At a time when increased independence requirements for auditors, legal backing for auditing standards, and increased audit documentation requirements have occurred, this book examines key issues in the market for audit services in Australia. It investigates issues including: the understandability of audit and the state of the audit expectations gap; auditors’ business acumen and industry expe…
The global economic downturn that followed the collapse of major US financial institutions is no doubt the most significant crisis of our times. Its effects on corporate and governmental balance sheets have been devastating, as have been its impacts on the employment and well being of tens of millions of citizens. It continues to pose major challenges to national policymakers and institutions a…
This book explores the manner in which a variety of public benefits such as environmental protection and consumer safety have been accommodated through the authorisation process within competition law and policy in Australia. While the regulator’s use of its discretion can be explained as a triumph of practice over theory, this book explores the potential for competition principles to be imbu…
The absence of vibrant bondmarkets in East Asia was a significant contributor to the 1997–98 financial crisis. Ever since, the development of local bondmarkets has been a major objective of financial reforms in many East Asian economies. This effort has been frustrated by the inability to reach a consensus on whether Asian bondmarkets are truly needed in East Asia, whether they can be made vi…
Across almost all standard indicators, the Indigenous population of Australia has worse outcomes than the non-Indigenous population. Despite the abundance of statistics and a plethora of government reports on Indigenous outcomes, there is very little information on how Indigenous disadvantage accumulates or is mitigated through time at the individual level. The research that is available highli…
The Chinese economy has entered a new phase of development in which sources of growth are not so much dependent upon pure increases in labour, investment and credit expansion, but from productivity improvement, structural changes, technological progress and the benefits from improvement of the social security and welfare improvement. When market functions are fully established to become a main …
The Cult of the Market: Economic Fundamentalism and its Discontents disputes the practical value of the shallow, all-encompassing, dogmatic, economic fundamentalism espoused by policy elites in recent public policy debates, along with their gross simplifications and sacred rules. Economics cannot provide a convincing overarching theory of government action or of social action more generally. Fu…
Country, native title and ecology all converge in this volume to describe the dynamic intercultural context of land and water management on Indigenous lands. Indigenous people’s relationships with country are discussed from various speaking positions, including identity and knowledge, the homelands debate, water planning, climate change and market environmentalism. The inter-disciplinary chap…
The engagement of Indigenous Australians in economic activity is a matter of long-standing public concern and debate. Jon Altman has been intellectually engaged with Indigenous economic activity for almost 40 years, most prominently through his elaboration of the concept of the hybrid economy, and most recently through his sustained and trenchant critique of policy. He has inspired others also …
This volume addresses important issues to do with access to higher education and different models of its financing in the East Asia region. It is enriched by diverse perspectives from vastly different starting points and by the historical and institutional settings in the region. The issues are set out in the context of the value of higher education in economic development and how it contribute…