The 2007-09 credit crunch has not only created problems for the UK’s public finances in meeting the costs of bailing out commercial banks and dealing with recession but also for providing better public services. This paper analyses the causes of the credit crunch, government policies to...

Constrained by severe, ongoing fiscal pressures and sensitive to concerns over bureaucratic inefficiency, policy-makers in a number of countries are re-evaluating both the goals and instruments of the modern state. In doing so, some have endorsed the need for government 'reinvention,' a term...

This dissertation examines the relationship between public infrastructure and regionaleconomic productivity in China. Based on a panel data set for 29 regions of China for a17-year period of 1987-2003, a three-step nonstationary panel analytical procedure isconducted to investigate whether...

Various reasons have been put forward to explain the stylized fact that the wages of job starters are more procyclical than the wages of workers who don’t change jobs. I explore the theoretical and empirical basis for one such reason: firms adjust the quality of workers assigned to jobs over...

The recent growth experience in India highlights the role of skill-based service sector and productivity improvement rather than a significant rise in physical capital accumulation. In this context we study the possible impact of higher productivity of labor in the formal sector on the informal...

Institutes of Higher Learning such as universities and Institutes of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) have traditionally provided the skilled workforce which finds employment in industry. In this respect, industry may be viewed as the core market for which learning and training...

Over the last decade numerous academic, industry and government studies have suggested that Australia has experienced a sustained decline in apprentice training rates and that this is contributing to shortages in core vocational occupations. This article redresses significant deficiencies in...

This thesis examines and explains multinational employers' experiences of localized shortages of skilled process workers in Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP), China. It explains three challenges facing SIP employers in accessing sufficient skilled process workers and their responses within HRM to...

In Australia the pace of labour market deregulation has rapidly accelerated over

This thesis consists of three chapters, each of which focuses on different aspects of economic inequality.First, we investigate the differences in wage inequality between the United States and continental European countries (CEU). Wage inequality has been significantly higher in the US compared...