The PhD Conference in Economics and Business was a unique Australian innovation when it commenced in the late 1980s. With the high-quality feedback from discussants, the conference was a productive special event, even horizon-broadening for some students. The conference is now a partnership between six universities and has involved almost 900 students from many universities. This paper places the conference in a broader context and highlights some of the stars by identifying 54 student-presenters now full professors.

This article is based upon presentations at the closing session of the 14th International Conference of the Western Economic Association International (WEAI), hosted by the Newcastle Business School, University of Newcastle, Australia, January 11–14, 2018. The panellists are: Orley Ashenfelter, Daniel L. McFadden, Abigail Payne, Jason Potts, Robert Gregory, and Wade Martin. ( JEL J6)

This article draws upon co-author Masashi Yui’s unique database on state sector organisational restructuring in New Zealand from 1960 to 2017. It shows that if the peak years of structural change, 1986–92 – the ‘revolution’ which saw New Zealand as a world leader in what became known as New Public Management – were seismic shocks, then they have been followed by an apparently endless number of aftershocks, which distinguish the post-peak period from the 25 years preceding it. The article speculates as to whether there could be links between the amount of organisational restructuring, unsatisfactory productivity rates in the New Zealand state sector, and the embedding of the ‘managerialist’ culture that was introduced by the ‘revolution’.

It is always good to end a review by suggesting where the future research frontier lies. With this in mind, it is important to emphasise the extraordinary nature of the current mining boom and slump. Only once in 150 years has Australian per capita income lifted as much as 15–20%, relative to that of the United States, and remained above US income levels for almost a decade. This extraordinary macro outcome was predominantly driven by trading gains, the result of resource export price increases relative to import prices. With export prices subsequently falling, Australia is moving towards a substantial decline in income relative to other advanced economies. This remarkable history provides both a unique macro quasi-experiment to enable us to understand better the impact of large trading gain shifts and an opportunity for special Australian research contributions to the world booming sector literature, in much the same way that occurred after the 1970s less substantial resource boom. In part 6 of the review, John Freebairn begins to focus on trading gains, but the journal-based academic literature inevitably lags behind our recent history. That history indicates quite clearly that resource economists should move away from their traditional emphasis on intersectoral resource competition and into the new territory of macroeconomy responses to large trading gain changes and a reassessment of the nature of our national accounts data. The textbook static theory of trading gains is well known (Kohli 2004; Coleman 2008), but the magnitude and dynamics of macroeconomic responses to substantial trading gain shifts is not. Let me illustrate this by comparing the income paths of the two major Australian ‘recessions’ of the last quarter-century. The income paths are measured by Real Gross Disposable Income (RGDI) per capita, which is Real Gross Domestic Product (RGDP) per capita adjusted to incorporate trading gain changes. In the major Australian income recession of the early 1990s, RGDI per capita fell 5% over two years and then recovered strongly. Almost all the RGDI fall was generated by RGDP falls with little trading gain contribution. From 2011, there is a longer-lasting income recession. RGDI per capita has fallen 4% over four years. This is a pure trading gain recession as RGDP per capita has continued to increase. All indications are that this recession will continue to deepen and Australia will experience the most serious and drawn-out income recession since the 1930s. But there is a major issue here. Recessions are usually measured by unemployment increases. In the 1990s recession, unemployment increased to 10%. In the current recession, unemployment has increased to 6%. The current recession, despite large per capita income losses, does not seem to be that bad from an unemployment perspective! This situation arises because the first RGDI recession was generated by RGDP losses, whereas the second recession is generated by trading gain losses. In the national accounts, a dollar lost from RGDP is interchangeable with a dollar lost from a trading gain, implying income lost from RGDP recessions can be directly compared to income lost from trading gain recessions. But something is missing here. Suppose, since 2011, the loss of income as measured by the time path of RGDI is unchanged, but the income loss was generated by RGDP falls rather than the trading gain losses. Then, current RGDP would be about 8 percentage points lower than it is today, and the unemployment rate would be well above 10%, even though there is no change in RGDI outcomes. Everyone would accept this hypothetical recession is more serious than the current recession even though the RGDI outcomes are the same. This example makes clear that a dollar trading gain loss is not commonly thought to be the same as a dollar output loss, despite the national accounts. The tensions among the national accounts, the simple trading gain model and our different response to an income recession, depending on the source of income loss, lead naturally to the new research frontier of integrating trading gains into macro analysis in a more meaningful way. The road to the research frontier – and the need to move booming sector economics away from the overemphasis on intersectoral resource competition – can be seen more clearly in the less formal and more macro-focused discussions in Gregory (2012), Garnaut (2013), Pincus (2014) and Edwards (2014) than in the formal academic literature.

