All Australian local government systems operate under sweeping legislative powers of their respective state government agencies, which has extensive implications for the manner in which local councils conduct their affairs. Thus the existence, functions, powers and structures of local...

A substantial empirical literature exists on ranking the published research output of individual academic economists and individual university Economics departments, including Australian work in Economics. However, very little corresponding effort has been directed at examining trends in the...

The Australian National Water Initiative (NWI) builds on the foundations of earlier water reforms, attempts to correct earlier errors in both policy and its implementation, and seeks to better define some of the policy aims with the benefit of hindsight. However, despite the deliberate effort to...

State and Federal governments are increasingly reliant on the re-purchase of water access rights as a vehicle for bringing ‘over-allocation’ in the Murray- Darling Basin into check. Not surprisingly, this has attracted criticism from several quarters, usually on the basis that such...

This paper investigates the effects of corruption on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows controlling other relevant determinants using a panel data approach for 45 countries over 1997-2004. Whereas economic theory suggests that corruption should discourage FDI, many notably corrupt countries...

Population ageing is now an established demographic characteristic of many economies. Economists working in the endogenous growth theory tradition have sought to model the relationship between public pensions, financed on a 'Pay-As-You-Go' basis, and the growth in per capita incomes. The...

Voluminous theoretical and empirical literature examines the relation between financial-sector development and economic growth. However, previous studies have largely ignored progress in former Soviet Central Asian republics engaged in transition from socialist command economies to market...