth interviews were analysed using the iterative thematic analysis described by Lieblich. Findings Living with cancer can be an exhausting process. Maintaining continuity of everyday life was the norm, and dependent on a dynamic process of balancing threats and supports to people’s emotional well-being. Interactions with health care professionals were therapeutic when they provided emotional, or narrative, support. Threats arose when the patient’s perception of the professional’s account of their illness experience was at odds with the person’s own sense of their core self and what was important to them. Our findings highlight the need for a framework in which clinicians may legitimately utilize different illness models to deliver a personalized, patient-centred assessment of need and care. The work provides testable hypotheses supporting development of understanding of therapeutic impact of the consultation

Comments on intergenerational report, 2002-2003

The Government's Intergenerational Report, tabled as one of a series of 2002 Federal Budget papers is the first in what may become a series of reports of this nature. Such a report is now required from time to time by the Government's Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 . The report (Table 13) highlights the concern that the future ageing of the Australian population may over-tax the workforce. So-called "demographic spending" on the part of the Commonwealth is predicted to rise from 13.9 percent of GDP in 2000 to 19.2 percent by 2041, a rise of just over five percentage points. This prediction is derived from baseline projections of demographic and economic trends. The impact of alternative demographic and economic scenarios is summarised in Table 15 of the report, with a downside of an additional two-and-a-quarter percentage points and an upside of a reduction in demographic spending of just under one -and-ahalf percentage points, relative to the baseline scenario. 1 The results of the report derive from the application of a complex model of future demography, future people-related federal outlays and future labour force trends, including labour productivity, labour force participation rates and unemployment. Clearly, over a 40-year period, there are substantial possibilities for variation in these trends. In general, we conclude that the report is conservative in its assumptions about possible variations as only relatively small variations from recent trends are tested. Future trends in all of the parameters of the model are based upon some form of extrapolation of past time trends. This means that what is presented is a projection of what will happen if demographic, health and economic trends and government policies remain much the same as they have been in the past. This approach is taken despite the fact that the report itself calls for policy initiatives such as encouraging mature-age employment that would lead to changes in the assumed parameters. It is our view that there is a range of possible policy initiatives that could significantly alter the assumptions of the model. These are discussed below. It is important also to realise that the outcome addressed by the report is the balance of Federal revenues and expenditure. The report does not deal with State and Territory budgets or with household budgets. However, given the cumulative impact of the productivity growth that is assumed in the report, output per worker doubles in the 40-year period and, accordingly, households would have considerably higher real incomes. Also, as the costs of children are primarily private costs rather than public costs, households on average would have lower child -related costs as the ratio of children to workers falls. If the sizeable real increase in household incomes leads to higher consumption expenditure, as is likely, then GST revenue would increase commensurately. The report, therefore, draws a picture of ageing leading to severe pressure on the Federal budget while the living standards of Australian households, including households of aged persons, and State revenues increase substantially. This distributional issue is a matter we think should have been addressed more explicitly in the report. While all of the major assumptions of the model are provided in the report, the workings of the model and numerous minor assumptions are not made explicit. This means that we are only in a position to make broad comments on the outcomes. We are not in a position to re-run the model with different assumptions. The assessment method we use, a proportional approach, is described in the following section

Bargaining over surplus : oligopolies, workers and the distribution of income

The thesis examines the interaction of labour and product markets in determining Income distribution. It presents evidence on a marked shift in the distribution of income in the UK, in the early 1980s, towards profits and away from manual earnings, a shift which is attributed in part to a secular rise in manufacturing price-cost margins contemporaneous with a massive Increase in unemployment. Evidence that labour strength affects real wages and income distribution is contrasted with apparently contradictory theory and evidence of oligopolistic employers' ability to determine profit margins constrained only by product market conditions. Oligopoly theory is examined along with an analysis of Stackelberg and Cournot duopoly. Results are derived illuminating the links between product market and labour market conditions on the one hand and Income distribution on the other. In particular it is shown that employers will generally prefer not to bargain over employment levels; but if they do bargain over jobs, then price-cost margins will be directly affected by workers' bargaining strength. An empirical study examines the effect of labour strength on price-cost margins in UK manufacturing industry. The analysis uses cross- section regressions for the years 1975, 1979 and 1982. Qualified support is found for the hypothesis that workers and employers do bargain over employment. There is also some econometric evidence that unemployment has undermined the bargaining position of manual workers. Taken together, these studies imply that unemployment has played an important role in shifting the distribution of income In the UK In the early 1980s. A further empirical study examines changes in import levels and manufacturing margins between 1979 and 1982. While single equation estimates appear to show that Import penetration reduces domestic margins, simultaneous estimation shows no competitive impact of imports

Creating Futures: Potential of Video Empowerment in Postsecondary Education

Social progress benefits from positive future expectations which are often diminished in the disability community and higher education. Considerable potential exists in the use of video and related technologies to create images of positive futures where previously there was none. These potentials stem from proven practices of self modeling and feedforward, methods to teach new skills with carefully planned and edited videos that show future capability of the individual on video. These practices have been applied to a diversity of ages, situations, and human conditions. We extend these practices to video-based futures planning, in which teenagers find meaning in their current educational setting to prepare them for adulthood and to putting individuals with disabilities in control of the video production to assemble television shows illustrating personal advocacy or community environments with positive outcomes for themselves, their families, and their neighbors. The examples show the considerable potential for support in the postsecondary educational environment