This paper makes the most of the observed actions of bribe takers and givers from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys and studies how a taker's action influences a giver's decision to pay bribes. To motivate our empirical study, we consider Kaufmann and Wei's (1999) Stackelberg game between a tax authority and a firm that undergoes tax inspection. The model predicts that, when the authority can use its action as a credible threat for the firm's profitability, the authority disturbs the firm by inspecting more, and the firm is more likely to pay bribes. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, we find correlational evidence that the propensity to pay bribes increases with the number of inspection visits, particularly for non-democratic countries.

This article critically analyses the opportunities for Australia to revitalise its strategically important manufacturing sector in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It considers Australia’s industry policy options on the basis of both advances in the theory of industrial policy and recent policy proposals in the Australian context. It draws on recent work from The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work examining the prospects for Australian manufacturing renewal in a post-COVID-19 economy, together with other recent work in political economy, economic geography and labour process theory critically evaluating the Fourth Industrial Revolution (i4.0) and its implications for the Australian economy. The aim of the article is to contribute to and further develop the debate about the future of government intervention in manufacturing and industry policy in Australia. Crucially, the argument links the future development of Australian manufacturing with a focus on renewable energy.

The Productivity Commission is Australia’s foremost policy advisory body. Its original incarnation as the Industries Assistance Commission derives from the 1960s push to dismantle the protective tariff regime that underpinned the Australian manufacturing sector. With success in tariff reductions and complementary reductions in rural sector assistance, the Commission’s investigatory role was gradually expanded to cover the entire gamut of government policy. The Commission’s history has generally been treated favourably. This article places the history of the original Industries Assistance Commission in context and takes a critical stance on its and the Productivity Commission’s vision and achievements.

The ‘productivity puzzle’ – the substantial drop in productivity in the UK since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008 – has exercised economists and policymakers alike. The loss in productivity levels, mainly output per hour, should have been restored by now and the trend growth should have been recovered, or even exceeded. Instead after a very sharp fall, much faster than many of our competitors, it has only recently started to rise again, but at a stubbornly slow rate and at the time of writing stood some 2 per cent below its pre-recession levels. So although we are likely to get back to where we were pretty soon, it is possible that the gap, with where we should have been on pre-recession trends, continues. The Bank of England calculates this gap could stay as high as 16 per cent or even widen if the rate of productivity increase does not return to normal. This is bad for the economy and especially bad for innovation, investment, growth and competitiveness. This paper examines possible explanations and offers some possible answers. It sides, in the end, more with those that argue that demand deficiency looks like being at least a part of the explanation, but acknowledges that changes in the structure and destination of employment, since the recession started, have also played a role.

In 2010 Spain ranked second among EU-15 countries in the manufacture of passenger cars; however, in 1950 the country’s car production had been purely symbolic. Taking as its starting point the trajectories of the enterprises that have shaped the auto industry in Spain, this study explores the sector’s process of development within the interpretative framework proposed by Alfred D. Chandler in Scale and Scope. Until the mid-1970s, SEAT and FASA-Renault, the sector’s first-movers, maintained their position as industry leaders. The entry of Ford and GM in the 1970s was to restructure the industry as it shifted its focus towards exportation to the European Economic Community. Both market share and net profits are used as indicators of the evolution of each car maker.