Book reviews : David Palmer, Ross Shanahan, and Martin Shanahan, eds., Australian Labor history reconsidered

An objective of this collection is to bring the history of the Australian labor movement to international attention. The editors introduce the collection with a brief overview of Australian labor history, emphasizing differences between the Australian and American experiences. The introduction argues that a unique aspect of Australian labor history is “laborism,” which is defined as the central place of the labor movement in Australian culture, as compared with the more marginal position of the labor movement in America. In Australia, this centrality is reflected in the embedding of trade unions and labor in the state through wage-fixing tribunals, a social security system designed to support the families of male wage earners, and the Australian Labor Party's strong links to the trade union movement. The introduction is informative and especially benefits from the insights of David Palmer, an American historian teaching at Adelaide's Flinders University. However, the introduction was apparently written later at the suggestion of an American reader and has thus not been fully integrated into the structure of the book.

Hunting the unobservables for optimal social security a general equilibrium approach

We study the optimal size of a pay-as-you-go social security program for an economy composed of both permanent-income and hand-to-mouth consumers. While previous work on this topic is framed within a two-period partial equilibrium setup, we study this issue in a life-cycle general equilibrium model. Because this type of welfare analysis depends critically on unobservable preference parameters, we methodically consider all parameterizations of the unobservables that are both feasible and reasonable—all parameterizations that can mimic key features of macro data (feasible) while still being consistent with micro evidence and convention (reasonable). The baseline model predicts that the optimal tax rate is between 6 percent and 15 percent of wage income.

Product specialization in international trade : a further investigation

In an influential paper, Schott [Schott. Peter K. (2004). “Across-product versus within-product specialization in international trade.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 119 (2): 647–678] makes two empirical observations about U.S. imports. (1) The United States is increasingly sourcing the same product (however narrowly defined) from both developed and developing countries. That is, ‘across-product specialization’ has been decreasing. (2) The unit values of these multiple-sourced products are positively and significantly correlated with the capital and skill abundance of exporters and with the capital–labor ratios used by exporters. That is, endowments-driven ‘within-product specialization’ has been increasing. We show that both these observations extend to the imports of Brazil, India and Japan. However, our main finding is that observation (1) is largely driven by two factors. First, China is the dominant low-wage exporter of multiple-sourced products. Second, the most developed countries remain the primary exporters of multiple-sourced products. The U.S. case is the most extreme of our four importers: When China is deleted from the U.S. import data there is no trend in across-product specialization and rich exporters are increasing their trade share of multiple-sourced products. Since deleting China has no theoretical justification, these results must be viewed not as a contradiction of Schott's work but as a way of deepening our understanding of his empirical results.

Doing justice' : stories of everyday life in disadvantaged schools and neighbourhoods

I worked as a school administrator in 'disadvantaged schools' for many years. In this study I asked colleagues from sixteen schools in the northern and western suburbs of Adelaide to co - theorise about changes in their neighbourhood, school populations and programs, now that their schools are no longer recognised by policy as 'disadvantaged1. I explore the use of narrative method and arts based approaches by constructing a 'literary' research text that uses conventional sociological forms together with images, poetry and personal stories. I use anthropological and geographical theoretical constructs to look at the changing material, economic, cultural and social landscapes and the mosaic of inequalities in the city of Adelaide. I suggest that this is not a simple binary polarisation, although large numbers of people are similarly positioned by de-industrialisation and the diminishing social wage. After examining the literature on poverty in Australia, I am eventually prepared to call this space class, understanding that this is a sociological metaphor. Through a theorisation of each school as a 'place' within a specific neighbourhood, I look at the similarities and differences across sites. I suggest that 'disadvantaged schools' are similarly positioned as sites for the mediation of social inequalities, and that this can be readily seen in the time consuming 'housework' of discipline and welfare. I indicate how each school is differently able to 'do more with less', because of their unique neighbourhood and its narratives, knowledges, histories, teleologies and people. I show that the common coercive regimes of market devolution, new public management and the 'distributive curriculum' frame the work of teachers, students and administrators in ways that are not conducive to 'doing justice', despite the policy rhetoric of equity and community. I provide evidence that the neoliberal imaginary of context free schooling enshrined in effective schools literatures is Utopian and irrational. I argue that the capacity of the school to 'generate context' is always paradoxically dependent on 'context derived'. I discuss the notion of 'doing justice' and the benefits of 'disadvantaged schools' having a local set of principles that guide their decisions and actions and provide evidence that the school administrator's understandings of 'doing justice' are important. I also suggest that, despite being increasingly isolated and hindered by policy directions, the majority of the sixteen schools continue to work for and with principles of justice and equity, drawing on a range of emotional and intellectual resources and deep, longstanding commitments. I conclude by speculating on the kinds of policy and research agendas that might take account of both the commonalities and differences amongst 'disadvantaged schools', and what might be included in a comprehensive and systematic approach to 'doing justice'.

The impact of liberalisation on the competitiveness in the Australian clothing industry : an empirical study

Examines the effect of price of labor, capital labor ratio and openness on the output of the Australian domestic clothing industry. Use of the unrestricted error correction model; Estimated short-run and long-run elasticities; Hourly wage costs; Bounds test for cointegration analysis.

Strategic vote manipulation in a simple democracy

In both the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) and employee buyouts, the common and crucial phenomenon is that some workers have two sources of income, namely wages and shares of profit. We analyze that phenomenon in an economy where workers are nonunionized and wages are determined by voting. If the employers sell a certain amount of shares of the capital stock to some non-risk-loving workers, these workers vote for the lowest possible wage along with the employers. As a result, all workers become equally worse off because of the competition among workers to buy those shares.

