Economics - Research Publications
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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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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.
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ItemParametric continuity of stationary distributions(Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 2004)
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ItemEquivalent conditions for irreducibility of discrete time Markov chains( 2004-02)We consider discrete time Markov chains on generalstate space. It is shown that a certain property referred to hereas nondecomposability is equivalent to irreducibility, and that aMarkov chain with invariant distribution is irreducible if and only ifthe invariant distribution is unique and assigns positive probabilityto all absorbing sets.
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ItemTechnological revolutions and financial innovations(Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 2004)
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ItemThe incidence of long-term unemployment in Australia 1978-2003( 2004-05)This paper explores the following question - Has there been any long-run increase (ordecrease) in the ‘incidence’ of long-term unemployment once we have corrected for cyclicalfactors? Our research leads us to conclude: (i) that the incidence of male long-termunemployment has been neither rising nor falling, once we allow for ‘cyclical factors’ and,(ii) that the incidence of female long-term unemployment has been rising, once we allow for‘cyclical factors’. We conjecture that there is a link between increasing female participation(which we take to be a proxy for ‘attachment to the labour market’ – and thus attachment tounemployment as well as employment) and an increasing incidence of long-termunemployment. Experimenting with policy dummies, we find no evidence of policy effects onthe incidence of long-term unemployment in the case of males and females but there is someevidence that policy had temporary effects on females.