Sustainable Management of the Great Artesian Basin: An Analysis Based on Law and Environmental Economics

Current policy issues surrounding management of the Great Artesian Basin - historical development of existing legislation and institutions - hydrological and historical background information - development of concerns over unsustainable use of resources and possible adverse environmental impacts - recent developments associated with the general reforms to water law and policy initiated by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) - comparison of issues surrounding the Murray-Darling Basin and the Great Artesian Basin.

Language Planning and Policy: Recent Trends, Future Directions

A framework for and overview of the key elements of language planning is presented covering status planning, corpus planning, language-in-education planning, prestige planning and critical approaches to language planning. Within each of these areas, key articles outlining important recent directions are discussed indicating the field’s new found sense of vitality.

Information and wildlife valuation: Experiments and policy

The authors use experimental surveys to investigate the association between individuals' knowledge of particular wildlife species and their stated willingness to allocate funds to conserve each. The nature of variations in these allocations between species (e.g., their dispersion) as participants' knowledge increases is examined. Factors influencing these changes are suggested. Willingness-to-pay allocations are found not to measure the economic value of species, but are shown to be policy relevant. The results indicate that poorly known species, e.g., in remote areas, may obtain relatively less conservation support than they deserve.

Asset Price Instability and Policy Responses: The Legacy of Liberalisation

The debate about the dynamics and potential policy responses to asset inflation has intensified in recent years. Some analysts, notably Borio and Lowe, have called for 'subtle' changes to existing monetary targeting frameworks to try to deal with the problems of asset inflation and have attempted to developed indicators of financial vulnerability to aid this process. In contrast, this paper argues that the uncertainties involved in understanding financial market developments and their potential impact on the real economy are likely to remain too high to embolden policy makers. The political and institutional risks associated with policy errors are also significant. The fundamental premise that a liberalised financial system is based on 'efficient' market allocation cannot be overlooked. The corollary is that any serious attempt to stabilize financial market outcomes must involve at least a partial reversal of deregulation.

The knowledge gap: A perspective on trade, industry, technology and policy from pre-war Australian music technology manufacturing (1903-30)

Australia struggles to achieve economic competitiveness, prevent expansion of the trade deficit and develop value-added production despite applications of policy strategies from protectionism to trade liberalisation. This article argues that these problems were emerging at the turn of the century, and that an investigation of music technology manufacturing in the first two decades of this century reveals fundamental problems in the conduct of relevant policy analysis. Analysis has focused on the trade or technology gap which is only symptomatic of an underlying knowledge gap. The article calls for a knowledge policy approach which can allow protection without the negative effects of isolation from global markets and without having to resort to unworkable utopian free-trade dogma. A shift of focus from a 'goods traded' view to a knowledge transaction (or diffusion) perspective is advocated.

Labour flexibility and gender in the service sector: A study of employment practices in law and accounting firms

In seeking to increase the flexibility of their use of employee time, employers can pursue strategies based on the employment of casual and part-time workers (numerical flexibility) or strategies based on ad hoc variation of the working hours of permanent employees (working time flexibility). Patterns of flexibility strategies and their implications are examined in the context of a highly feminised sector of work-clerical and administrative employment in law and accounting firms. We consider whether, as is often assumed, working time flexibility strategies are generally better for employees because they avoid the substitution of core, high quality jobs with the peripheral, relatively insecure employment often associated with casualisation. Analysing data drawn from a survey of law and accounting firms, we argue that there are three distinct flexibility strategies adopted by employers, and that the choice of strategy is influenced by the size of the firm and the extent of feminisation. The quality of employment conditions associated with each strategy is investigated through an analysis of the determinants of training provision for clerical and administrative workers. Rather than an expected simple linear relationship between increasing casualisation and decreasing training provision, we find that firm size and feminisation are implicated. Larger firms that tend to employ at least some men and use a combination of working time and numerical flexibility strategies tend to provide more training than the small, more fully feminised firms that tend to opt for either casualisation or working time flexibility strategies. This suggests that, from an employee perspective, working time flexibility may not be as benevolent as is often thought.