During his honours research on an index of industrial production at the University of Western Australia, Salter gained an understanding of the composite commodity theorem. The applied work on the index of industrial production provided him with the analytic foundations for his two famous...

In early monetary systems the unit of account was separate from the medium of exchange. Commodity prices and prices of coins were quoted in terms of a fixed quantity of metal that was embodied by an 'index coin'. Coins circulated at their metal value because coinage was imperfect and fixed...

Contracts for future delivery of commodities spread from Mesopotamia to Hellenistic Egypt and the Roman world. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, contracts for future delivery continued to be used in the Byzantine Empire in the eastern Mediterranean and they survived in canon law in western...

From the early 1960s onwards, Arnold Zellner has been publishing influential papers in the areas of statistical theory, econometric applications and macroeconomic modelling. This conversation canvasses Zellner’s transition from physics to economics, the reason for the renewal of interest in...

Currency competition provided a stable monetary standard in those Swiss cantons that deregulated their financial systems after liberal revolutions in the 1830s and 1940s. The Swiss currency issuers' concern with purchasing power stability suggests that each of them faced a real demand for notes...

Purpose – In Australia broadacre crops can be insured against hail and fire damage and some other perils but not against losses caused by drought, flood or frost. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the private provision of crop insurance in Western Australia....

Farm survey data show that the risk aversion of West Australian farmers is comparable to that of other asset holders. An increase in the variability of crop yield by 20%, which may be caused by future climate change, would raise their willingness to pay for crop insurance almost one-to-one by...

The vintage model of capital accumulation predicts that technical progress depends on the installation of new capital equipment. In this paper it is found that investment raises labor productivity in the G7 countries and Australia. This finding implies that the decline in investment during the...