Essays on the economics of natural disasters and political institutions

This thesis examines how natural disasters—earthquakes, floods and storms—affect democracy by altering economic outcomes. The results indicate that earthquakes and floods improve the level of democracy, while storms lead to non-democratic transitions, particularly in island countries.

Essays on social capital and poverty in Bangladesh

The thesis examines the role of social capital in determining a number of socio-economic factors in Bangladesh. It uses cross-sectional data of 5600 extreme poor households and finds that social capital plays an important role in improving health and hygienic behaviour, and labour market outcomes during lean season.

Bollywood’s Australian yarn

 It’s 101 years since the birth of Bollywood, the world’s largest and most vibrant movie industry and, of course, that’s more than enough time to mature and alter, to grow arms and legs. For some time, but since the 1990s particularly, the connections between Australia and Bollywood have really taken hold. So sit back and enjoy a cinematic journey that’s sure to entertain. As a genre Bollywood has grown and developed over a period of 100 years, coloured by India’s history, politics, socio-economic conditions, culture, sensibilities, dreams, fantasies, hopes and expectations. The ever-increasing presence of the Indian diaspora in different parts of the world has helped to realise what we might think of as Bollywood’s cultural diplomacy project. Various Australian state tourism bodies have since supported Indian productions and used Bollywood stars as ambassadors to promote Australia as a welcoming nation. The 1996 film Indian has been credited for featuring the first appearance of kangaroos in Indian cinema. But I have noticed that as early as 1974, a Hindi film Majboor made first reference to Australia and its iconic boxing kangaroo. It featured Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan with a poster captioned: ‘Just hop, skip and jump every Thursday to Perth Sydney’. Australia is now a hot destination for Bollywood as well as regional language film-makers, with a successful foray of films from Soldier (1998) to Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013). Over the past two decades, Australian films such as Holy Smoke! (1999), The Waiting City (2009), Save Your Legs! (2012), feature India, not just as a background location but as an integral part of the plot. Bollywood’s influence on Australia can be gauged by the direction of Australian film careers. Be it the Indian-Australian actress Pallavi Sharda (Besharam) or Australia’s bowling sensation Brett Lee (Asha and Friends), Mary Ann Evans – AKA Fearless Nadia, Louise Lightfoot, Tom Cowan, Bob Christo, Tania Zaetta (Salaam Namaste), Nicholas Brown (Kites), Tabrett Bethell (Dhoom 3), Rebecca Breeds (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag), Kristina Akheeva (Yamla Pagla Deewana 2), Emma Brown Garett (Yamala Pagla Deewana), Vimala Raman (Mumbai Mirror), Anusha Dandekar (Delhi Belly), and Maheep Sandhu (Shivam). In this paper I would focus on the journeys and stories of actors, chiefly Fearless Nadia, Bob Christo, and Pallavi Sharda; and also compare a few Bollywood films, particularly Kya Kehna (2000) and Salaam Namaste (2005) made on same theme but set in India and Australia respectively, to show how Australia as has been presented as sexually liberating, visually romantic, and fantastical land of beaches and beauties.

Northern Lights: the positive policy example of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway

The nations of Scandinavia and Finland, or Nordic Europe, continue to provide living proof that economic prosperity can be combined with social equality and environmental responsibility. This book, written from an Australian perspective, explores previous outside policy interest in the Nordic nations and outlines some lessons which the English-speaking world, in particular, can learn now from the achievements of the four main Nordic European nations. In terms of income distribution these countries are still much more equal than Australia, Britain, New Zealand and Canada – and nearly twice as equal as the United States. Workforce participation rates are high in the Nordic nations but working hours remain within reasonable limits, enabling genuine work–life balance. Sweden has played a leading role in improving wellbeing, and lowering poverty, among children. Finland has achieved stunning success in schools since the 1990s. Denmark invests in comprehensive skills training as part of providing security, as well as flexibility, in people’s employment lives. Norway’s taxation approach and other measures ensure that its natural resources are used sustainably for the entire nation’s long-term wealth. All of these achievements are relevant to the policy choices for the future which Australia, and other English-speaking countries, can now make.

The efficient market hypothesis and corporate event waves: part II

This article is the second of a two-part series on the efficient market hypothesis corporate event waves. The ideas of market efficiency, or rational theory, and the behavioral hypothesis have been extensively used to explain the modern phenomena of corporate event waves. Some studies investigate the patterns of corporate events from a behavioral finance perspective and suggest that corporate announcement waves are driven by investor sentiment. Baker and Wurgler examine equity market timing as an aspect of real corporate financial policy. Sentiment can also explain IPO waves. Post-announcement returns and IPO volume are positively correlated to firms' capital demands and the level of investor optimism. Helwge and Liang examine the IPO cycles from hot to cold markets from 1975 to 2000. Corporate e vent wave scan also be explained by the neoclassical efficiency hypothesis, proposing that business cycle fluctuations and economic conditions drive firms' decisions on financing transactions.

