Examines the productivity performance of the wholesale and retail trade sectors in light of their significant contribution to Australia’s record productivity performance in the 1990s. Fundamental changes in the nature and operations of wholesale trade, in particular, have brought marked...

The author empirically tests two aspects of the interaction between financial variables and inventory investment: negative cash flow and finance constraints due to asymmetric information. This is one of the first studies of inventory investment and finance constraints using Canadian data. A...

This paper shows that small firms inventory investment is substantially more sensitive (relative to large firms) to cash flow than previously recognized. Consequently, the strength of financing constraints on inventory investment may have been understated.

In a classical article, Granger (1966) argued that the levels of most economic time series have spectra that exhibit a smooth declining shape with considerable power at very low frequencies. He termed it "the typical spectral shape of an economic variable." Granger's assertion has not been...

The increased use of information and communications technology (ICT) has helped to raise Australia’s productivity growth, according to a new Commission study. It has enabled firms to innovate in what they do and how they do it. ICT Use and Productivity: A Synthesis from Studies of Australian...