Riccardo Welters

Employer search and employment subsidies

In this paper insights into the literature on employment subsidy evaluation and that on employer search are merged to explore uncharted territory: the firm and job characteristics leading to deadweight loss in employment subsidy schemes. A model is developed which integrates various arguments found in the existing employer search literature. Using a survey of Dutch firms for 1999, the model predictions are confirmed. The richness of the data set enables one to construct some measures of deadweight loss which are new to the existing literature. It turns out that firms which experience low screening costs (large firms), firms that forego substantial production due to unfilled jobs (vacancies for full-time jobs) and firms operating in slack labour market conditions cause significantly more deadweight loss.

Job mobility and segmentation in Australian city labour markets

There are many differences between the cities and their counterparts for the motivations and the transitions of the jobs. This paper attempts to extend these findings using four waves of Household Income and Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) data, to examine whether cities do promote greater levels of mobility and whether primary and secondary labour market participants display different patterns of search and occupational transition in urban areas.

Developing a regional economy through creative industries: innovation capacity in a regional Australian city

ABSTRACT Creative industries are driving economic growth across the world with their employment of innovation methodologies, including Co-creation and Design Thinking, which has spawned disruptive but beneficial business models. Creative industries are, therefore, cross-pollinating their ideas within other business sectors, primarily in major urban areas. This study examined whether those same innovation methodologies are used and can grow a regional economy, specifically in Townsville, Australia. Surveys and interviews were employed to gauge local business demand for creative industries services and also the creative industries sectors’ understanding of human-centred innovation methodologies and the potential for their use. Survey and interview results indicate confusion about the specifics of innovation methodologies – particularly in engaging with the end-users of services – but there is a general support for their use in the wider business community. Interviews with business owners highlighted a willingness to engage with regional creative industries, but concerns were raised about the affordability of such business services when compared to services offered in major urban centres. The findings propose that there is strong potential for creative industries to grow a regional economy, in this case Townsville in northern Australia, but only if the creative sector markets itself better to the wider business community.

Creativity in the ‘Torrid’ zone: policy, creative industries and the vision for Northern Australia

Creative industries are recognised as a key driver of economic growth in both developed and developing nations. In addition to recognising the importance of creative industries, the Australian government has recently renewed a focus on the vast northern tropical area of this island nation as key to future economic and population growth, via the release of a white paper focussed on development options for the north. However, the white paper contains virtually no references to creative industries. In addition, Australia’s most recent national cultural policy, Creative Australia, has after only a few years slipped into obscurity and despite major resources being invested towards its development. Drawing on the almost 100 years of policy documentation relevant to Northern Australia, this paper highlights the limited attention paid to arts, culture and creative industries, and considers this relative policy vacuum in the context of global developments in creative industries.

Active Labour Market Policy by a Profit-Maximizing Firm

This article investigates the effectiveness of an employment programme exclusively run by a private sector firm in order to find out whether such a programme can be beneficial to both the participating individuals and the private firm. To answer these questions, we use a unique dataset on a private employment programme covering 23 years of operations and data on 1,000 participating unemployed individuals. Using conservative estimates, we show that a private employment programme is more effective in reintegrating the unemployed than public efforts, while providing tangible benefits to the firm.

Exploring determinants of the extent of long distance commuting in Australia: accounting for space

ABSTRACT Previous research exploring the impacts of long distance commuting (LDC) or, more generally, mining on host regions, struggles to explain the variability of these impacts over time and across space. This article argues that spatial effects should be accounted for explicitly in order to improve the predictive power of contemporary research. We study the extent of LDC in a region in a spatial model disaggregating Australia into 325 subregions. We find evidence that space is an important factor in explaining the extent of LDC in a region, which challenges the validity of studying LDC impacts on host regions in isolation. With regards to the determinants of the extent of LDC, we find that residential attractiveness of a region influences the extent of LDC in a region; the size of the pool of unemployed in a region does not.

Does social capital help communities to cope with long-distance commuting?

ABSTRACT Long-distance commuting (LDC) is a common occurrence in rural/remote regions. The literature shows that the impacts of LDC on residents in host regions can be diverse. To understand this diversity, this paper explores the potential mediating role of social capital between LDC impacts in a host region and the well-being of its residents. Using detailed information on residents’ social capital in a remote region, this paper confirms the negative relationship between LDC impacts and resident well-being, but it finds no evidence of social capital’s mediating role. It is hypothesized that lack of access to appropriate linking social capital may explain the findings.

Creative industries in a regional city: How much work is lost to rivals based elsewhere?

The ability to exploit the fruits of agglomeration in metropolitan environments may foster the perceived superiority of metropolitan vis-à-vis rural creative industries practitioners. Based on a unique survey conducted among the business community of the regional city of Townsville, the article quantifies the industry linkages between the creative industries sector in the regional city and the city’s wider business community; and the share of demand for creative industries services/products generated in the city that is sourced elsewhere: the import leakage. The import leakage – estimated at a quarter – is a yardstick for the competition that the industry faces from creative industries practitioners based elsewhere. The article shows that policies that reduce the import leakage have considerable impact on gross business income of the local creative industries sector.

Re-engaged students’ perceptions of mainstream and flexible learning environments – a ‘semi-quantitative’ approach

ABSTRACT Flexible Learning Options (FLOs) attempt to enable secondary school completion by young people for whom ‘mainstream’ schooling has not worked well. Despite their proliferation and the increased research attention to understanding the mechanisms at work within such programmes, quantitative methods have not been utilised to compare participants’ perceptions of the learning environments of FLOs and mainstream schools. This study describes the development and application of a quantitative instrument to assess re-engaged Australian students’ perceptions of an FLO relative to their previous (mainstream) schools. Findings indicate that, on average, young people rate the learning environment more highly at the FLO than at the mainstream school from which they disengaged, indicating that the learning environment of the FLO aligns more closely with the needs of its student cohort. However, bimodal results for some instrument items highlight that the learning environment is influential, but not necessarily a precondition of school disengagement or re-engagement. Implications of this study are considered, with attention to the complexities that mainstream schools and FLOs negotiate in creating effective learning environments for diverse young people.

A rapid assessment of wildlife tourism risk posed to cetaceans in Asia

ABSTRACT Dolphin-watching tourism is growing globally. In developing countries, the typically low environmental awareness of operators and poorly enforced or non-existent regulations exacerbate risks to wildlife. Ecological indicators like behavioural responses are useful to assess wildlife tourism, but obtaining such data is slow and expensive. We modified the Driver–Pressure–State–Impact–Response (DPSIR) framework to rapidly assess the risk of dolphin-watching tourism harming, displacing or causing local extinction to dolphin populations, using human dimension data to complement limited ecological data. We assessed industries at seven dolphin-watching sites in six countries in Asia: Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. All sites have reached or almost reached financial saturation except Cambodia and Malaysia. We find high risk to dolphins at the sites in India and Indonesia and intermediate risk at the site in Cambodia. Pending more ecological data, the risk at Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysian sites might be low. Our analysis also indicates site-specific conservation recommendations for Driver, Pressure and Response. We suggest that the DPSIR framework is useful to assess the risk of a wildlife watching industry, even when the impact is uncertain due to insufficient ecological data. Video abstract Video abstract Read the transcript Watch the video on Vimeo