The author surveys shifts in macro-economic policy and thought from Keynes and Kalecki to the present, tracking the changing climate of economic opinion. As Kalecki foresaw, the success of Keynesian demand management was undermined when, in an era of full employment, the power of labour threatened industrialists’ authority over the economy. From the 1970s, this led governments to introduce pro-capitalist measures. Countering recessions with budget deficits was now seen as irresponsible. The rise of globalisation meant that domestic demand management became less effective, especially in economies highly dependent on imports. Opening up economies meant that their exchange rates and stock markets became more vulnerable to capital flights. As the reach of finance became increasingly global, those private credit rating agencies became the game changers. Today private credit agencies, through their rating of the investment climate and sovereign risk of a country, in effect rate the quality of its government. Capitalist democracies are now dominated by private finance. Management of the investment climate is increasingly done through the virtual rather than the real economy, creating artificial financial asset and housing market bubbles. At the same time, in the neglected real economy, inequality and unemployment have increased, and living standards are falling.

Many governments across the world provide extensive funding to national sports teams and individual athletes in pursuit of success at international competitions such as the Olympic Games. One factor that motivates governments to fund national sports teams is the potential to exploit the elevation in nationalistic pride that attends international sporting success. Drawing on research in the psychology of sport, this article contends that politicians can access the ‘reflective glow’ of successful athletes for their political benefit. The statistical correlation between government funding and Olympic success is explored using the basic prisoners’ dilemma to represent the decisions of two governments competing for sports success. While the analysis is simple, we argue that it sheds some light on recent examples and represents a first step in understanding this complex issue.

The term ‘precarious employment’ is widely used to describe irregular and insecure work arrangements that have grown substantially in both rich and poor countries since the late 1970s. Like the term ‘contingent work’, precarious employment has been adopted and increasingly used by academic researchers and later policymakers since the 1980s. However, the term has deeper historical roots and its recent use can be more accurately seen as a revival as labour markets have taken on some features characteristic of an earlier period. This article examines the use of the term ‘precarious employment’ in political and public debate in the century or more prior to the 1930s, finding that in key respects, this use mirrors contemporary debates. Recognising that precarious employment was a pervasive feature of labour markets in developed countries prior to World War Two has a number of major benefits for contemporary debates. These include a better understanding of the policies that shape the extent of precarious employment. Historical evidence also provides a guide for and reinforcement of a growing body of contemporary research, pointing to both the immediate and broader social effects of precarious employment.

The plan to introduce a carbon pricing scheme in Australia has focused attention on the future relevance and necessity of using other policy instruments to reduce carbon emissions. Significant reports, including the Wilkins Review and reports by the Productivity Commission, have argued using the standard neoclassical economics framework that once a carbon price is established, it should be (almost) the only instrument needed to tackle climate change mitigation in Australia. With a small number of exceptions for complementary instruments to address some market failures, the use of other climate policy instruments, it is argued, will result only in unnecessary duplication and potential distortions. The aim of this article is to show that there are, in fact, a significant number of rationales for implementing several climate policy instruments in combination with a carbon price, and we should not be too quick to dismiss certain climate policy instrument combinations.

This paper critically examines the key empirical evidence used to support the fiscal consolidation argument, complemented by a brief assessment of the limitations of the analytical foundation of the growth promoting benefits of the fiscal consolidation thesis. It also reviews the evidence on the debt-growth relationship at some length. It finds that the negative relationship between debt and GDP growth is influenced by outliers or exceptionally high debt-GDP ratios. It also points out that the composition of public debt matters. Additionally, the debt-GDP relationship appears to be non-linear—positive first and turning to negative, but there is considerable variation in the estimated turning or ‘tipping’ point, which is not helpful as a policy guide. Historical evidence does not lend support to the concerns that the current situation is likely to cause rapid upward spiraling of public indebtedness. Finally, the argument that fiscal consolidation is possible without adversely affecting growth is not based on robust empirical evidence. This conclusion is reinforced by a succinct overview of some country-specific experiences (Denmark, Ireland and United States).

