Young people and intentional informal voting in Australia

Compared to most other advanced democracies, Australia experiences fairly high levels of both intentional and unintentional informal (or invalid) voting. Using survey data obtained predominantly from the Australian Election Study and aggregate-level data derived mainly from the Australian Census, we explore whether young people are more likely to cast intentional informal votes. We also reflect on why they might do so. We find that young people are strongly implicated in the rising intentional informal vote rate. We also find that their motivations are linked to the following factors: the young are less likely to be members of political parties, less interested in electoral politics and tend to value voting less than the average citizen. Young people also report higher than average levels of cynicism about politics and lower levels of satisfaction with Australian democracy.     

Human–animal relations and the celebration of place‐identity: A case study of the Scone Racing Carnival,New South Wales

Festivals and carnivals are social‐cultural assemblages of human and non‐human entities. This paper investigates interactions between humans and animals by focusing on the Scone Racing Carnival, a key event in the Scone and Upper Hunter Horse Festival. This paper contributes to existing studies of non‐metropolitan festivals and animal–human relations by questioning how and why non‐humans are enrolled in these cultural events, and the impact this has on place identity. The central argument is that the relationship between humans and thoroughbred horses, in particular, has played a significant role in the creation of a distinctive landscape, a regional identity for the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales, and a local identity for Scone. In turn, the carnival has assisted in maintaining an ‘eque‐cultural’ identity through the marketing and annual public celebration of human–horse relationships.     

Marked occupational dental abrasion from medieval Kent

A medieval male skeleton displays marked dental abrasion which is considered to be occupational, possible related to carpentry. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TESTING FOR CAUSALITY BETWEEN PRODUCTIVITY AND AGGLOMERATION ECONOMIES

ABSTRACT The productivity effects of agglomeration economies are often treated as endogenous in empirical work due to the potential for reverse causality. The extent to which these relationships are actually simultaneously determined, however, remains largely unobserved. This paper estimates panel data vector autoregressions for different sectors of the economy to test for bidirectional causality between productivity and both localization and urbanization economies. The aim is to address some key questions that will help to identify the extent of the endogeneity problem. Can we actually observe bidirectionality in the data? Does it feature more for some industries than for others? Is it more prevalent for localization or urbanization economies? The results show that agglomeration economies are not strictly unidirectional and that higher levels of productivity can induce growth in the scale of local urban and industrial environments. The paper discusses the difficulties that these issues pose for the estimation of agglomeration economies.