No abstract

The role of public services in private production is quantified for the Australian economy over the period 1966/67–1989/90. Public capital is shown to have a significant and positive impact on private production and private total factor productivity. The extent to which these results can contribute towards the debate about appropriate levels of public investment is also considered.

This paper examines the relationship between consumption and wealth in Australia. We find a steady‐state relationship between non‐durables consumption, labour income and aggregate household wealth for the period 1988–1999. We also find that changes in both non‐financial and financial assets have significant but different short‐run and long‐run effects in dynamic consumption models. Finally, we place our results within the broader empirical literature and examine whether they are consistent with standard theories of consumption.

No abstract

This article uses an extension of Mankiw, Romer and Weil's augmented Solow-Swan growth model to examine whether public investment has a distinct role as a determinant of economic growth. It considers both the predictions of the model in steady state and in transition to steady state. For the steady state model, there is no significant effect from public investment on the level of output per worker. Using standard ordinary least squares (OLS) methods for the transition model, it observes a significant contribution to economic growth from public investment. When instrumental variables methods are used, however, the associated standard errors are much larger and the contribution of public investment is statistically insignificant.