Background: Recent combat operations have involved large numbers of personnel. Long-term health effects of military deployment remain largely unknown.Objectives: To examine patterns and trends in long-term disability among combat veterans and to relate disability to aspects of wartime experience.Participants: A total of 60,228 Australian military personnel deployed between 1962 and 1975 during the Vietnam War, and 82,877 military personnel who were not deployed overseas.Outcome Measures: Accepted physician-assessed disability claims were evaluated over follow-up periods up to 50 years after deployment, and compared with age-matched controls. Multivariable analysis was used to examine differences by service branch, rank, age, and deployment duration.Results: The steepest rise in disability incidence was observed among Vietnam veterans starting in the 1990s, around 20-30 years after deployment for most veterans. After 1994, when Statements of Principles were introduced to guide evaluation of disability claims, the hazard ratio for disability incidence was 1.53 (95% confidence interval, 1.32-1.77) compared with the prior period. By January 2011, after an average follow-up of 42.5 years, 69.7% (95% confidence interval, 69.4%-70.1%) of veterans had at least 1 war-related disability. Many veterans had multiple disabilities, with leading causes being eye and ear disorders (48.0%), mental health conditions (47.9%), and musculoskeletal disorders (18.4%). For specific categories of disability, relative risks for accepted claims among veterans compared with controls were highest for mental health disorders, at 22.9 (21.9-24.0) and lowest for injuries, at 1.5 (1.4-1.6) with a relative risk for any disability of 3.7 (3.7-3.8). Veterans with service of > 1 year were 2.5 (2.2-2.7) times more likely to have a mental health disability than those who served < 100 days, and 2.3 (2.1-2.5) times more likely to have other disabilities.Conclusions: Long-term effects of deployment into military conflicts are substantial, and likelihood of war-related disability is associated with service history. If similar patterns follow from more recent conflicts, significant additional resources will be needed to prevent and treat long-term health conditions among veterans.

Three decades ago most immigrants to Australia with work entitlements came as permanent settlers. Today the annual allocation of temporary visas, with work entitlements, outnumbers permanent settler visas by a ratio of three to one. The new environment, with so many temporary visa holders, has led to a two-step immigration policy whereby an increasing proportion of immigrants come first as a temporary immigrant, to work or study, and then seek to move to permanent status. Around one half of permanent visas are allocated on-shore to those who hold temporary visas with work rights. The labour market implications of this new two-step system are substantial. Immigrants from non-English speaking countries (NES), are affected most. In their early years in Australia, they have substantially reduced full-time employment and substantially increased part-time employment, usually while attending an education institution. Three years after arrival one third of NES immigrants are now employed part-time which, rather than unemployment, is becoming their principal pathway to full-time labour market integration. Surprisingly, little has changed for immigrants from English speaking countries (ES).

Australia's current resources boom has three elements: high terms of trade, strong investment and increased resource exports. For a decade, the net effect has been strongly positive: the boost to incomes and activity from the first two has more than offset the impact of the high Australian dollar. But, both resource investment and the terms of trade will fall in due course and the economy will face a major deflationary shock. A sustained policy response will be needed that recognises the limits of monetary policy and hence involves fiscal stimulus, together with innovative approaches to ensure that infrastructure investment rises rapidly.

I discuss selected research contributions of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research to 50 years of welfare policy for those of workforce age and focus particularly on the policy focus of R. F. Henderson, the inaugural director. Following the spirit of his 1960s poverty research, in the mid-1970s, government doubled unemployment allowances in real terms and increased pensions by approximately 40 per cent. Both income support payments were to be indexed by average wage increases. At the time, unemployment was typically around 1 per cent and the pension take-up for those of workforce age was also limited. Today, income support take-up rates have probably increased fivefold. In response, government has adopted a make work pay' policy over the last two decades and indexed allowances for Consumer Price Index increases and allowances have fallen by 25-35 per cent, relative to community living standards. Pensions continue to be indexed by average wage changes. I address a range of questions arising from this experience, including: Why has government abandoned the Henderson recommendations?; Is there any evidence that a make work pay' policy is working?

