R&D, Innovation and Productivity: The Role of Public Support

Research and innovation are widely agreed to be major driving forces behind long-term productivity and economic growth. However, the relationships have proven to be difficult to quantify. We make reference to the international literature and draw on recenI. Productivity Performance: The Australian Experience 　II. Innovation and Productivity 　III. Knowledge and Other Intangibles 　IV. Public Funding 　V. Public R&D Capital and Productivity Growth 　VI. Conclusions 　REFERENCE

Responding to Negative Public Attitudes towards Immigration through Analysis and Policy: regional and unemployment dimensions

This paper examines two key dimensions of the impact of immigration for Australia and related policy aspects. One is sub-national and the other is national. They are, first, the regional location aspects of immigration and, second, the aggregate unemployment implications of immigration. These are chosen so as to focus on two important issues that condition public attitudes towards immigration. In relation to the first, there is a common positive view that channelling migration towards regional areas assists regional development and reduces pressure on metropolitan areas. The paper reviews regional concepts embodied in Australian immigration policy and the ways in which visa arrangements have implemented policies geared towards the regional dispersal of immigrants. Using official data, it discusses the demographic impacts of these policies and, in particular, considers the extent to which immigrants to regional Australia remain there over the longer term. In relation to unemployment, a common concern is that immigrants take jobs from local workers. The paper examines—using statistical regression methodology—the relationship between immigration and national aggregate unemployment in Australia. It evaluates the net consequences of immigration for both existing residents and new arrivals together. The paper concludes that, with good policy design in each case, regional location encouragement can be effective for immigrants and that immigrants need not take more jobs than they create. The analysis demonstrates that mixed-methods approaches to important social science issues can be productive, and helpful also for policy. Evidence, such as that presented in this paper, offers a powerful basis from which to counter negative public and political discourses surrounding immigration in contemporary Australia.This work was partly supported by the Australian Council of Learned Academies from the Australian Research Council Grant [LS120100001 “Securing Australia’s Future: Project 1 – Australia’s Comparative Advantage”]

La mesure du numérique explique-t-elle le ralentissement de la productivité ? Le cas de l’Australie / Does Measurement of Digital Activities Explain Productivity Slowdown? The Case for Australia

The post 2004 slowdown in productivity growth in developed nations has led to speculation that mismeasurement of digital activities within the national accounts may be responsible. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) modelling of potential missing output confirms the findings of Syverson (2017), Ahmad & Schreyer (2016) and Byrne, Fernald & Reinsdorf (2016) that unrecorded digital activities were of insufficient magnitude to explain the productivity slowdown. While there may be room for improvement in data sources and methods more broadly, conceptually digital activities are captured in the National Accounts framework.Le ralentissement de la croissance de la productivité enregistré dans les pays développés après 2004 a donné naissance à des spéculations sur la responsabilité d’une erreur de mesure des activités numériques dans la comptabilité nationale. L’Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) a modélisé la possible production manquante et confirme les conclusions de Syverson (2017), Ahmad & Schreyer (2016) et Byrne, Fernald & Reinsdorf (2016), selon lesquelles l’ampleur des activités numériques non enregistrées ne suffit pas à expliquer le ralentissement de la productivité. Bien que, de façon générale, les sources de données et les méthodes puissent être améliorées, au niveau conceptuel, les activités numériques sont déjà intégrées dans le cadre de la comptabilité nationale.Burnell Derek, Elnasri Amani. La mesure du numérique explique-t-elle le ralentissement de la productivité ? Le cas de l’Australie / Does Measurement of Digital Activities Explain Productivity Slowdown? The Case for Australia. In: Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, n°517-519, 2020. Numéro spécial : Au-delà et autour du PIB : questions à la comptabilité nationale / Special Issue : Beyond and Around GDP: Questions to National Accounting pp. 129-145

The impact of debt relief in low-income countries

The perceived lack of conclusive quantitative evidence on the macroeconomic effects ofdebt relief in low-income countries has generally blurred the image of debt relief effortsand left the issues of its effectiveness and efficiency open to debate and dispute. Thisthesis seeks to shed more light on the subject by providing some further empiricalevidence. This objective is achieved by performing an empirical investigation of twoeffects of debt relief. First, the study examines the debt relief-new borrowing relationshipin a multivariable regression framework. The results that emerge suggest that, onaverage, debt relief can be beneficial in reducing the future new borrowing of HighlyIndebted Poor Countries (HIPCs). This conclusion, to some extent, is in line with thegoals of HIPCs debt relief initiatives in reducing external debt burdens of those countriesto sustainable levels. However, it presents a challenge to the views of William Easterlyon the ‘perverse incentive effects’ of ‘continuing waves’ of debt relief that are said tolead to further debt accumulation of a similar magnitude to replace old cancelled debt.Second, the analysis explores the influence of debt relief on domestic investmentbehaviour in developing countries. Debt relief is found to have a positive effect ondomestic investment in countries with good policy environments. This result suggeststhat debt relief would be more effective in promoting domestic investment if it were morecautiously conditioned on sound policy frameworks

Three essays on infrastructure investment: the Australian experience

This thesis studies a number of crucial topics in relation to infrastructure investments and their effects on economic performance. By focusing on the Australian experience, the thesis addresses several critical issues which have not received adequate attention in the earlier literature. Chapter 2 examines the relationship between public infrastructure and productivity by estimating a production function. The findings of this chapter suggest that while aggregate analysis produces an implausibly large infrastructure effect, results from an approach which controls for the specific characteristics of the states are more plausible. In another piece of evidence, the estimation of an error-correction model reveals that a long-run identification and modelling of the relationship reflects the important positive role of infrastructure on productivity. Short-run dynamics, however, provide no support for a positive effect. In addition, applying a causality test suggests a long-run unidirectional causality running from public infrastructure to productivity. Chapter 3 examines the impact of the provision of public transport infrastructure on the cost structure of Australian industries within a context that recognises interindustry spillovers. The study extends the symmetric normalised quadratic cost function by incorporating public transportation capital as an external input and adapting the spatial econometric techniques into an industrial context to allow for industry spillovers in the cost analysis. The study finds that while public transport has a productive effect in reducing the cost of production, neglecting interindustry spillovers noticeably reduces this effect. Chapter 4 examines the optimality of the provision of infrastructure using a system of Euler equations to represent intertemporal efficiency conditions. The estimation results suggest that dealing with individual types of infrastructure investments at the state level is helpful for reaching realistic conclusions about infrastructure provision. In particular, the study finds that while the efficiency conditions are satisfied at the aggregate level, a disaggregate analysis which examines individual components of economic infrastructure reveals inefficiency in the provision of some types of infrastructure across the states. In addition, contrary to other methods, the efficiency approach produces a relatively plausible estimate of the infrastructure effect