The increased use of information and communications technology (ICT) has helped to raise Australia’s productivity growth, according to a new Commission study. It has enabled firms to innovate in what they do and how they do it. ICT Use and Productivity: A Synthesis from Studies of Australian...

Many existing measures of vulnerability lack a theoretical basis. In this paper we propose to measure vulnerability rigorously as the welfare of a household which solves an intertemporal optimisation model under risk.In such models, in essence a stochastic version of the Ramsey model, an...

Genuine saving is an established indicator of weak sustainable development that measures the net level of investment a country makes in produced, natural and human capital less depreciation. Maintaining this net level of investment above zero is a necessary condition for sustainable development....

The paper explores an endogenous growth model in which scale effects asymptotically vanish and an economy grows without population growth. The key mechanism behind these features is substitution between investing in capital and in knowledge when firms face growing uncompensated knowledge...

We study the politico-economic interaction in a country in transition from a communist regime to a democratic, free market system, to wit, Albania. It is argued that the politico-economic system there is characterized by the existence of clans. Both the communists and the first democratically...

The decision to migrate has received substantial attention from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Underlying most analyses is the desire to understand why individuals relocate within their own country, or more drastically, migrate to another country. While there are numerous reasons...

In a globally networked economy, the telecommunications sector – which was long in the hands of a state-run company – must not close its eyes to competition. All the same, Germany was late in starting to deregulate the industry and so far has concentrated more on competition among service...

This study analyses the role played by adjustment costs and R&D investment prices in total R&D productivity. The results show that on average, for each monetary unit increase in adjustment costs produces a fall in productivity of 0.034 monetary units.

In a framework similar to the models of expectation on economic policy, we purpose a model where the government subsidizes firms privatized by massive giveaways to the managers who are empire- builders. The government injects funds because its aim is to avoid a drastic fall of output when a...

The in-bond manufacturing sector in Mexico, popularly known as the 'maquiladora' industry, suffered a number of job cuts and plant closures between 2001 and 2003. Business cycle downturns, fiscal uncertainty, excessive red tape, exchange rate overvaluation, and foreign competition all...