Aboriginal Australia: An Economic History of Failed Welfare Policy

Aboriginal welfare policy of recent decades has been widely rejected as a failure. Radically different policies are now being trialed, in recognition of the continuing large gap between indigenous and non-indigenous living standards. Some Aboriginal leaders themselves have called for a rejection of the passive welfare policies of the past, in acceptance of a Friedman-style critique of ‘money for nothing’ welfare handouts, while nonetheless calling for a Sen-style capabilities approach to the policy needs of the future

Exploring the links between corruption and growth

Corruption is a widespread phenomenon, but relatively little is confidently known about its macroeconomic consequences. This paper explicitly models the transmission channels through which corruption indirectly affects growth. Results suggest that corruption hinders growth through its adverse effects on investment in physical capital, human capital, and political instability. Concurrently, corruption is found to foster growth by reducing government consumption and, less robustly, increasing trade openness. Overall, a total negative effect of corruption on growth is estimated from these channels. These effects are found to be robust to modifications in model specification, sample coverage, and estimation techniques as well as tests for model exhaustiveness. Moreover, the results appear supportive of the notion that the negative effect of corruption on growth is diminished in economies with low governance levels or a high degree of regulation. No one-size-fits-all policy response appears supportable.

All the Conditions of Effective Foreign Aid

The conclusion that foreign aid will promote economic growth only when allocated towards good policy regimes has been the subject of considerable debate. Aid effectiveness researchers have variously sought to falsify this result or to find other individual conditions of aid effectiveness. However, economic theory suggests that any factor which influences the expected returns to investment may influence the effect of aid on growth even when aid is partly diverted to consumption. To investigate this hypothesis, �all� of the hypothesized conditions of aid effectiveness are individually tested in a cross-country growth specification. From these tests the most significant and robust individual interactions are simultaneously modeled, thereby deriving multiple conditions of aid effectiveness. The paper concludes that aid is more effective in economies experiencing economic shocks or recovering from war, and less effective in countries which are geographically disadvantaged or at war. We also find a previously unidentified condition of aid ineffectiveness: the inflow of foreign direct investment. This finding renews a justified interest in the policy-aid-growth nexus, insofar as domestic policy determines the distribution of aid and FDI flows, which appear to act as substitutes in the growth process.

Economics teaching in Australian universities: The real and the ideal

This paper presents evidence from two surveys to help explain the poor ratings consistently given to the teaching of economics at Australian universities. The evidence suggests that the poor ratings of economics teaching can be attributed to two related factors: inappropriate pedagogical practices including course content, teaching methods and assessment; and lack of incentives for academic economists to allocate time to teaching. With respect to the first factor - pedagogical practices - the survey data consists of 250 usable responses from graduates form two Queensland universities. The time elapsed since graduation ranges from one year to ten years. This differs from CEQ survey data which relates only to the previous year's graduates. With respect to the second factor - incentives driving time allocation - the survey data consists of 290 usable responses from academic economists across a wide range of Australian universities

Exports of Tertiary Education Services and the Queensland Economy

Exports of tertiary education services have become a growth industry for the Queensland economy. Since a policy change in 1987 from an aid to a trade approach to overseas students, fee paying overseas students have risen from a mere 5.9 per cent of all overseas students in 1987, to 89.6 per cent in 1995. Exports of tertiary education services from the Queensland economy now rival wool and wheat in importance. A number of marketing and policy issues arise in the context of further change in the services sector of the Queensland economy.Aids; Education

Economics education in Australia

The Australian economy fared better than most others throughout the global financial crisis, but enrollments in economics degree course have been less resilient. We document the decline in enrollments in economics courses that has proceeded at a varying pace over several decades and explore some reasons for this trend. One important reason is strategic: the failure to adapt the economics curriculum in response to the growing Australian trend towards mass higher education. Inertia in the curriculum caused economics to be seen as too abstract and boring, while students found new "vocationally oriented" courses in business and marketing more attractive