To help explain some of the issues and examine the potential environmental impacts (positive and/or negative) of selected tax arrangements, the Productivity Commission sought advice from Robert Douglas, a specialist in the field. This consultant’s report makes a contribution to understanding...

This paper looks at the impact on Australia’s trade in crops (non-wheat grains and oilseeds) where GM technology has been introduced. The model includes assumptions about the productivity gains of GM crops, possible consumer responses and regulatory costs for Australia and its major trading...

A recent study suggested that output composition rather than technical efficiency changes were the primary result of dramatic regulatory reforms imposed on the New Zealand sheep and beef farming sector in the 1980s. These results raise important questions about the substitutability and cost...

• Available evidence strongly suggests that cotton producers in West Africa are relatively unresponsive to changes in world prices. This means they are poorly placed to take advantage of improved market conditions that might result from the reduction or abolition of cotton subsidies in rich...

The growth dynamics of complex organizations have attracted much interest of econophysicists and sociophysicists in recent years. However, most of the studies are done for developed countries. We investigate the growth dynamics of the primary industry and the population of 2079 counties in...

Since 1989 and the regionalization of public transports in Belgium, the Société des transports intercommunaux de Bruxelles (STIB), i.e. the public operator of urban transport in Brussels, has undergone many changes, both structural and organizational. Meanwhile, the company has managed to...

This chapter aims to focus and further develop the issue of the importance of the EU integration process for the improvement of the regulatory quality and rule of law in Western Balkan countries. The process of legislative reforms started in parallel with their transition process from socialist...

We consider a policy reform that would relax price controls in American pari-mutuel wagering on horse racing by examining bookie behavior in Australia’s fixed-odds gambling sector. Descriptive regressions indicate that bookmaker takeouts (the effective prices of races) vary substantially and...

This paper examines productivity and returns to scale under the assumption of monopolistic competition using Japanese firm-level data. Although differentiating products (services) is considered important in firms’ strategies and productivity growth, it has not been sufficiently investigated in...

In 2009, the G20 leaders agreed that all standardised over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives should be cleared through central counterparties (CCPs). Accordingly, an increasing proportion of OTC derivatives are now centrally cleared, particularly where the trading counterparties are large...