Economics - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe Doha agenda and development prospects for intellectual property rights reform(Asian Development Bank, 2002)At the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Doha, a number of key declarations were made that will directly impact the operation of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). These declarations perform a multidimensional function: clarifying and reiterating existing rights and obligations, as well as setting out a negotiating agenda. By providing clarity on a number of critical issues, the Doha Ministerial Conference attempted to clear the way for future work on TRIPS. Overall, the Doha Declarations with respect to the TRIPS Agreement are seen as a major step for developing (and particularly the least developed) countries towards securing flexibility in the use of intellectual property rights (IPRs), especially with respect to public health issues. Specifically, the Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health helps to ensure that in situations where a national emergency has to be dealt with, the set of options is not limited by the architecture of international IPRs. More generally, it reiterates the ability of countries to interpret the TRIPS Agreement in a way that is beneficial to them or reflective of their needs. The right to exercise flexibility over IPRs has historically been available to countries during their industrializing phase. While the TRIPS Agreement does limit the flexibility a country has, much work has attempted to emphasize the scope for discretion a country has in the design of its IPR system. The results of the Doha Ministerial Conference can be seen as an attempt to further stress the flexibility within the TRIPS Agreement.
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ItemDiscrete hours labour supply modelling: Specification, estimation and simulation(John Wiley & Sons, 2005)The assumption behind discrete hours labour supply modelling is that utility-maximising individuals choose from a relatively small number of hours levels, rather than being able to vary hours worked continuously. Such models are becoming widely used in view of their substantial advantages, compared with a continuous hours approach, when estimating and their role in tax policy microsimulation. This paper provides an introduction to the basic analytics of discrete hours labour supply modelling. Special attention is given to model specification, maximum likelihood estimation and microsimulation of tax reforms. The analysis is at each stage illustrated by the use of numerical examples. At the end, an empirical example of a hypothetical policy change to the social security system is given to illustrate the role of discrete hours microsimulation in the analysis of tax and transfer policy changes.
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ItemIslamic religious education and the debate on itsreform post-September 11(University of New South Wales Press, 2005)The place of Islam and Muslims in the West has been a source of much debate in the post-September 11 era, not least in the area of Islamic education – an area seen by some Western commentators as a major source of anti-Western attitudes, and a breeding ground for terrorism. Such simplistic views of Islamic religious educational systems and institutions ignore the complex history of Islamic education and the diverse forms that it has taken across different times, places and cultures. This chapter from the book Islam and the West: Reflections from Australia explores the development of Islamic religious education over time, tracing its growth and decline in the pre-modern period and moves towards reform in the modern era. This is followed by a discussion of the generally simplistic perception, held particularly among Western commentators post-September 11, 2001, that Islamic religious education is closely linked to terrorism. Saeed notes that the hijackers involved in the 2001 attacks were not graduates of traditional Islamic education, a fact overlooked by many commentators. Although many prominent Muslim academics and scholars have been working to reform Islamic education over the past century, Saeed argues that these efforts may well have been hindered rather than helped by the authoritarian and coercive forms of reform which are being called for by some commentators in the West. In fact, the war on terror may well be the biggest stumbling block to the reform of Islamic religious education.
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ItemThe need to rethink apostasy laws(Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2004)Recent high-profile cases and a number of Muslim scholars affirming the death penalty for apostasy have brought the issue of the pre-modern Islamic law of apostasy (riddah) back to the fore. Once largely ignored, apostasy is today vigorously debated among Muslims. The Qur’anic concept of non-coercion in religion was interpreted narrowly by pre-modern Islamic scholars, and excluded the right to convert away from Islam. In this chapter from the book Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam, Saeed observes that this was a reasonable conclusion in the pre-modern context, when religious identity was enmeshed with political affiliation, and a person’s rights flowed from their membership of the religio-political entity. In the modern world, however, the author argues that there is ample reason to re-think these conclusions. Today, most Muslim nation-states recognize equal citizenship regardless of religion and are highly diverse. Large numbers of Muslims live as minorities in non-Muslim countries. Further, the death penalty for apostasy has weak textual support in the classical sources. The reaffirmation of pre-modern laws developed for different circumstances is unhelpful in the modern period. Pre-modern formulations of apostasy are particularly open to abuse in states which are authoritarian in nature, a feature of many Muslim states today. Moreover, the phenomenon of globalisation will mean more intensive linkages and mixes of people from different backgrounds. There is a need for an idea of religious freedom in Islam that accords with modern realities. Saeed argues that the weak textual basis of the law of apostasy and the greatly differing religio-political context of modern period are strong justifications for embarking on the task of reforming this law.
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ItemAn employment equation for Australia: 1966-2001( 2004-01)We model the relationship between hours of work and employment and argue thatunless actual hours are varying with a change in ‘standard hours’, actual hours shouldnot appear in the long-run component of an equation for employment. If howeverstandard hours are changing then it is desirable that this variable be incorporated intothe employment equation. Our theoretical model yields an expression for the elasticityof employment with respect to standard hours which shows that the elasticity isrelated to the size of the premium for overtime. Using quarterly data for the period1966:3 – 2001:3 we estimate a new employment equation for Australia incorporatingstandard hours of work. We find empirical support for our approach and we providenew estimates of the elasticity of employment with respect to the real wage and GDP.We also find a marked asymmetry in the response of employment to variations in realGDP and real wages in recession periods as against non-recession periods.
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ItemBudget balance and trade balance: kin or strangers. A case study of Taiwan( 2004-01)In line with the deterioration of Taiwanese budget deficits, the trade surplus has alsodecreased. It is the ideal time to investigate the relationship between budget balances andtrade balances. Unit root tests, cointegration tests, Granger causality tests and the VARsmodel are techniques used to test the Keynesian proposition and the Ricardianequivalence. The main findings are that Keynesian proposition is supported only by themodel using data of the whole period. There is no support for the Ricardian equivalence.That budget balances and trade balances being kin or strangers varies over periods of dataused.
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ItemOptimal licensing policy in differentiated industries(WILEY-BLACKWELL, 2005-03)
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ItemModels with two or more public goods(Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 2004)
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ItemStochastic growth with nonconvexities: the optimal case( 2004-02)This paper studies optimal investment and dynamicbehaviour of stochastically growing economies. We assume neitherconvex technology nor bounded support of the productivity shocks.A number of basic results concerning the investment policy and theRamsey–Euler equation are established. We also prove a fundamentaldichotomy pertaining to optimal growth models perturbedby standard econometric shocks: Either an economy is globallystable or it is globally collapsing to the origin.
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ItemAsymptotic statistical properties of the neoclassical optimal growth model( 2004-02)The standard one-sector stochastic optimal growthmodel is shown to be not just ergodic but geometrically ergodic.In addition, it is proved that the time series generated by the optimalpath satisfy the Law of Large Numbers and the Central LimitTheorem.