Three decades ago, most immigrants to Australia with work entitlements came as permanent settlers. Today the annual allocation of temporary visas, with work entitlements, outnumbers permanent settler visas by a ratio of three to one. The new environment, with so many temporary visa holders, has...

The conference spent too much time discussing unemployment. The two key labour market problems are the lack of full-time job growth and the rapid growth of all welfare recipients. Unemployment is just a small part of the structural problem in the Australian economy. For the perspective of...

The evolution by sexual selection of the male propensity to engage in conspicuous consumption contributed to the emergence of modern rates of economic growth. We develop a model in which males engage in conspicuous consumption to send an honest signal of their quality to females. Males who...