‘Governance’ in its simplest form is the way that an organisation is directed and controlled, but the concept of governance also incorporates systems of rules, relationships, and processes to achieve that end. This article focuses on governance of sporting organisations in Australia. Sport in Australia is organised in a singular fashion when compared to other organisations and to sport in other countries. This has significant implications for assumptions about corporate structure, law and governance. The article examines governance of sporting organisations from a number of perspectives and draws distinctions between standard assumptions about governance and the realities of sports governance in Australia. It concludes that a number of assumptions made about organisations in law and governance theory do not apply to Australian sporting organisations. It asks how these anomalies in assumption and execution affect ultimate good governance in sport and impact on the way directors approach their duties.

There has been much debate about the role of carbon prices in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. However there has been far less attention paid to the evaluation of complementary and other non-price policies designed to accompany the carbon price. The purpose of this article is to develop a framework for considering the case for, and effectiveness of, the wide range of existing and proposed complementary policies that are designed to accompany the carbon price in the effort to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. The article concludes that an effective evaluation of complementary policies should include identifying the market failure the policy is aimed at correcting. The complementary policy should work in conjunction with, not opposition to, other polices aimed at reducing emissions. It should be complementary with the policies of other levels of government and it should also consider issues of efficiency, equity, accountability and adaptability.

While the linkage between team performance and attendances is well established, there has been negligible previous research using club memberships as an alternative indicator of demand for sport. Little attention has been paid to how the number of memberships is affected by common measures of team performance, such as the team’s win-ratio. This study utilises a previously unavailable long range time-series data set of annual memberships for an Australian Football League (AFL) club, Hawthorn FC. A succession of basic correlation analyses demonstrates that, while the relation between club membership numbers and win-ratios is strongly positive as it is for attendances (for most of the sample), some of the finer properties are substantially different. It is suggested that much of the reason for this lies in differences between the segmented nature of these markets for attendances and memberships.

The euro project is now at the threshold of disintegration as the fault-lines between the core/surplus countries and the peripheral/deficit countries experience a profound rupture. In the absence of political union or fiscal federalism, these centrifugal forces appear to be irreversible. It is difficult to envisage the current system, with its internal contradictions, surviving the crisis that now engulfs the entire eurozone. The present crisis is to a large extent the continuation of the longstanding neoliberal policies favoured by Germany, which have informed the creation of the euro. This article examines the historical context of the debt crisis and the institutional design of this flawed monetary edifice.

Australia’s carbon pricing scheme protects the profits of polluters and, as a consequence, has a negligible impact on the carbon emissions emanating from Australian industries. I concentrate on the assistance given to emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries and use a post Keynesian approach to explain that, despite the rhetoric, industries and firms will not move offshore under a carbon price and industry assistance is unnecessary. When assistance is given, profits are protected and could increase in certain industries, which occurred in the comparable European emissions trading scheme. In orthodox economic theory, despite this negligible impact on profits, any method of pricing carbon causes a reduction in emissions because firms seek to adjust technology and factor inputs at the margin and abate until marginal abatement costs equal the carbon price. However, from a post Keynesian perspective, the government’s prediction of a transformed economy and clean energy future will not occur unless the carbon pricing policy reduces the corporate profits of emitting firms. Thus, complementary policies are required to take the burden of reducing emissions off the more symbolic carbon market established. I further argue that a carbon tax without any industry assistance is a preferred approach and that where plant shutdown does occur, carbon emissions around the world will fall and workers could be compensated at a far smaller cost than the adjustment assistance given to industries in the policy’s current form.

The paper provides basic information on the operation of Australian player associations. In doing so it draws on the experience of player associations in English soccer and American baseball. England’s Professional Footballers’ Association acted as a beacon to various attempts by Australian soccer players to form associations. Its legal victory in Eastham, in 1963, where it challenged the retain and transfer system, has had a resonance in Australia with the 1971 decision of the High Court in Tutty which struck down the New South Wales Rugby League’s retain and transfer system. This and decisions by lower courts in other states aided Australian player associations in their dealings with their respective leagues. Information is provided on various failed beginnings prior to World War I, and subsequent successful attempts to establish player associations in Australia, the formation of confederations both domestic and international, details of the respective membership of associations, the average income of members and a measure of their ability to provide services for members.

