Does Australia Still Need State Governments?— An Exchange

These two perspectives on the need for state governments were presented to the RIPAA National Conference on 30 November 1995, Brisbane.     

Evaluation of Solvency Standards for State Unemployment Insurance Trust Funds1

As a result of relatively large state unemployment insurance trust fund (UITF) balances and the perceived low risk of recessionary economic conditions, business leaders and policy makers across the U.S. are appealing for a moratorium or a reduction of unemployment insurance (UI) taxes. This article examines the advisability of this action in relation to adequacy standards endorsed by industry advisory groups. Using multivariate techniques, this article evaluates the relevance of the most widely used standard and determines how the maintenance of this standard affects the estimated length of time until insolvency after the onset of a recession. Assuming an economic downturn of the severity of the 1970s recession, we find that the standard is overly conservative with an associated probability of failure of less than 1 percent and with an ability to withstand a recession 100 months in length.     

Market Demand for Civic Affairs News

This paper uses time series methods to test the relationship between civic affairs content and audience share for the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news in the mid-1990s. Because these programs competed in the same market, but varied the amount of their civic affairs coverage, they present an excellent opportunity to analyze this relationship. The study uses hand-coded news abstracts and O.J. Simpson murder trial coverage as separate measures of news content. The study finds that lower levels of civic affairs content and higher levels of O.J. news are associated with greater audience share.     

Extract from statement by the Central Committee of the PCP (pro Chinese) Oct. 15, 1974

Globalisation in recent years has come to play an increasing significance in analyses concerning the state and political economy. However, many debates have revolved around a theme whereby increasing globalisation inevitably leads to decreases in the role of the nationstate. This article examines two countries' experiences of globalisation and the attempts by state leaderships to produce globally integrated sectors. The article identifies the historical contexts to changes within the capitalist world economy of the Cold War and the patterns of development associated with such processes in Costa Rica and Thailand. By locating the analysis within a comparative perspective the article comments on the role of authoritarianism as a factor in the implementation of neo-liberal agendas.     

From agricultural modernisation to agri-food globalisation: The waning of national development in Thailand

Agriculture has been central to accounts of Thailand's modernisation and the rise of the national development project between the 1940s and the 1970s. However, the role of agriculture in the waning of national development is rarely explored critically in the Thai context. This paper focuses on agriculture and the role of the state in the shift from national development to globalisation. The first part of the paper examines the beginnings of Thailand's modern agricultural sector, before turning to the state-sponsored diversification of agriculture in the 1950s. The paper locates shifting state responses to agriculture in the late 1950s and 1960s in the context of specific political and historical social forces, before exploring the emergence of agri-food exports in the 1970s and the rise of agribusiness in the 1980s and 1990s. The paper concludes by commenting on the significance of the Thai state's role in the national development project and the globalisation project.     

The Impact of War on Calorie Food Demand in Bangladesh

Daily per capita calorie intake in Bangladesh averaged almost 2,100 (kilo)calories in the 1960s but fell to 1,840 in 1972 following the war of independence in 1971, and only by 1987 did it reach 2,000 again. This article examines the long-run relationship between per capita income, food prices and per capita calorie intake using aggregate data for Bangladesh for 1962–97 and the recent cointegration procedure of Johansen et al., which permits structural breaks. Results show that a long-run relationship exists and that the war reduced average calorie intake permanently by 10 per cent. Impulse responses show that income Granger-causes calorie intake but not vice versa.