Status, caste, and market in a changing Indian village

When social and economic conditions change dramatically, status hierarchies in place for hundreds of years can crumble as marketization destabilizes once rigid boundaries. This study examines such changes in symbolic power through an ethnographic study of a village in North India. Marketization and accompanying privatization do not create an independent sphere where only money matters, but due to a mix of new socioeconomic motives, they produce new social obligations, contests, and solidarities. These findings call into question the emphasis in consumer research on top-down class emulation as an essential characteristic of status hierarchies. This study offers insights into sharing as a means of enacting and reshaping symbolic power within a status hierarchy. A new order based on markets and consumption is disrupting the old order based on caste. As the old moral order dissolves, so do the old status hierarchies, obligations, dispositions, and norms of sharing that held the village together for centuries. In the microcosm of these gains and losses, we may see something of the broader social and economic changes taking place throughout India and other industrializing countries.

Expanding the Australian empire?: the Australian Council for the World Council of Churches, the Menzies Government and the New Hebrides in the late 1950s

In the late 1950s the Australian Council for the World Council of Churches (AC-WCC) inspired primarily by the Presbyterian Church, undertook a concerted campaign to pressure the Australian government to assume a greater role in the affairs of the New Hebrides. The AC-WCC wanted the Australian government to take over the United Kingdom's role in the administration of the Anglo-French Condominium. It was motivated to undertake this campaign by the dismal social and economic conditions in the islands, the neglect of the British and French colonial authorities, and their failure to offer the indigenous people a way forward to self-government. The high point of the campaign was a meeting between Robert Menzies, the Australian prime minister and a delegation from the AC-WCC in early 1958. As a result of this meeting Australian ministers and officials, for the final time, gave extended consideration to expanding Australia's empire in the South Pacific to include the New Hebrides. This article examines the AC-WCC's campaign, explores the Australian government's response, and analyses the outcome of this important episode in Australia's involvement in the colonial territories of the South Pacific.

Middle-class school choice in urban spaces: the economics of public schooling and globalized education reform

Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces examines government-funded public schools from a range of perspectives and scholarship in order to examine the historical, political and economic conditions of public schooling within a globalized, post-welfare context. In this book, Rowe argues that post-welfare policy conditions are detrimental to government-funded public schools, as they engender consistent pressure in rearticulating the public school in alignment with the market, produce tensions in serving the more historical conceptualizations of public schooling, and are preoccupied by contemporary profit-driven concerns.Chapters focus on public schooling from different global perspectives, with examples from Chile and the US, to examine how various social movements encapsulate ideologies around public schooling. Rowe also draws upon a rich, five-year ethnographic study of campaigns lobbying the Victorian State Government in Australia for a brand-new, local-specific public school. Critical attention is paid to the public school as a means to achieve empowerment and overcome discrimination, and both a local and global lens are used to identify how parents choose the public school, the values they attach to it, and the strategies they use to obtain it. Also considered, however, are how quality gaps, distances and differences between public schools threaten to undermine the democracy of education as a means for individuals to be socially mobile and escape poverty.This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of global social movements and activism around public education. As such, it will be of key interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the field of education, specifically those working on school choice, class and identity, as well as educational geography.

CH2 energy harvesting systems : economic use and efficiency

This paper looks at the City of Melbourne's new office development CH₂ as a case study of world class energy performance. In particular, the integrated design of conventionally independent systems has led to the potential to deliver significant savings to the Council and to deliver better environmental conditions to building occupants that in turn may contribute to satisfaction, well-being and Productivity. It is concluded that this project has the potential
to be an iconic example of effective implementation of ESD (environmental sustainable design) principles and therefore act as a demonstration project to others. Energy efficiency of more than 50% of current benchmarks for Melbourne is effected. Energy harvesting is defined as arising from squander, waste and nature, which is a new concept introduced in this paper to better describe the design decision process.

Assessing cost-effectiveness in mental health : family interventions for schizophrenia and related conditions

Objective: Existing evidence suggests that family interventions can be effective in reducing relapse rates in schizophrenia and related conditions. Despite this, such interventions are not routinely delivered in Australian mental health services. The objective of the current study is to investigate the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) of introducing three types of family interventions, namely: behavioural family management (BFM); behavioural intervention for families (BIF); and multiple family groups (MFG) into current mental health services in Australia.

Method: The ICER of each of the family interventions is assessed from a health sector perspective, including the government, persons with schizophrenia and their families/carers using a standardized methodology. A two-stage approach is taken to the assessment of benefit. The first stage involves a quantitative analysis based on disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) averted. The second stage involves application of 'second filter' criteria (including equity, strength of evidence, feasibility and acceptability to stakeholders) to results. The robustness of results is tested using multivariate probabilistic sensitivity analysis.

