摘要:

The use and cost of child care have become important policy issues with rising labour force participation for women responsible for young children. In this article it is shown that for children aged less than 2 informal care is much more important than formal care. For children aged 3 to 5 by far the most important, and cheapest, form of formal care is preschool. The category of formal care which has expanded most rapidly is child care centre places. However the recent expansion of female employment has been effected with no rise in the share of formal care in the total. Publicly supplied child care centre places are over 40 per cent more expensive to produce than private ones. It is argued that for those who do not receive a fee relief subsidy public care is more expensive than private care. The inference is drawn that people are willing to pay more for public than private care because public care is of higher quality. However those buying this higher quality care pay (at most) only 80 per cent of the cost of producing the care. The shortage of care in the public sector is not solved by private sector expansion because users of care are not willing to pay the price of producing high quality care.

ISSN:0004-9018    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8462.1992.tb00571.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1992

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This article argues that interventionist policies aimed at encouraging export or import‐competing industries would not, of themselves, eliminate external deficits under the existing floating exchange rate regime. Similarly, improved productivity and changes in competitiveness are also likely to render microeconomic reform ineffective as an instrument for influencing the external accoun

ISSN:0004-9018    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8462.1992.tb00572.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1992

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Drawing principally on the English‐speaking countries, where tax reform has proceeded furthest, the common characteristics and causes of the worldwide tax reform movement of the 1980s are examined. Tax reform reflected the change in economic philosophy — disillusionment with state intervention and a revival of belief in the efficacy of markets.The causes and content of tax reform in Australia have much in common with those elsewhere except that the reduction in marginal rates of income tax was achieved with no real change in the tax mix. The success of tax reform is assessed using as criteria: (i) how far the outcome matched the objectives specified by the reformers themselves — in particular tax neutrality; (ii) the sustain‐ability of the reforms; and (iii) how far ‘undesirable’ consequences (especially distributional effects) were avoided. Applying these criteria to Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and Australia, it is concluded that in all these countries there are deficiencies, but Australia comes second to New Zealand in the success league. The notable Australian deficiencies are the lack of a broad‐based consumption tax (Australia is now the only OECD country without one) and the fact that lower marginal rates of income tax have been achieved mainly because of falling real thresholds of the

ISSN:0004-9018    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8462.1992.tb00573.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1992

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Major changes to the Australian financial system in the 1980s may possibly have influenced the effects of monetary policy on economic activity. Using vector autoregressive econometric techniques we find that the deregulation of the financial system has made very little difference to the reduced form relationships among interest rates, employment growth, inflation and the growth rate of real credit. We find that interest rates are an important determinant of the business cycle, with credit being much less significant. We also find that monetary policy reacts to unexpected movements in real variables but does not react to surprises in the inflation rate.

ISSN:0004-9018    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8462.1992.tb00574.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1992

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The social opportunity cost of consumption (SOCC) for an economy is the rate at which current consumption can be traded for consumption in the future. The SOCC is an important determinant of the socially optimal levels of investment and the current account surplus and should be an input into the framing of government economic policy. Using overseas interest rates, the SOCC for Australia is calculated in this article. The calculated series is fairly constant for the 1960s and then has a pronounced cyclical pattern from the late 1960s to 1988–89. The average value of the SOCC for Australia is about four per cen

ISSN:0004-9018    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8462.1992.tb00575.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1992

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0004-9018    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8462.1992.tb00576.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1992

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0004-9018    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8462.1992.tb00577.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1992

数据来源: WILEY