Digital Commons Network^™

Schooling Quality And Economic Growth, Frank Neri

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

Many studies of the determinants of economic growth rates across countries use a measure of schooling quantity, such as mean secondary school enrolment rates, to proxy for the rate of human capital accumulation. This approach ignores the contribution of schooling quality. We augment the growth model of Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992) to include schooling quality, derive the relevant steady state income and growth rate equations, and then estimate the model. We find that differences in schooling quality across countries are probably more important than differences in schooling quantity in explaining variations in economic growth rates.

The Illawarra At Work: A Summary Of The Major Findings Of The Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, R. Markey, A. Hodgkinson, T. Mylett, S. Pomfret, M. Murray, M. Zanko

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

This paper summarises the main results of the Illawarra Regional Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (IRWIRS). The data is unique in that it provides the only comprehensive and statistically reliable source of information about workplace employee relations at the regional level in Australia, and compares regional patterns with national trends. The data collected relates to industrial relations indicators, workplace ownership, market conditions, management organisation and decision-making in the workplace, among other things. The results reveal a positive pattern of employment relations in the Illawarra, distinctive in many respects from national trends.

Part-Time Employment, Gender And Employee Participation In The Workplace: An Illawarra Reconnaissance, R. Markey, J. Kowalczyk, S. Pomfret

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

The growth in non-standard forms of employment has major implications for the effectiveness of employee participation mechanisms in the workplace, whether direct or indirect (representative). This seems to be especially the case with representative forms, such as consultative committees, because they effectively assume permanent or long-term employment and are not as easily accessible to part-time employees. However, the literature on participation rarely addresses this major contextual aspect. The issue is of further significance since the majority of part-time and casual employees are female. Consequently, to the extent that non-standard employees do not have the same access to participatory mechanisms in …

Poverty Rates Among Part-Time And Casual Workers, Joan Rodgers

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

The proportion of Australian workers who are employed on either a part-time or a casual basis has been increasing for the past several decades. By the beginning of the 21st century, 30 percent of employment is of this type. The common perception seems to be that part-time and casual jobs are undesirable. For example, Sharan Burrow, President of the ACTU, in her 14 February 2001 address to the Committee for Economic Development asserted that "60% of all casual workers require more hours to ensure a living wage." But economic status depends not only upon the worker’s own earnings but also …

Federation And Labour 1880-1914: National, State And Local Dimensions, R. Markey

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

We are accustomed to thinking of the labour movement in Australia as ‘Australian’ soon after the turn of the century, in the sense of having a national institutional base and political program. It has been argued traditionally that Australian nationalism was distinctive because of its working class base and radical democratic nature. As Stuart Macintyre argues elsewhere in this volume, the Australian Labor Party is the ‘only party to have participated continuously in national politics since its inception’. Partly as a result, the Labor Party exerted a significant political influence upon the national political program after federation. It took the …

Gender, Part-Time Employment And Employee Participation In The Workplace: Comparing Australia And The European Union, R. Markey, A. Hodgkinson, J. Kowalczyk, S. Pomfret

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

The international trend in the growth and incidence of ‘non-standard employment’, and its highly gendered nature, is well documented. For ease of definition, and because of the nature of the available data, we focus upon part-time employment in this paper. Employee participation may be defined as any workplace process which ‘allows employees to exert some influence over their work and the conditions under which they work’ (Strauss 1998). It may be divided into two main approaches, direct participation and indirect or representative participation. Direct participation involves the employee in job or task-oriented decision-making in the production process at the shop …

The Challenge Of Child Labour In Rural India: A Multi-Dimensional Problem In Need Of An Orchestrated Policy Response, D. P. Chaudhri, E. J. Wilson

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

Perceptions about facets of child labour in India, and elsewhere, are strongly conditioned by our knowledge of economic history, socio-cultural view of child welfare, respect, or lack of it, for functioning of the market system and attitudes towards duties of the Sovereign with respect to its citizens and to the international community. The spectrum of views generated by such a complex intellectual prism would naturally be rather large. The coloured vision of vested interests reduces the transpiracy of the spectrum. This is clearly observable in media reporting, legislative processes, national and international posturings on the subject of child labour. The …