Results: The most cost-effective intervention, in order of magnitude, is BIF (A$8000 per DALY averted), followed by MFG (A$21 000 per DALY averted) and lastly BFM (A$28 000 per DALY averted). The inclusion of time costs makes BFM more cost-effective than MFG. Variation of discount rate has no effect on conclusions.

Conclusions: All three interventions are considered 'value-for-money' within an Australian context. This conclusion needs to be tempered against the methodological challenge of converting clinical outcomes into a generic economic outcome measure (DALY). Issues surrounding the feasibility of routinely implementing such interventions need to be addressed.

Investigating socio-economic status and chronic illness: directions and dilemmas

In Australia, chronic illness is increasing being recognised as more important. Yet there is relatively little discussion of the nature of the role played by socio-economic status (SES) plays in its prevalence. This paper argues there are two effects of SES. The first is that lower SES can lead to an increase in chronic illness, as evidenced by a number of epidemiological studies. The second is that chronic illness can contribute to lower SES. Examples are provided of the different types of relationships. Difficulties associated with SES analyses and its relationship to chronic illness are discussed, and specific conditions such as HIV/AIDS are referred to as examples. In addition the work of Marmot on SES and chronic illness is drawn on. The authors identify a number of areas that require further research, and recommend that in studies of chronic illness, SES may be a contributing variable, and outcome, or both.

Which aspects of socio-economic status are related to health in mid-aged and older women?

A population-based study was conducted to validate gender- and age-specific indexes of socio-economic status (SES) and to investigate the associations between these indexes and a range of health outcomes in 2 age cohorts of women. Data from 11,637 women aged 45 to 50 and 9,510 women aged 70 to 75 were analyzed. Confirmatory factor analysis produced four domains of SES among the mid-aged cohort (employment, family unit, education, and migration) and four domains among the older cohort (family unit, income, education, and migration). Overall, the results supported the factor structures derived from another population-based study (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1995), reinforcing the argument that SES domains differ across age groups. In general, the findings also supported the hypotheses that women with low SES would have poorer health outcomes than higher SES women, and that the magnitude of these effects would differ according to the specific SES domain and by age group, with fewer and smaller differences observed among older women. The main exception was that in the older cohort, the education domain was significantly associated with specific health conditions. Results suggest that relations between SES and health are highly complex and vary by age, SES domain, and the health outcome under study.

Making long-term economic growth more sustainable: evaluating the costs and benefits

Currently, traditional development issues such as economic stagnation, poverty, hunger, and illness as well as newer challenges like environmental degradation and globalisation demand attention. Sustainable development, including its economic, environmental and social elements, is a key goal of decisionmakers. Optimal economic growth has also been a crucial goal of both development theorists and practitioners. This paper examines the conditions under which optimal growth might be sustainable, by assessing the costs and benefits of growth. Key environmental and social aspects are considered. The Ecol-Opt-Growth-1 model analyses economic–ecological interactions, including resource depletion, pollution, irreversibility, other environmental effects, and uncertainty. It addresses some important issues, including savings, investment, technical progress, substitutability of productive factors, intergenerational efficiency, equity, and policies to make economic growth more sustainable—a basic element of the sustainomics framework. The empirical results support growing concerns that costs of growth may outweigh its benefits, resulting in unsustainability. Basically, in a wide range of circumstances, long term economic growth is unsustainable due to increasing environmental damage. Nevertheless, the model has many options that can be explored by policy makers, to make the development path more sustainable, as advocated by sustainomics. One example suggests that government supported abatement programs are needed to move towards sustainable development, since the model runs without abatement were infeasible. The optimal rate of abatement increases over time. Abatement of pollution is necessary to improve ecosystem viability and increase sustainability. Further research is necessary to seek conditions under which alternative economic growth paths are likely to become sustainable.

From kiwis to pad thai : why similar national framework conditions may lead to different entrepreneurial outcomes

Analyzing GEM 2005 data, we confirm that entrepreneurship and economic development form a U-shaped curve. We seek to understand New Zealand’s large deviation from the modeled curve by analyzing all countries’ deviations from the curve. We make recommendations that would move New Zealand toward the trend line and thus aid in increasing its level of economic development. Our findings more generally suggest how entrepreneurial policies should be designed differently, depending on the current level of economic development and a region’s short and long-term economic goals.

From kiwis to curry wurst : why similar national framework conditions may lead to different entrepreneurial outcomes

Analyzing GEM 2005 data, we confirm that entrepreneurship and economic development form a U-shaped curve. We seek to understand New Zealand’s large deviation from the modeled curve by analyzing all countries’ deviations from the curve. We make recommendations that would move New Zealand toward the trend line and thus aid in increasing its level of economic development. Our findings more generally suggest how entrepreneurial policies should be designed differently, depending on the current level of economic development and a region’s short and long-term economic goals.