E-Government, targeting and data profiling: Policy and ethical issues of differential treatment

Networked information and communication technologies are rapidly advancing the capacities of governments to target and separately manage specific sub-populations, groups and individuals. Targeting uses data profiling to calculate the differential probabilities of outcomes associated with various personal characteristics. This knowledge is used to classify and sort people for differentiated levels of treatment. Targeting is often used to efficiently and effectively target government resources to the most disadvantaged. Although having many benefits, targeting raises several policy and ethical issues. This paper discusses these issues and the policy responses governments may take to maximise the benefits of targeting while ameliorating the negative aspects.

Neoliberalism, individualisation and community: Regional restructuring in Australia

Since the early 1980s, Australian governments have embraced neoliberal policies as a means of improving the nation’s global economic competitiveness. The impacts of such policies in regional areas have been quite profound, leading to socio-economic polarisation, population loss, and the growth of anti-globalisation sentiments. In this paper, we examine the process of regional restructuring that arises from this trajectory in Australia, and examine current policy responses to change under the neoliberal regime. We argue that while many such responses are individualistic, and based upon policies of personal responsibility, self-advancement and entrepreneurship, others are imbued with the language of community, social capital and collective action. The existence of individualism and community within the same policy agenda may appear contradictory, yet it is suggested that neoliberalism brings together these two opposing discourses through a process of what Nikolas Rose calls ‘governing through community’. We explore how neoliberalism underpins community approaches to regional development in Australia, arguing that such strategies do little to counter the negative forces of globalisation in non-metropolitan parts of the country.

Asset Price Instability and Policy Responses: The Legacy of Liberalization

The problem of asset price bubbles, and more generally of instability in the financial system, has been a matter of concern since the 1980s but has only recently moved to the center of the macroeconomic policy debate. The main concern with bubbles arises when they burst, imposing losses on investors holding the bubble assets and potentially on the financial institutions that have extended credit to them. Asset price volatility is an inevitable consequence of financial market liberalization and, in extreme cases, generates asset price bubbles, the bursting of which can impose substantial economic and social costs. Policy responses within the existing liberalized financial system face daunting levels of uncertainty and risk. Given the pattern of increasing asset market volatility over recent decades and the policy issues highlighted in this paper, the future looks uncertain. Another significant cycle of asset price movements, especially in one of the major economies, could see a fundamental revision of thinking about the costs and benefits of liberalized financial systems.

No more free beer tomorrow? Economic policy and outcomes in Australia and New Zealand since 1984

There are no controlled experiments in macroeconomic policy, nor in systematic programs of microeconomic reform, but a comparison between New Zealand and Australia over the period since 1984 provides as close an approach to such an experiment as is ever likely to be possible. From quite similar starting points the two countries pursued liberal reform programs that differed sharply, mainly as a result of exogenous differences in constitutional structures and the personal styles of the central actors. Australia followed a more cautious, piecemeal, consensus-based approach, whereas New Zealand, in contrast, adopted a radical, rapid, 'purist' platform. The NZ reform package was generally seen by contemporary commentators as representing a 'textbook' model for best practice reform. However, Australia since 1984 has performed much better than New Zealand, whose per capita GDP growth indeed ranked at or near the bottom of the OECD. In this paper, we assess a variety of explanations for the divergences in policies and outcomes.