Adaptive economic growth

This paper develops an evolutionary theory of adaptive growth, understood as a product of structural change and economic self-transformation, based upon processes that are closely connected with but not reducible to the growth of knowledge. The dominant connecting theme is enterprise, the innovative variations it generates and the multiple connections between investment, innovation, demand and structural transformation in the market process. The paper explores the dependence of macroeconomic productivity growth on the diversity of technical progress functions and income elasticities of demand at the industry level, and the resolution of this diversity into patterns of economic change through market processes. It is shown how industry growth rates are constrained by higher-order processes of emergence that convert an ensemble of industry growth rates into an aggregate rate of growth. The growth of productivity, output and employment are determined mutually and endogenously, and their values depend on the variation in the primary causal influences in the system.

Energy consumption, economic growth and prices: A reassessment using panel VECM for developed and developing countries

This paper reinvestigates the energy consumption-GDP growth nexus in a panel error correction model using data on 20 net energy importers and exporters from 1971 to 2002. Among the energy exporters, there was bidirectional causality between economic growth and energy consumption in the developed countries in both the short and long run, while in the developing countries energy consumption stimulates growth only in the short run. The former result is also found for energy importers and the latter result exists only for the developed countries within this category. In addition, compared to the developing countries, the developed countries' elasticity response in terms of economic growth from an increase in energy consumption is larger although its income elasticity is lower and less than unitary. Lastly. the implications for energy policy calling for a more holistic approach are discussed. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The effect of non-standard employment on work-family balance

Across the last four decades, the structure of the Australian labour market has changed profoundly as non-standard forms of employment have become more prevalent. According to many researchers, the growth of non-standard work has been driven by employee preferences, particularly among married women, for greater flexibility to balance paid work with domestic responsibilities and other non-work related pursuits. In contrast, other researchers argue that the increasing prevalence of non-standard employment reflects employer demands for greater staffing flexibility. From this perspective, non-standard forms of employment are considered to have a negative effect on work-family balance. This paper explores whether non-standard employment is associated with improved or poorer work-to-family conflict and tests whether experiences vary by gender. It concentrates on three common forms of non-standard employment: part-time employment, casual and fixed-term work contracts and flexible scheduling practices (such as evening work, weekend work and irregular rostering). Analysis is based on 2299 employed parents from the first wave of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics on Australia (HILDA) project. Results show that few scheduling measures are significant determinants of work-family balance. However, part-time employment is associated with reduced work-to-family strain for both men and women, even after controlling for various other employment and household related characteristics. Casual employment, in contrast, incurs the cost of poorer work-family balance for men. Surprisingly, HILDA data show that overall men experience greater work-to-family strain than women.