The econometric technique of cointegration is used to model the aggregate demand for imports in Australia over the period from September 1974 to September 1989. We find that movements in total and endogenous imports are well explained by movements in domestic demand, the relative price of...

By international and historical standards, Australia does not appear to be under-capitalised. Nevertheless, the past decade has seen a clear reversal of the steady upward trend in capital intensity; this reversal was most marked after the short-lived increase in capital spending associated with...

The cost of capital is a potentially important determinant of business investment, yet there have been few attempts to provide an adequate measure of it. In this paper the importance of the cost of capital and weaknesses inherent in existing measures are discussed. A new series for the cost of...

In the second half of 1997 many Asian emerging economies suffered large declines in both their currency and equity markets. This Asian financial turmoil arose primarily from three interrelated sets of factors, namely: shortcomings in the financial sector at a time when global liquidity...

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One of the recurring themes in the literature on financial systems is whether financial integration – that is, openness in the domestic and international financial system – has real, structural economic effects. This paper examines the effect of financial openness on the consumption of...

This paper considers whether capital is a significant constraint on employment in Australia. We calculate the level of capital-constrained employment for ten sectors of the Australian economy. The calculations suggest that the manufacturing; mining; transport, storage and communication and...

The two recently developed Australian indexes of leading indicators have received much attention in the press. Despite this, relatively little is known about their usefulness in forecasting the associated indexes of coincident indicators (i.e., measures of the business cycle) or any activity...

In April 1993, the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision released a series of consultative papers relating to the supervisory treatment of market risk within banks' trading portfolios. The papers proposed a method of allocating capital to cover risk from banks’ trading positions in debt...

This paper provides a survey of ways in which financial innovations may affect the making of monetary policy. This subject has recently become more topical because of both the increased importance of monetary policy and the increasing pace of financial innovation. The analysis makes use of the...