The WTO negotiations on agriculture remain deadlocked after four years of discussion, and efforts to find a solution at Cancún failed. Analysis shows that the recent draft Cancún text offers more flexibility than earlier proposals, and such flexibility most likely implies a lower level of...

Stocks of Australian wine, at an industry level, have considerably exceeded sales for many years. However, all varieties and regions are not the culprits of this oversupply. The mismatching of supply and demand can be attributed to a lack of adequate market information, particularly at the...

In NSW the Water Management Act (2000) requires water to be specifically allocated for environmental purposes so as to improve river health. Water sharing plans have been developed that establish extractive and environmental shares to river flows. In unregulated river systems this has resulted...

A great deal of attention has been given in recent years to the question of externalities associated with water entitlements and how third parties can be protected without restricting opportunities for water trade. Yet one market failure that has received no attention at all is the missing...

The extent of the benefits of improved river health remain uncertain. Quantifying these benefits is useful in prioritising policy investments. This study uses the Choice Modelling technique to estimate the value that households attach to attributes of improved river health. Data from a choice...

made in one situation to related circumstances. The benefit transfer process is typically reliant on the availability of a number of source studies which have appropriate levels of reliability and relevance to the issue of interest. However, the limited number of non-market valuation studies to...

The sharp increase in Australia's terms of trade since 2003-04 has dramatic regional and sectoral implications. Mining-intensive regions have gained from the jump in export prices. Import-competing sectors have faced greater competition both from falling import prices and due to rising demand...

Natural resource management decision making by Catchment Management Authorities in NSW is being aided by a project involving bio-physical modelling and the development of an alternative decision-making framework. The objective of the bio-physical modelling process is to generate predictions of...

In this paper, we extend the Solow growth model to include corruption as a determinant of the multifactor productivity using a Cobb-Douglas production function framework. In addition to the classical components of any growth model (output, labor, capital), we incorporate corruption as a...

The use of market-based instruments (MBIs) to provide and protect ecosystem services has gained significant attention in Australia. Despite their popularity, MBIs are not appropriate for the provision of all ecosystem services. Rather, MBIs must be carefully designed given the ecosystem service...