Abstract This paper examines the relationship between labour productivity and employment in Australian manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The results indicate that labour productivity of SMEs varies substantially between industries within the manufacturing sector, but on average...

Trade in services has outpaced trade in merchandise over the last two decades. The services sector has increased steadily in importance both in terms of it shares in GDP and employment over the lat 30 years in Australia and its contribution to trade will continue to increase. The significance of...

There has been a significant shift in trade policy orientation in Bangladesh over the last two decades. A dirigiste policy orientation has gradually been replaced by a more outward oriented economic policy. In line with such policy orientation, a series of trade liberalisation measures has been...

Background: Private psychiatric services are produced and consumed on a fee-for-service (FFS) basis in Australia. The Commonwealth Government subsidises these (and all) medical services via Medicare, a universal, comprehensive, tax-financed medical and hospital financing mechanism. A key purpose...

Australia’s share of intra-industry trade (IIT) in its total trade of textiles and clothing (TAC) is one of the lowest among the OECD countries. However, over the recent years there has been a rising trend in Australia’s IIT in some categories of TAC products. The purpose of this paper is to...

This paper draws attention to the innovative but neglected work of Hans Singer on the dynamics of unemployment. Influenced by Keynes, in the late 1930s Singer enquired into the relationship between the inflow into unemployment— resulting primarily from (involuntary) separations from...

In this paper we examine unemployment rate dispersion across the (statistical) regions in theMelbourne metropolitan area. We find that the level of dispersion is positively correlated withthe unemployment rate in all the regions taken together and that the ‘elasticity’ of dispersionwith...

China is currently expecting a growth in inbound travel demand as the result of China's “open door policy,” participation in World Trade Organization (WTO), success in hosting the Olympics in Beijing in the year 2008 and political stability. This paper focused on two issues: (1) forecasting...

The production of specialist psychiatric services in Australia reflects the “mixed” system of public and private production of health services generally. This paper, an exercise in descriptive or positive economics, is concerned only with private production, i.e. those services provided by...

In an open economy like Australia, SMEs ability to export has become very crucial for their long-term servival and growth. This depends on SMEs capacity to remain internationally competitive. Productivity growth is the key which will enable SMEs to deliver products at lower costs. The results...