One way to understand the value of sporting ‘superstars’ is to examine the effect they have on match attendances and revenue. Arguably, the most famous sports star in Australia was Sir Donald Bradman, whose batting average has far exceeded that of any cricket players. This paper examines the...

At the end of 2002 or thereabouts the Commonwealth Government will be announcing changes to the financing of Australian higher education. The paper addresses the major issues, beginning with a brief history of university funding arrangements. This is followed by an conceptual analysis of...

This paper examines the impact of changes to Australia’s student financing system on various hypothetical students who choose the Government’s proposed deferred payment options, HECS-HELP and FEE-HELP. The present values of their HECS repayments under the existing (2004) system are compared...

This paper describes the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), Australia's income contingent charge mechanism, and analyses its impact on the social composition of university participation. We analyse university participation data from three cohorts of young Australians. The first cohort...

There is an increasing recognition that economically disadvantaged areas do not have an inherent capacity to regenerate economic activity or to deliver automatically socially propitious outcomes. In such circumstances, there might be a strong case for public sector intervention of various types....

This report extends the initial analysis of the first wave of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia (LSIA) conducted in 1995. Most immigrants in the survey have been interviewed a second time, starting in March of 1995 (approximately 18 months after arrival), and it is now possible...

There is arguably a consensus that the current approach to drought relief is in need of reform and possibly replacement with an improved government financial assistance mechanism. Grants to farmers, in the form of interest rate subsidies, have several difficulties, which in summary are as...

The public vocational education and training (VET) system is now one of the few areas in Australia’s tertiary education system where students are required to pay up-front fees without access to loan assistance. These arrangements may lead to sub-optimal educational outcomes to the extent that...

Australia’s National Drought Policy is considered to be one of the most advanced in the world, recognising as it does the reality of climate and focusing on adapting farm management to climatic uncertainty rather than simply subsidising agriculture in low rainfall areas. But while the...