This paper undertakes an exhaustive search for robust determinants of international trade, where "robustness" is tested using three popular empirical methods. The paper is frankly atheoretical: our goal is solely to establish statistically robust relationships. Along the way, however, we relate...

This paper studies the changing characteristics of post-war international comovement under fixed and flexible exchange regimes. I find that business cycle comovement among all the G7 economies was highest in the universally flexible exchange rate era following the collapse of Bretton Woods (BW)...

This paper develops a framework for projecting the GDP growth of Australia’s trading partners from 2012 to 2050. The framework draws heavily on the existing conditional growth literature, including long-standing estimates of key convergence parameters. It adds to the large amount of research...

Treasury’s forecasting framework has evolved over the past 21 years from the outlook for a single financial year to the outlook for the Australian economy 40 years ahead for intergenerational analysis. A constant through this evolution has been the sharp distinction between the methodologies...

Australia’s terms of trade rose significantly over the eight years to 2011 12 following a period of relative constancy over the preceding 40 years. Australian Government fiscal projections from the 2010 11 Budget to the 2013 14 Budget, assumed that beyond the near term forecast period the...

We derive a conditional long run labour demand equation via a representative firm level profit maximising problem, where production takes place according to a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function. This theoretical framework is augmented by cyclical explanatory variables...

This paper investigates the determinants of business cycle comovement between countries. Our dataset includes over 100 countries, both developed and developing. We search for variables that are “robust” in explaining comovement, using the approach of Leamer (1983). Variables considered are...

The Australian economy is constantly affected by technological, demand and policy shocks from home and abroad. The opportunities and challenges presented by these shocks create demand for government advice on the likely effects on households, firms and the Australian economy, and in turn...

This paper investigates the sources of terms of trade volatility, specifically addressing the relative importance of goods-price effects vs. country-price effects. For fuel exporters, most of the terms of trade variation stems from goods-price effects, as one would have expected, a priori. For...