This paper extends the staple theory literature by examining the influence of wool, Australia's dominant primary-product export, on the development of the Australian economy and external position over the period 1862-1995. The results support the view that while shocks to the wool industry had...

The earnings of immigrant and native-born men in Canada are compared using eleven cross-sectional surveys spanning the years from 1981 to 1992. Evidence of a decline of the earnings of recent cohorts of immigration in Canada is not found.

This article explains how movements in the unemployment rate reflect the relative rates of growth of employment and the labour force and are related to the participation rate, labour productivity growth and output growth. A framework is provided in which to analyse the determinants of movements...

In this paper, we investigate the magnitude of errors that come about as a consequence of using a linear approximation to a well-known optimising model. We do this by taking a calibrated version of the neoclassical adjustment-cost model of investment due to Hayashi (1982).

The Fisher equation predicts that nominal interest rates and inflation should move together one-for-one. Recently published work argues that both nominal interest rates and inflation are non-linear. The evidence in this paper suggests that nominal interest rates are well described as two-regime...

In this paper we examine the impact of macroeconomic conditions on federal electoral performance in twentieth century Australia. We find that the electorate penalises a government for high inflation and high unemployment relative to trend. Real GDP growth and real wage growth were not found to...

This paper outlines and evaluates a new learning strategy implemented in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the University of Melbourne. The strategy is an Internet based assignment delivery and assessment system designed to (i) equip students to make link between macroeconomic theory and...

Two common properties of macroeconomic models are non-linearities and dynamics characterised by a non-zero number of unstable eigenvalues. Under these circumstances, a common approach is to make analysis more tractable by linearising the model in the neighbourhood of an appropriate steady-state....

This paper examines the incidence of worker displacement in Australia between 1984 and 1996. Similar to recent international studies a particular focus is on whether job security declined between the 1980s and 1990s. It is found that a significant, but apparently temporary, increase in the...