Issue 1

Prof Mike Hefferan, Prof Bruce Wilson, Adj Prof Paul Collits and Dr Wayne Graham

Page Number - 1

International market dynamics are often cited as the cause of the decline in the Australian wine industry’s relative position globally and the subsequent declining economic returns to the country’s diverse regions. However, this perspective has been derived principally from international trade data. By way of providing a more nuanced explanation, we compare Australia’s wine production and export performance with that of the 10 largest wine-exporting countries from the Southern Hemisphere New World, North American New World and Old World (European) wine-producing regions for the pivotal year 2000. The analysis deploys three performance measures and one measure for productivity developed specifically for this study. The results suggest that these wine exporters occupied a series of complex positions with respect to one another. Further, Australia’s situation was at the time far from dire. Nevertheless, the comparative position from the perspective of performance in 2000 initiated a situation where ‘the hunter became the hunted’.

Bligh Grant, Stuart Mounter, Euan Fleming, Garry Griffith and Renato Villano

Page Number - 4

This article discusses results of a spatial index of social exclusion for school-aged children at a small area level in Australia. Using data from the 2006 Census, at the height of the mining boom, the index is calculated to examine how the children aged 5-15 years in different states were faring at a time when there were significant differences in the performance of state economies. We analyse the regional distribution of the risk of child social exclusion, examining differences between states, urban and rural areas and by remoteness category. The results show that Tasmania and the Northern Territory are the states with the highest risk of social exclusion for school-aged children. There is a higher proportion of rural small areas which fell into the most at risk category compared to urban areas. Further analysis of results for the education domain and a comparison to child poverty rates are also presented.

Riyana Miranti, Anne Daly and Robert Tanton

Page Number - 26

Given the climate change predictions for Australia, increasing temperatures and lower rainfall are likely to have adverse health implications for remote communities’ dependant on agriculture for their livelihood. This paper examines the impact of the loss of employment in the pastoralism sector on the wellbeing of Aboriginal residents in the Shires of Cloncurry and Mount Isa City in North West Queensland. Data were collected in 2013 via postal questionnaires from 96 non-Aboriginal households, and three focus groups with male and female Aboriginal residents (n=14). The results outline the social problems and decline in mental wellbeing among Aboriginal people as a result of the downsizing in the pastoralism sector during a period of prolonged drought. Unemployed Aboriginal people who have been ‘forced’ to migrate from regional areas to nearby towns through no fault of their own need alternative activities to enable them to maintain a sense of wellbeing. This may in part be provided through involvement in community-driven social support activities.

Meryl Pearce, Lynne Eagle, David Low and Andrea Schurmann

Page Number - 50

The water policy reform in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) will have a range of implications on the social-ecological system (SES) of the Basin. We propose an analytical framework that may be useful in analysing how policy changes or external shocks, which originate in one part of a SES can be traced transparently throughout the SES by sequentially linking a series of models, where each model has demonstrated strength in explaining a part of the whole system. This framework is suitable to analyse the national, regional and spatial socio-economic and distributional effects of regional-specific policy reforms or external shocks.

Maheshwar Rao, Robert Tanton and Yogi Vidyattama

Page Number - 80

The paper examines key changes in central-provincial government financial arrangements and their effects on provincial economic disparities in Vietnam over the period 2000-2008. We find that after 2004, transfers from the central to provincial governments conformed much more closely to objective and pre-determined criteria than before. Econometric estimations indicate that in the post-2004 sub-period, poorer provinces obtained more-than-proportionate assistance from the central government, and the favourable treatment was statistically significant. Responses from interviews and statistical data suggest that transfers from the central government played an important role in reducing poverty and provincial output disparities after 2004. The difficulties experienced by the central government in securing adequate resources to finance such transfers, the over-reliance of some provinces on the transfers, and related policy implications are also discussed in the paper.

Xuan-Binh Vu, Duc-Tho Nguyen and Christine Smith

Page Number - 108

This paper investigates the trends, patterns and determinants of foreign investment in Mongolia using a panel data set of 17 countries over 21 years. The empirical evidence suggest market growth rate, quality of infrastructure, geographic proximity and the Chinese economic boom are the important determinants of foreign direct investment in Mongolia. In terms of policy implications, our findings suggest that Mongolia can attract much needed technology and capital for ensuring employment-intensive growth, particularly in manufacturing and agriculture, through further reforms with a heavy focus on infrastructure development.

Oyunbadam Davaakhuu, Kishor Sharma and Yapa M. W. Y. Bandara

Page Number - 138