Brief analytical notes on the interactions between exchange rates and commodity prices. Gold and iron-ore are used as examples of the issues raised. The paper also presents a stylised model to determine the effects of exchange-rate changes on the internal and external prices of commodities. Also...

Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), the link between exchange rates and prices, is a fundamental building block of international finance, one which has been attracting increasing research interest during the past three decades. The Big Mac Index (BMI), invented by 'The Economist' magazine in 1986,...

This paper examines the validity of two classes of simple technical trading rules – moving averages and trading range breaks – in the Australian Stock Exchange. We conduct our empirical analysis in two stages. In the first stage, standard t-tests are used to compare returns generate by the...

The purpose of this critical note is to contest the recent interpretation of the choicepreference approach of the “Sunto” by drawing attention to its cardinal restrictions and by highlighting the continuity in Pareto approach to utility theory between the “Sunto”, the 1906 Manuale di...

This is Chapter 4 of my PhD thesis Understanding the World Wool Market: Trade, Productivity and Grower Incomes, UWA, 2006. The full thesis is available as Discussion Papers 06.19 to 06.24. This chapter has three broad aims: (i) to describe the sources and methods used to construct the WOOLGEM...

Using data from the 2001 Australian Census of Population and Housing, this article estimates private rates of return to university education at the bachelor degree level for males and females, and determines the age threshold when studying for university qualifications becomes no longer...

This report contains information about the sessions, papers, speakers and participants in the conference on the Economics of Commodity Prices and Exchange Rates held at the University Club at UWA on 9 June, 2006.

This study constructs an altruism model of food aid. A theoretical model is constructed and shows that how each country's donation to the recipient countries is determined, based on relevant variables in association with each donor country's altruism. Analyses of data using donations through the...

Using 54 yeras of US quarterly data and a VAR model underpinned by a theory of the relationship between stock prices and output, this paper considers the deviations of US stock prices from their fundamental value. To do this we derive the fundamental price-output ratio and the fundamental stock...