In this article we consider the Australian Football League Players’ Association (AFLPA) initial fixed percentage of revenue pay request for the 2012–2016 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the Australian Football League (AFL) in the context of theoretical predictions of models of player salaries in both settings of profit-maximising and win-maximising clubs. We then explore the AFL data from 2001–2009 and show that the declining share of player salaries as a proportion of revenue is consistent with the predictions from these theoretical models. This poses the question of what the league and the clubs do with the additional revenue if they are not paying it to the players. We explore alternative talent investments (better coaching, improved facilities) as a club strategy and the changing spending on game development as a league strategy.

The sudden decline in Australian manufacturing associated with the current resources boom necessitates a renewed examination of the foundations of industry policy. Since the reforms of the 1980s, industry policy has been characterised by an economic liberal approach, the purity of which has been compromised by political pragmatism — particularly evident in the continued support for the auto industry. This article examines the issues raised by industry policy, and the history of industry policy in Australia, as a context for a review of a Report recently released by the Non-Governmental Members of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Manufacturing. This review finds useful proposals within the document, as well as a strong statement of the need for interventionist policy, albeit buried in the main text and an appendix. That this discussion is not front and centre in the Report’s presentation indicates ongoing sensitivity about the main choice in industry policy — whether the government should selectively intervene, or leave the organisation of industry to the market.

The Australian Government has produced a CO2-equivalent tax proposal with a difference: it is a short prelude to an emission trading scheme that will allow the increasing rate of emissions to continue, while being a net cost to the Treasury. That cost extends to allowing major emitters to make guaranteed windfall profits from pollution permits. The emission trading scheme suffers numerous problems, but the issues raised in this article show that taxes can also be watered down and made ineffectual through concessions. Taxpayers will get no assets from the billions of dollars to be spent buying-off the coal generators or other polluters. The scheme seeks to stimulate private investors to create an additional 12 per cent in renewable electricity generation by 2020. A really serious emissions reducing alternative would need to create a nationalised electricity sector with 100 per cent renewable energy within a decade. We explore the limitations of Australia’s carbon tax plan which has now passed into law.

The neoclassical theory of labour supply cannot unambiguously explain the decision of highly-skilled high-wage male workers to work longer and harder than their counterparts in the 1980s. We investigate the labour supply elasticities of these workers, over time, and across countries, within a ceteris paribus condition. The estimates reveal a shift rather than a movement along the supply curve. We find that ambiguities are due to the absence, in the theory, of a clear distinction between a change in consumption that is partly due to changes in the wage rate and partly due to changes in purchasing power. We apply a new pluralist approach to the standard income-leisure choice framework and provide for a more systematic and consistent method of measuring variations in labour supply, with policy implications.

An impediment to Malaysia’s drive for knowledge economy status is thought to be a very high rate of labour mobility — overseas, to Singapore, and inter-firm — by knowledge workers, particularly engineers. While a strong external labour market may be a sign of economic dynamism, very high turnover rates may indicate a failure of the sort of organisational attachment among professionals that is needed to foster organisational learning. Moreover a ‘brain drain’ from the country of Malaysian-educated engineers remains an ongoing concern. Although this phenomenon is popularly attributed to the ‘job-hopping’ propensities of young Malaysians, it is argued here that firms, through their human resource management (HRM) practices, have an important role to play in encouraging stronger rates of knowledge worker retention. The article reports on research findings indicating varying levels of organisational commitment by a sample of Malaysian engineers. It examines possible links between high turnover and HRM approaches that afford employees few other forms of voice than exiting the firm. Evidence is provided that employee participation in decision-making, particularly relating to training and development, and the perceived fairness of performance appraisal practices, contribute to feelings of perceived organisational support (POS), and that this sense of support influences engineers’ commitment and thus turnover intentions.

Professional athletes such as soccer players are expected to be in better health than the average member of their age cohort, if only because of the very demands imposed on them by their profession. Moreover, during their active career, their health is monitored on a regular basis. However, whenever a (former) well-known athlete dies, such an event is publicised widely. Perceived mortality among athletes may be distorted. In this article, we examine medium-term mortality of professional soccer players in The Netherlands. More specifically, we answer two questions. First, we examine if the mortality of soccer players is significantly different from mortality in the general population. Second, we assess whether mortality varies by team. We find that mortality among soccer players is significantly lower than in the general population, with no significant between teams variation. The methodology used in this article is easily extended to examine atypical mortality among other groups of athletes.