The Creative Industries Concept: Stakeholder Reflections on Its Relevance and Potential in Australia

The creative industries concept or term continues to attract attention in both developed and developing economies worldwide. However, it is not universally applied, with other terms such as cultural industries, arts and culture, copyright industries, or the experience economy used in various global locations. There is also ongoing debate and critique in relation to the creative industries concept, given that it emphasises employment and wealth creation and gathers together a range of disparate disciplines. This article explores these issues via interviews with twenty-two key leaders representing fifteen different industry organisations, advocacy groups, and government funding bodies in the Australian creative industries sector. The findings reveal only a moderate level of understanding and application of the creative industries concept, with a range of views on its relevance and utility for those working in the sector. In addition, the findings propose that there is significant potential and need for the sector to work towards a stronger advocacy position and profile within the broader economy. However, this represents a major challenge for the creative industries sector, given the existing vertical and horizontal power structures within this complex and diverse area of the economy.     

Does the amount of participation matter? Public comments,agency responses and the time to finalize a regulation

The notice and comment rulemaking process is a fundamental part of how agencies write regulations. While this process is starting to receive more empirical attention, the question of how the number of comments that an agency receives affects its decision-making process has received little examination. This paper uses Boolean analysis to examine nine rules from two agencies at the Department of Health and Human Services and evaluates the impact of a high volume of comments on agency changes to proposed rules and the time an agency takes to finalize a proposed rule. These nine cases suggest that agencies are most likely to change their proposals when they receive a high volume of comments on highly complex rules that are not very politically salient. Highly complex rules are also likely to take a long time to finalize when there are many public comments however it is often other factors that cause a long delay between proposed and final rules.

Research on immigrant earnings

As the first in a trio of pieces devoted to incorporating immigration into policy models, this review of research on immigrant earnings trajectories brings to light several findings. Controlling for demographic and human capital characteristics, immigrants often start their U.S. lives at substantially lower earnings, but experience faster earnings growth than natives with comparable years of education and experience. The extent to which the earnings trajectories of immigrants and natives differ varies by country of origin, with the source-country's level of economic development being a key determinant of the size of the U.S.-born/ foreign-born difference. The earnings profiles of immigrants from economically developed countries such as Japan, Canada, or Western Europe resemble those of U.S. natives who are of the same age and education level. In contrast, the earnings of immigrants from developing nations tend to start well below those of U.S. natives with comparable education levels and experience, but rise more rapidly than their U.S. counterparts. Comparing the earnings profiles of immigrants of similar age, sex, and years of schooling, over time and across groups, a strong inverse relationship emerges between their initial earnings and their subsequent U.S. earnings growth. In other words, the lower (higher) the initial earnings are, the higher (lower) the earnings growth. These and other research results have important implications for the projection of immigrant earnings and emigration in microsimulation models, as discussed in the two articles following this one: (1) "Adding Immigrants to Microsimulation Models" and (2) "Incorporating Immigrant Flows into Microsimulation Models".     

That Enlightenment Question Again

Sandall’s complaint that the Enlightenment is in danger is not new as it repeats a long standing complaint about “the betrayal of the intellectuals”. But the danger today is not from either the Muslim world or from the marginalized academics who pursue an anti-liberal multicultural agenda that belittles the Western liberal tradition. In the United States the menace comes from the much more powerful far right that has abandoned America’s Enlightenment tradition. It is time for academics to start teaching students what that tradition is all about, and why it needs to be defended, but spreading fear about weak and divided Muslim societies is not the way.

Detracking America's schools: Equity at zero cost?

Schools across the country are ending the practice of grouping students based on ability, in part, because of research indicating that tracking hurts low-ability students without helping students of other ability levels. Using a nationally representative survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, (NCES) we reexamine the impact of tracking on high school student achievement through the estimation of a standard education production function. This approach allows us to control for the possibility that track is correlated with factors such as class size and teacher education. In addition, we address the possibility that there are unobserved student or school characteristics that affect both achievement and track placement. Our results indicate that abolishing tracking in America's schools would have a large positive impact on achievement for students currently in the lower tracks, but that this increase in achievement would come at the expense of students in upper-track classes.