The cost of capital is the minimum rate of return that an investment project must earn in order to cover its funding costs and any tax liabilities. Australian studies on this subject have produced a wide range of estimates. This paper demonstrates that a wide range of outcomes can result from...

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...

This book is an up-to-date, authoritative and comprehensive analysis of the key issues and challenges facing regional currency area projects in the context of financial globalization. The authors focus on several central issues that emerged during the experiences of the 1990s and 2000s: exchange...

Jim Cairns was the only academic economist to become Treasurer. But despite his qualifications, even his own assessment was that his tenure as Treasurer was unsuccessful. While a driving force behind the 1974 budget, he was Treasurer for only seven months and was one of only a handful of...

A number of concepts of 'competitiveness' are applied to national economies, not always clearly or helpfully. This paper suggests a possible taxonomy of these concepts, and applies them to Australian data. Australia performs well on the internal competitiveness of its markets. It also does well...

Major shifts in the global economy — such as rapid growth in global commodity prices associated with the emergence of China and other countries — are leading to changes in Australia’s international income flows. This is attracting an increasing amount of attention as the net income deficit...

This article examines Treasury's macroeconomic forecasting performance over the period from 1989-90 to 2003-04, with a focus on forecasts of nominal and real GDP, the GDP deflator, the unemployment rate, and CPI inflation.

We present a computational model of fishing fleet dynamics for the Queensland coral reef line fishery. The model runs in a two dimensional space with agents moving between port and the collection of available reefs. The model of rationality is based on the haystack models of game theory, such...