This paper examines whether there has been a significant trend towards longer working hours in Australia, and whether working arrangements involving long hours are unreasonable. Recent years have seen growing concern with the number of hours many Australians are spending in paid employment....

Working hours in Australia are quite widely distributed around the population mean. That is, there are relatively many people working both relatively short hours and relatively long hours each week. From a welfare perspective, however, it is not the actual number of hours worked that is of...

The 1990s has seen bargaining, and more specifically, enterprising bargaining supplant arbitration as the dominant industrial relations paradigm. In large part, this change reflects widespread belief that enterprise bargaining would stimulate greater levels of productivity. Evidence in support...

Data from a representative survey of adult Australians are analysed for usual and preferred working time across family types. We discover a time divide regardless of gender and family type: many short hours individuals desire longer hours of employment, while many long hours individuals prefer...

There appears to be widespread consensus, at least in industry and government, that enterprise bargaining has been beneficial for productivity. Many academics, however, have argued that the link between bargaining structure and workplace productivity is a contentious one, and that research has...

This paper investigates the determinants of profitability of Australian tax entities over the period 1993/94 to 1996/97 for each of 91 three-digit ANZSIC industries. The theoretical model is based on that of Cowling and Waterson (1976). However, it is augmented by the inclusion of lagged...

There appears to be widespread consensus in industry and government that a switch from centralized bargaining to an enterprise based system benefits productivity. However, research suggests that the link between bargaining structures and worker productivity is dubious and that empirical research...

There is a growing literature that seeks to analyse the relationship between consumer sentiment and economic variables, primarily because of the pervasive belief that consumers' opinions and expectations can influence the direction of-or signal changes in the direction of-the economy. There has...

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between innovative effort, measured by R&D intensity, and foreign shareholding and competition. The data set used is a sample of large Australian firms between 1994 and 1997. Previous studies have used aggregate variables to account for these...

During the 1990s there were several measures introduced to improve the efficiency and financial performance of government trading enterprises in Australia. The purpose of this paper is to discover whether there has been any change in the financial performance of government trading enterprises...