An economic and financial geography of the Australian superannuation industry

The Australian superannuation industry has grown enormously over the past 30 years. Whereas working people are automatically enrolled at their workplaces, the head offices of many industry funds are in Melbourne rather than Sydney. Melbourne’s dominance of the superannuation industry is explained, in part, by happenstance—the location of major unions and employer groups and their initiatives in response to the enabling legislation. Other factors identified include opportunism, cooperation, and the advantages of growth. Government-prompted mergers and acquisitions have also reinforced the dominance of Melbourne, notwithstanding attempts by Sydney-based superannuation funds to out-compete their Melbourne rivals. Whereas the geographical bifurcation of the Australian superannuation industry has been mediated by the formation of a Queensland-based superfund “champion,” it is suggested that it faces numerous challenges. In conclusion, avenues for future research are sketched, focusing upon the future of Melbourne as the centre of the superannuation industry, the role of digital platforms in service delivery, pension adequacy, and the increasing importance of Australian funds in global financial markets.     

Conveying Mission Through Outcome Measurement: Services to the Homeless in New York City

This paper outlines the policy decision to implement a performance incentive program in a large social services agency. Specifically, it describes the evolution of services to homeless people in New York City, including the creation of the New York City Department of Homeless Services, the privatization of a majority of the shelter system, and the redefinition of the role of government in the provision of homeless services. It explains how performance measurement is an integral part of this evolution, and the numerous challenges that this initiative has presented to management of the Department.     

Institutional Influences on EU Funded Regional Technology Development in the UK: A Study of the Yorkshire and East London Regions in the 1990s

This paper seeks to place policy research undertaken in the Yorkshire and East London regions of the UK within the broader context of regional innovation system building. In particular, it attempts to draw out the releasing factors and conditions that shaped stakeholder relationships in these two EU Objective Two regions during the 1990s. This is undertaken with a view to drawing out conclusions about the extent of autonomy, institutional lock-in and compatibility within regional governance. The extent to which such EU stimulated influences are relevant to the practice of regional technological development is explored in areas which have experienced industrial restructuring.     

The City of London in the Asian crisis

This paper seeks to understand the Asian crisis through theeyes of the City of London. Relying upon material provided byThe Financial Times (FT), we construct an index of pessimismto chart the dominant City of London interpretation of the pathof the crisis. This index is set against data on the actualperformance of the Hong Kong, and Tokyo, London, and New Yorkstock markets over the same period. We have the luxury of retrospectivelyreconstructing the actual path of the crisis whereas the FT(and global financial markets) had to respond to specific eventsin a chain of apparent cumulative events. Our goal is to explainthe construction of the dominant pessimistic interpretationof the path of the crisis, placing the City of London in thecontext of global markets (in time, between Tokyo and New York).In the penultimate section of the paper we report on an interviewwith Riley, the FT columnist, about the results of our analysis,emphasizing the apparent homogeneity of information and opinionin the City of London as opposed to New York. The conclusionfocuses upon the implications of this argument for the studyof discontinuities between global markets, and the future offinancial centres.     

Integrating Transportation Network and Regional Economic Models to Estimate the Costs of a Large Urban Earthquake

In this paper we summarize an integrated, operational model of losses due to earthquake impacts on transportation and industrial capacity, and how these losses affect the metropolitan economy. The procedure advances the information provided by transportation and activity system analysis techniques in ways that help capture the most important ecomonic implications of earthquakes. Network costs and origin-destination requirements are modeled endogenously and consistently. Indirect and induced losses associated with direct impacts on transportation and industrial capacity are distributed across zones and ecomonic sectors. Preliminary results are summarized for a magnitude 7.1 earthquake on the Elysian Park blind thrust fault in Los Angeles.     

Fishing for Fish and for Jaminyjarti in Northern Aboriginal Australia

Socio‐cultural and ecological literature about Australian Indigenous groups reveal that fishing is a vital part of everyday life for many groups who have customary and recreational fresh and salt‐water affiliations. This vitality exists and has meaning for families and communities in the Kimberley's Fitzroy Valley region of Northern Aboriginal Australia. Less well known, however, is the central part that fishing plays in jaminyjarti, a ritual that relies on close kin regularly catching, cooking and sharing fish for bereaved family members during the ‘sorry business’ time that emerges after the death of a loved one. What becomes evident is that while fishing is undoubtedly intertwined in the everydayness and sociality of life, it is also central to comforting the bereaved during and after the grieving process that accompanies death.