Working Boarders: The Boarding Out Scheme In New South Wales, 1820-1920, M. Murray

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

This paper considers the work of children placed under the boarding out scheme in New South Wales in the period 1880-1920. It argues that work for, and by, boarded children was an intrinsic part of both ideology and functioning of the scheme. The paper suggests that, by boarding children in ‘respectable’ working class households (often in rural areas), the State Children’s Relief Board placed children in situations where their exploitation, or overwork, was a significant possibility. It argues that the Board’s mechanisms for ensuring the children’s welfare under the scheme were not fail-proof and that exploitation, in variance from the …

Determinants Of Child Labour In Indian States: Some Empirical Explorations (1961-1991), D. P. Chaudhri, A. L. Nagar, T. Rahman, E. J. Wilson

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

Growing concern about the incidence of child labour and attempts for its elimination at the national and international levels has been attracting attention of researchers. The complexities of the issue and the problems of inter-relatedness of factors affecting incidence of child labour are also being realised.1 Policy formulation in India, in the rest of South Asia and elsewhere is still based on wisdom derived from micro studies2, variables known to have correlation with the incidence of child labour and those which are presumed to drive demand and supply of child labour. Most of these variables are not only interdependent but …

Children And Schoolwork In New South Wales, 1860-1920, M. Murray

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

In the second half of the nineteenth century in New South Wales the introduction and spread of mass schooling added a significant workload to the lives of most children. In effect the schoolroom became a kind of workplace, albeit unpaid. Schoolwork became a given for nearly all children, whatever their household's position in society. Socio-economic status, race and gender affected and mediated a child's experience of schooling, but they did not remove children from the school experience and its workloads. The question of what children in New South Wales did learn or gain from their schoolwork in the second half …

Basic Human Rights, Core Labour Standards And Relative Educational Deprivation Of Youth In Modern Indian States, D. P. Chaudhri

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

The United Nations and its specialised agencies, beginning with the declaration of Universal Human Rights in 1948 have relentlessly pursued the issue and the associated one of core labour standards. Ideas pertaining to these issues have acquired a life and potency of their own and are, at least, giving a bad conscience to those claiming to be world leaders. During the 1990's, particularly since the inception of World Trade Organisation, and the UN’s search for an unambiguous role, a paradigm shift is unfolding. Powerful nation states with more than proportionate influence in the UN system are successfully seizing the agenda …

The Relevance Of Labour History To Contemporary Labour Relations In Australia, Ray Markey

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

History has always been important for the labour movement in defining its identity. Partly for this reason the institutions of the labour movement have placed great emphasis on recording their participation in labour history.

The importance of labour history for contemporary labour relations, however, is far greater than that. An appreciation of labour history throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries shows that most of the major contemporary issues in Australian labour relations are really new wine in old bottles. Workplace reform, deregulation and decentralisation of wage determination have been on the employers’ agenda on a number of other occasions, …

Expenditures By International University Students, Darren Mckay, Don Lewis

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

Although the growth of overseas students in Australia is well documented, little is known about their personal expenditure patterns. To help fill this important vacuum in our knowledge a census of spending by overseas students at the University of Wollongong was conducted in September 1992. Following is a presentation and analysis of the findings. The results provide estimates of spending by overseas students and are cross-classified by nationality, type of fee payment, residential status, level of study and gender. Inferences have been drawn from this data to estimate total expenditure within the Wollongong region and the greater Australian economy. It …

The Effects Of Protective Legislation On Occupational Segregation In The United States And Australia, Charles Harvie, Chris Nyland, Stuart Svensen

Faculty of Business - Economics Working Papers

Gender-specific protective labour laws are considered unacceptable by many analysts because it is presumed they must necessarily adversely affect employment opportunities for women. This paper reviews United States research which has sought to assess the validity of this assumption; and reports on the impact of these laws within Australia. The assumption that gender-specific labour laws adversely affect female employment opportunities is not supported by United States research or Australian data. It is concluded that a reform strategy centred on simple abolition may involve loss of employee protection without necessarily producing any compensating increase in opportunities for women.