Tacit cognitive structures have been explored by many disciplines (cognitive science, anthropology, psychology) under several names: frames, schemas, and scripts (D''Andrade, R., 1992; D''Andrade, R. and Strauss, C., 1992; Mandler, J., 1984). Although useful in automating routine repetitious activity, their tacit nature makes them problematic for disciplines that emphasize creative activity. Put another way, it''s difficult to think outside the box if the box is invisible. As Schön (1983) explains, such frames limit creativity because they determine our strategies of attention. Frames shape thought and also behavior but invisibly; practitioners 'do not attend to the ways in which they construct the reality in which they function; for them, it is simply the given reality.' Bijker (1989) has called such mental structures technological frames 'constructed from the concepts and techniques used by a community in its problem solving' -- defined broadly to include 'a combination of current theories, tacit knowledge, engineering practice (such as design methods and criteria)' etc. The more advanced the practitioner, the more tacit the knowledge, as Lindblom and Cohen (1979) put it: 'all expertise rests on a veritable iceberg of tacit, taken-for-granted knowledge.'

This paper discusses the large reductions in full-time employment among unskilled Australian males that began in the 1970s and continued over the next three to four decades. Over this period, each recession led to large falls in the male full-time employment-population ratio, and during each economic recovery the employment ratio failed to move back to its previous levels. Unemployment fell during each output recovery, not in response to employment gains, but in response to large-scale withdrawals from the labour market into the welfare system. The loss of unskilled jobs for men has been associated with falling marriage rates and increasing use of the welfare system by single women. The paper concludes by briefly assessing some of the impacts of the new resource boom on these long-run labour market and welfare trends, and discusses the potential for different labour-market outcomes emerging across mineral and non-mineral Australian states.

Australia is experiencing its largest mining boom for more than a century and a half. This paper explores, from a national perspective, important economic differences that arise when a mining boom, such as the current one, is generated by sustained export price increases (trading gains) rather than export volume increases. Since 2003, the terms of trade changes – through their direct trading gain effect and indirect real GDP effects – have increased Australian living standards. The increase, measured from official data and relative to the United States, is about 25 per cent; an increase that probably places Australian living standards well above those of the United States. But official data inadequately adjusts for foreign ownership of mining resources suggesting that this estimate is probably a little too high.

Australia is experiencing its largest mining boom for more than a century and a half. This paper explores, from a national perspective, important economic differences that arise when a mining boom, such as the current one, is generated by export price increases (trading gains) rather than export volume increases. Terms of trade changes - through their direct trading gain effect and indirect real GDP effect, primarily through increased employment levels - have increased Australian living standards. The increase, relative to the US, is about 25 per cent; an increase which probably places Australian living standards well above those of the US.

The Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) is a rare example of an important, innovative, and imaginative policy instrument developed and applied within a relatively short time period. Looking back over Australian history, innovative policy instruments, with substantial tax revenue or expenditure implications, and introduced quickly, are rare. The short list would probably include the introduction of the old age pension, unemployment benefits and Medicare, although I am not sure of the length of the pre-introduction phrase associated with each of these innovations. Unlike HECS, however, almost all these policy innovations were introduced a long time ago. The size of the macro financial implications, the innovative nature and the speed of introduction and acceptance, suggest that some comments that extend beyond the usual economic discussions of asymmetric information, market failures and adverse selection might be useful.

High welfare withdrawal rates generate high effective marginal tax rates and work disincentives; but reducing withdrawal rates extends welfare to the better‐off. We analyse pension taper reduction effects for lone mothers subject to the Australian tax and welfare reforms of July 2000. The changes in work incentives were trivial. Taper reductions extended income support and provided larger family payments to high income lone mothers previously excluded from welfare. Approximately 90 per cent of the better‐off group now made eligible for income support had a long history of welfare reliance. The taper reduction encouraged them to stay on welfare longer.