The Productivity Commission was asked to report on the Implementation of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) by Commonwealth Departments and Agencies. The inquiry was to cover all Commonwealth departments and agencies with major responsibility for implementing EDS, or whose activities...

The Productivity Commission convened a workshop, Microeconomic Reform and the Environment, in September 2000. Its purpose was to explore the links between economic and environmental policy objectives and outcomes. The workshop was structured around a series of contributed papers that considered...

The joint conference paper, 'Third-party effects of water trading and potential policy responses' by Anna Heaney (ABARE), Gavan Dwyer (PC), Stephen Beare (ABARE), Deborah Peterson (PC) and Lili Pechey (ABARE), was presented to the American Agricultural Economics Association conference,...

The Productivity Commission today released a staff working paper titled The Stern Review: an assessment of its methodology. This technical paper contains a detailed examination of key elements of the Review’s analytical approach. Originally prepared as an internal research memorandum following...

This paper aims to provide an overview of the changing role of part-time work in Australia and was released on 12 June 2008. The objectives of the paper are to - provide a comparison of part-time work in Australia and overseas, and possible reasons for our relatively high reliance on this form...

The Productivity Commission Staff Working Paper, ‘Men not at Work - An Analysis of Men Outside the Workforce’ (by Ralph Lattimore), was released in January 2007. This paper analyses the characteristics of adult men outside the labour force in Australia. The paper finds that, in contrast to...

Investment in capital is important for economic growth. But capital is not just physical assets; firms also invest in 'soft' capital such as knowledge, firm-specific skills, and better ways of doing business. This investment results in accumulation of 'intangible assets'. Intangible assets have...

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union has undergone significant reform since the early 1990s, with the aim of improving its market orientation. There is an increasing focus on breaking the link between direct income payments and production decisions — so called...

The Productivity Commission Staff Working Paper, ‘Effects of Health and Education on Labour Force Participation’ (by Patrick Laplagne, Maurice Glover and Anthony Shomos) was released in May 2007. The paper explores alternative methodologies to obtain estimates of the labour force...

A Productivity Commission Staff Working Paper, Armington Elasticities and Terms of Trade Effects in Global CGE Models by Xiao-guang Zhang was released on 8 February 2006, in conjunction with the staff working paper, The Armington Model. Armington elasticities specify the degrees of substitution...