Are employees entitled to more?

George Lopez, chair of CPA Australia's insolvency and reconstruction committee reported in Australian CPA (November 2001) on the replacement of the Commonwealth Government Employee Entitlements Support Scheme (EESS) with a new scheme, the General Employee Entitlements Redundancy Scheme (GEERS). Both schemes provide a safety net by which government pays employees their service entitlements and then takes the employees' place in claims against the insolvent employer organisation. Such schemes are fundamentally inequitable as ultimately they require taxpayers and shareholders to foot the bill for the mistakes, excesses, misdemeanours or incompetence of employers. Similar arrangements have been proposed in the past. For instance, the Australian Law Reform Commission's Harmer Report (1988) contained a recommendation that a wage earner (fidelity-type) protection fund be established. In the state of Victoria, local government legislation already exists to ensure that long service leave entitlements are funded.

The determinants of immigration from Fiji to New Zealand : AN empirical reassessment using the bounds testing approach

This article re-examines Gani's (1998) findings on the determinants of migrant flows from Fiji to New Zealand by employing the bounds testing procedure to cointegration, within an autoregressive distributive lag framework. The main findings are that in the long run all variables are statistically insignificant, although correctly signed with the exception of the unemployment differential. In the short run, in sharp contrast to Gani's (1998) findings, political instability is consistently the most important determinant of migration flows while the standard of living and real wage differentials are statistically insignificant across all specifications.

Modelling immigration flows : an application of the bounds test to Fiji - Australia migration

This paper examines the long-run and short-run determinants of migration from Fiji to Australia between 1972 and 2001 using a human capital framework, which is extended to take account of political instability in Fiji. Our main findings are that in the long run the real wage differential and political instability in Fiji are the main determinants. In the short run, there is some evidence that the wage differential and transport costs are important factors, but this finding is not robust across all specifications. Lagged migration and political instability are the most important determinants in the short run.

Picture this : a simple graph that reveals much ado about research

Funnel graphs provide a simple, yet highly effective, means to identify key features of an empirical literature. This paper illustrates the use of funnel graphs to detect publication selection bias, identify the existence of genuine empirical effects and discover potential moderator variables that can help to explain the wide variation routinely found among reported research findings. Applications include union–productivity effects, water price elasticities, common currency-trade effects, minimum-wage employment effects, efficiency wages and the price elasticity of prescription drugs.

Determinants of maternity leave duration in Australia : evidence from the HILDA survey

We use the first five waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey to examine what determines the maternity leave taken by pre-birth employed mothers of newborn children in Australia. We find that the difficulties faced by mothers in finding appropriate child care in terms of both cost and quality hinder them from returning to the labour market following childbirth. Maternity leave entitlements lead to an earlier return to the labour market following the birth of a child, relative to those who have no leave rights at all. Mothers with higher wages in their pre-birth employment and mothers with higher education levels tend to return to the labour market earlier than their lower wage and less educated counterparts. More flexible pre-birth jobs are associated with an increase in the likelihood of mothers returning to the workforce earlier than the average. Household wealth, however, seems to play a facilitating role in mothers taking a longer period of maternity leave to look after the newborn child. That is, mothers who have higher wealth levels can ‘afford’ to stay on maternity leave longer, to look after their children better during their primary developmental months. We believe that this article provides useful insights into the employment transitions of Australian mothers after having a baby.

Restructuring the architecture of state regulation in the Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand cleaning industries and the growth of precarious employment

This paper examines changes in the commercial cleaning industry in Australasia which are occurring against a backdrop of significant transformation in the mode of labour market regulation in both countries. Specifically, whereas for most of the twentieth century both Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia had systems of labour market regulation in which the state provided minimum wage and work protections through the interventions of arbitration courts, in the past few years these courts have either been abolished (in the case of New Zealand) or severely restricted in their ambit (in the case of Australia), all as part of a neoliberal effort to introduce “flexibility” into labour markets. The result has been an erosion of wages and a worsening of conditions of employment for cleaners and many other groups of workers. At the same time, this transformation in the architecture of labour market regulation poses significant challenges to unions seeking to represent cleaners and other low-paid service sector workers.

The development of Australian tertiary education to 1939

Some accounts of Australian education have suggested that the growth of mass public education has been the result of two factors. First, mass public demand, in the wake of the development of an industrial society which gave the working man more leisure, a rising standard of living, and an appreciation of the benefits of education. Second, the concern of more enlightened sections of the upper class for the welfare of the working class. The development of education is seen as linked with the development of the liberal democratic state. Other accounts have linked educational development with the development of capitalism in a more direct way. They suggest that schools developed with factories, wage labour and work dependence as agents of socialization, and for basic skill transmission, in the face of the declining influence of the church, family and artisan.

Economic value of mitigation of plant invaders in a subsistence economy : incorporating labour as a mode of payment

This paper presents the analysis of a choice experiment designed to estimate willingness-to-pay (WTP) to mitigate damages caused by invasive plant species in a rural community of Nepal. In order to address the cash constraints problem in a subsistence economy, two payment attributes, labour contribution and membership fee, were included in the choice sets. The results reveal that rural farmers have significant WTP for forest management activities, in terms of both cash and labour contributions. The results also suggest that rural farmers value their time in this context at a different rate from the current wage rate.