General government investment in infrastructure has fallen in recent years for most of the countries in this study, (information is not available to assess whether this is true for public investment more generally). Nevertheless, overall investment in infrastructure has remained fairly steady in...

The staff working paper 'Stranded Irrigation Assets' (Roper, H., Sayers, C. and Smith, A.) was released on 28 June 2006. Prior to the National Water Initiative (NWI), irrigation authorities imposed restrictions on outward trade of water entitlements partly to protect remaining irrigators against...

Historically, governments have played the predominant role in owning and operating infrastructure facilities such as schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, railways, ports, telecommunications networks, and water and electricity supply facilities. However, fiscal policy constraints, growing...

The objective of this study was to undertake a series of modelling exercises that took advantage of the additional available data to explore the effects of R&D on Australian productivity. However, despite the advances in data and methods, our research was unable to find a consistent robust...

The Productivity Commission’s inquiry report into the ‘Conservation of Australia’s Historic Heritage Places’, was tabled in Parliament on 21 July 2006. The Commission was asked to examine the policy framework and incentives for the conservation of Australia’s historic built heritage...

Many Australian farmers and rural communities have been experiencing hardship from the latest severe and prolonged drought. While this is not new to dryland farming, 'irrigation drought' is uncharted territory. Australia has always had a variable climate, with drought being a recurring feature....

A catalyst for this inquiry was concern that executive pay had got out of hand. This perception was fuelled by practices in financial institutions abroad that were seen as a key contributor to the global financial crisis. Further, while local shareholder value plummeted in 2008 as a result of...

While Australia's consumer policy framework has considerable strengths, parts of it require an overhaul. The current division of responsibility for the framework between the Australian and State and Territory Governments leads to variable outcomes for consumers, added costs for businesses and a...

The Productivity Commission’s inquiry report into ‘Review of Price Regulation of Airport Services’ was tabled in Parliament in April 2007. A price monitoring regime for airport services was introduced at Australia’s seven major mainland airports by the Australian Government following an...