Australia is in the early stages of introducing a system of self-provision for retirement through mandatory contributions to private superannuation funds. For most employees, the scheme will eventually replace, either fully or partially, the government age pension, currently relied upon by a...

This paper reviews the performance of a selection of indicators that are in common use in analysing the business cycle. The analysis proceeds in two stages, looking first at relationships between major expenditure aggregates and GDP, and then looking at the extent to which partial indicators...

This paper reviews issues in the econometric modelling of monetary policy in the light of recent experience and research. Two main sets of issues are covered: first, the operation of policy including the specification of the instrument and objectives; and second, the transmission of monetary...

Assets with superannuation funds represented the fastest growing of the major components of household wealth during the 1980s. This paper reviews the causes of that growth, and its effects on private saving and on the pattern of financial intermediation. It is found that the growth of...

During the past two or three decades structural change in the Australian financial system has been rapid. The system has grown substantially in assets and volumes of activity, has become much more open and competitive, and has undergone some significant shifts in market shares. There has also...

This paper investigates the efficiency of Australian options markets using a version of the Black-Scholes model. Under the joint null hypothesis that the pricing model is valid, and that forecasts are efficient, the implied volatilities calculated from observed option prices should be efficient...

This paper identifies two major sets of issues which have been raised in the study of financial futures markets outside Australia. The first concerns the hypothesis of market efficiency, which asserts that futures prices fully reflect available information about subsequent prices in the physical...

This paper reviews the behaviour of saving and investment in Australia during the 1980s. The subject matter is divided into three broad areas: a description of trends in saving and investment (Section 2); a discussion of the basic determinants of private saving rates (Section 3) and a discussion...

In this paper we estimate the effect of particular price incentives on consumer payment patterns using transaction-level data. We find that participation in a loyalty program and access to an interest-free period, both of which lower the price of credit card use, tend to increase credit card use...

Indices of business and consumer sentiment receive widespread media coverage and are closely watched by market economists despite their limited success as leading indicators. In this paper we ask what explains ‘sentiment’ and find that lagged economic indicators (such as changes in GDP, job...