Garry MacDonald

The Elasticity of Demand for Labour in Australia

The elasticity of demand for labour at the aggregate level is an important parameter for macroeconomic analysis. In particular, policy issues concerning the impact of wage falls on employment and unemployment hinge on the size of this parameter. It is argued in the present paper that previous work on the elasticity of demand for labour in Australia has been unsatisfactory in a number of ways. A new set of estimates is provided that are derived using a better methodology than before.

Purchasing Power Parity - Evidence From a New Panel Test

This paper uses a recently suggested test for unit roots in panels of time series data (Maddala and Wu, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 61, 631-52, 1999) to consider the Purchasing Power Parity hypothesis. The major innovation of this test is that it allows both the testing of unit root null, using the ADF test, and the stationarity null, using the KPSS test. It is found that the results are inconsistent, suggesting that either alternative hypotheses to a unit root may need to be considered or that panel based testing in this particular context may be of limited value.

Asymmetric Effects of Interest Rate Changes: The Role of the Consumption-Wealth Channel

This article examines the role of the consumption-wealth channel in explaining asymmetric effects of monetary policy changes. Towards this end, we draw upon available literature on the consumption function and behavioural finance to construct a framework for asymmetric effects of monetary policy caused by the impact of wealth changes on aggregate consumption. We then employ data from the UK to examine the validity of the proposed framework. In the context of a liberalized economy with easy access to consumer credit, wealth reduction due to monetary tightening is expected to have weaker impact on spending than increase in wealth. Our results validate the above hypothesis.

Regional Monetary Policy: An Australian Perspective

Fraser P., MacDonald G. A. and Mullineux A. W. Regional monetary policy: an Australian perspective, Regional Studies. A structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model for Australia is utilized to identify the domestic impacts of common monetary policy shocks on national and state business cycles and to consider the role of state diversification disparities for observed differences in responses to monetary policy innovations. Western Australia and Queensland differ to other states in their response to common shocks and evidence suggests this may be due to differences in their economic geographies. Overall, the Australian monetary union has become increasingly reliant on fiscal transfers particularly from Western Australia in the past two decades. This emphasizes the importance of a political union underpinning a successful monetary union.

A Dynamic Equalisation Model for Economic and Social Capital Grants with a South African Example

Abstract A capital grant model has been developed which can be used in developing economies to allocate grants to sub-national governments for economic or social capital. The model allows these allocations to happen in a way that increases the value of the capital stock whilst at the same time addresses any inter regional inequities, or economic inefficiencies. The model is also applied to South Africa as an illustrative example and the results of three model simulations for that country are presented. There is a discussion of the data requirements for the model and how it might be replicated by researchers for other economies.

Commodity Prices: How Important are Real and Nominal Shocks?

We consider the response of both nominal and real commodity prices on world markets to real and nominal shocks by hypothesizing that nominal shocks can permanently affect nominal commodity prices, but can have only temporary effects on real commodity prices. Real shocks, in contrast, can have permanent as well as temporary effects on both nominal and real commodity prices. When nominal and real shocks are decomposed in this manner, real shocks are found to be of much greater importance to the observed movements in commodity prices. We use the Blanchard and Quah (BQ, 1989) decomposition to obtain the permanent and temporary components of the real commodity price series and relate this to the rate of growth of world industrial production as an indicator of business cycle movements. The results suggest that the impact of the business cycle is self-stabilizing in that there is an initial positive effect on growth in commodity prices followed by a fully offsetting negative effect.

Monetary policy influences in Australian housing markets

Purpose - – This paper aims to analyze the impact of common monetary policy shocks on house prices at national and capital city levels of aggregation, using Australian data and the Lastrapes (2005) two-part structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) empirical method. Design/methodology/approach - – The Lastrapes (2005) two-part SVAR empirical method is applied to Australian housing market and macroeconomic data to assess the impact of common monetary policy shocks on house prices. Findings - – Results show that while the impact of shocks to interest rates on aggregate house prices is almost neutral, the responses of state capital city house prices to the same shock can exhibit significant asymmetries. Originality/value - – This paper contributes to the monetary policy–asset price debate by examining the influence of Australian monetary policy on capital city housing markets over the period 1982-2012. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that has adapted this Lastrapes (2005) methodology to the analysis of housing markets.

Permanent and transitory shocks in the presence of asymmetric error correction

This article highlights the potential importance of asymmetries in the loading vector of a set of cointegrated variables for the construction, analysis and interpretation of permanent and transitory shocks using impulse response functions. We derive an asymmetric version of the Permanent–Transitory decomposition suggested by Gonzalo and Ng (2001) and illustrate the potential importance of such asymmetries using the ‘cay’ data of Lettau and Ludvigson (2004).

The Impact of Monetary Policy on Australian Capital City House Prices: The Case of Australia

Using Australian national economic data and state level house prices we construct a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model to identify the impact of common monetary policy shocks on house prices both at national and state levels. Our results suggest that the impact of a shock to interest rates on national aggregate house prices is almost neutral. However, aggregation influences mask asymmetries in the responses of state capital city housing markets. Positive shocks to interest rates on capital city house prices exhibit significant asymmetries.

Stock Returns and the State of the Economy: A Historical Perspective Using Very Long-run UK Data

What are the forces behind the increasing globalization of economic life? How does globalization affect the functioning of national economies? What difficulties confront government policymakers in dealing with the global economy? These issues are addressed in this volume by leading specialists. The contributors present a range of unique and varied perspectives from which they consider aspects of the increasing integration of economic life, exploring implications for the functioning of domestic markets in a rapidly changing global economy. The result is a collection of insights that provide a framework for understanding globalization as an economic phenomenon.