Australians are among the largest consumers of marijuana in the world, and estimates show that their expenditure on marijuana is about twice that on wine. In this paper we analyse the evolution of marijuana prices in Australia and show that they have declined in real terms by almost 40 percent...

This paper presents an empirical assessment of the “New Economy” in China, drawing upon the linkage between information technology (IT) and economic growth. The aim of this paper is to interpret China’s economic growth from a perspective which emphasizes IT as a factor in economic growth....

Students’ success during their first year at university is largely influenced by their university entrance score. Personal characteristics and secondary school characteristics also impact on success. This paper uses quantile regression to investigate how the effects of these factors vary along...

Shann Memorial Lecture, 5 September 2002

Outside of Continental Europe, Italian fiscal sociology is almost completely unknown. Seminal works have not yet been translated into English, and what is known is generally consistent with James Buchanan’s contention that Gino Borgatta was the most direct follower of Pareto who, with others,...

Government agencies around the world produce indexes that purport to measure international competitiveness. The most common version is the real effective exchange rate, which is some form of weighted average of the real exchange rates of the country’s trading partners. Such indexes convey a...

This brief paper contrasts the history of economic thought programs offered at the University of Western Australia in 1953 and 2003: an interval of fifty years. The study identifies lessons for current HET units from Merab Harris’ class of ’53, where HET was taught with general reference to...

This paper explores weak and semi-stong efficiency for both A and B shares traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges using daily data for seven indexes for the period 1992-2001. We find evidence of departures from weak efficiency in the form of predictability or returns on the basis of...

Based on a low level of elasticity of substitution between labour and capital in the transitional economies, this paper theoretically suggests how they should be able to reach a stable growth path after a period of rapid dynamic short-run movement. The paper places particular emphasis on the...