The bilateral trade between Australia and Japan has played very important roles in Australian and Japanese economies over a long period of time. In this study, we apply the bounds testing approach within an Autoregressive Distributed Lag framework (ARDL) to evaluate the major determinants of Japanese demand for Australian exports. The modelling results show that real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the most important factor positively affecting the Japanese real imports from Australia. The real exchange rate and foreign reserves assets affect negatively but are inelastic in both the long run and the short run. With a value of -0.74, the error correction coefficient is very significant. This indicates that only a short period of time (4 months) is needed to achieve long run equilibrium.

Economic theory regarding household fertility decisions has long recognized precautionary demand for children, such that households in a high-mortality environment respond to the risk of children not surviving to adulthood by increasing their family size. We test whether such an effect exists in response to nutrient deficiencies. Using survey data on a sample of 5,966 households in Vietnam, we find that a 10% increase in calorie availability decreases the likelihood that they had a child by 0.8%. Protein, potassium and thiamin also have significant effects. These findings provide initial evidence of an economic link between nutrition and fertility.

Precautionary demand for children has long been recognized by economists as a component of household demand for children, such that households respond to the risk of children not surviving to adulthood by increasing their optimally desired family size. We examine whether such an effect exists in response to nutritional constraints. We argue that nutrition measures are suitable proxies for the expectations of parents regarding the lifetime mortality risks of their children. Using a sample of 5,966 Vietnamese households, we estimate Logit models of a birth indicator regressed on self-constructed measures of nutrient consumption and other controls. We find significant effects for calories, protein and an index of micronutrients on the likelihood that the household had a child. The micronutrient index effect is dominant, and is contingent on the health insurance status of children in the household. These findings provide initial non-experimental evidence of the relevance of nutrition on demand for children. They suggest that rising prices and disruptions to food supplies may increase population growth rates, all else equal, an indirect effect that may be moderated by agricultural and food aid policies.

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine five research questions with respect to what extent exchange rate volatility affects Vietnamese international trade performance through applying dynamic panel models with data from 2000 to 2012. These research questions include: 1. What effects does exchange rate volatility have on Vietnam's international trade flows? 2. Are the effects equal or different between aggregate, bilateral, and sectoral data? 3. Why use the generalised method of moments (GMM) to analyse the impact of exchange rate changes on the trade performance of Vietnam? Is it appropriate? 4. Whether or not a different method of volatility measurements reveals a different trade effect? 5. What measures do governmental policy makers in Vietnam need to implement so as to develop suitable exchange rate policies in order to encourage international trade of this country? The thesis is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 1 introduces background information, research problem, expected contributions, research objectives and outline of the thesis. Chapter 2 presents Vietnamese exchange rate policy and statistically analysis of merchandise trade of this country. Chapter 3 provides literature reviews of previous studies on the effects of exchange rate instability on trade, focusing on measures of exchange rate variations, methods and techniques of estimations and results. Chapter 4 is an exploration of methodology using an empirical research model, including a formulation of the equations which make up the econometric model. The next three chapters present empirical results of the impacts of exchange rate volatility on Vietnamese trade performance at three different data levels, in each chapter there is a brief description of variables, data and model specification. Chapter 5 reports the empirical results of the effects of exchange rate instability on the trade of 53 countries including Vietnam, at the aggregate trade data level. Chapter 6 discusses the empirical results of the impact of exchange rate volatility on Vietnamese trade at the bilateral trade data level. Chapter 7 presents this empirical result at the sectoral level. Chapter 8 deals with a summary and conclusion of the study, as well as its limitations and suggestions for further research directions. The main findings, based on the empirical study undertaken to examine the impacts of exchange rate volatility on trade performance of Vietnam at three data levels, are now summarised. In total, there were 32 equations estimated. Firstly, exchange rate volatility has statistically significant impacts on Vietnam’s trade performance in the majority of the 32 trade equations. Secondly, the impact of exchange rate volatility on trade differs between different trade data levels. While exchange rate instability has mostly significant positive impacts on exports in the aggregate level, its effects are mostly significant and negative in the bilateral and sectoral level. Further, a volatile exchange rate has no significant impact on imports at the aggregate level; its effects are significant and positive in most import equations at bilateral and sectoral level. Thirdly, exchange rate volatility can have either a positive or negative impact on trade performance. For aggregate, bilateral and sectoral levels, volatility has a statistically significant positive impact on trade flows in 3, 1 and 8 equations respectively, and a statistically significant negative effect in 0, 2 and 5 equations respectively. Fourthly, for all the equations analysed there are more export equations than import equations (12 vs 7) in which exchange rate volatility has a statistically significant impact on trade flows. This suggests that Vietnam's exports are more sensitive than imports to exchange rate volatility. In the majority of estimated equations, exchange rate volatility has a statistically significant negative effect on exports, while its impact on imports is statistically significant and positive. Fifthly, generally there is a large overall difference between the results produced with MOVSD-derived volatility measures and those with GARCH-derived volatility measures. Specifically, in terms of the number of equations in which volatility has a statistically significant impact on trade flows, these numbers (using MOVSD-derived measures vs GARCH-derived measures) are 2 vs 1, another 2 vs 1, and 9 vs 4 for aggregate, bilateral and sectoral levels respectively. The findings in this thesis make a strong case for more careful macroeconomic management, in order to boost Vietnam's overall trade and economic growth strategy, particularly in the light of Vietnam’s many years of persistent trade deficit. In practice, macroeconomic policies that enhance exports and limit imports should be implemented. In general, policy makers should develop policies, under which greater stability of exchange rate of VND will be maintained, in order to improve the country’s trade balance.

The effects of population ageing on asset markets are complex. Recent literature has raised concerns of significant downward pressure on asset prices, housing and financial, due to the rapid demographic transition associated with retiring Baby Boomers. Awareness of this demographic transition and speculation over the consequent effects on asset markets prompted the asset meltdown debate. This thesis contributes to the asset meltdown debate and addresses the question whether demographic transitions, particularly the increasing proportion of the population in the old age cohort due to the retirement of Baby Boomers, will precipitate a dramatic decline in house and stock price in Australia. The structural vector autoregressive model used for the empirical analysis is an important improvement over the reduced-form regression strategies usually employed in the literature. Both the demographic and non-demographic variables used in the empirical analysis are treated as endogenous and reverse causality between the variables is taken into account. The population ageing dynamics are modelled using impulse response functions and, thus, an insight into the potential magnitude of demographic shocks, particularly retirement shocks, is obtained. The analysis quantifies the responses in real house and stock prices to such shocks. The structural shocks are characterised as a sequence of shocks, often with different signs at different points in time, rather than one-off shock. The cumulative effect of such a sequence of shocks on the evolution of real house and stock prices over time is examined using historical decomposition. In addition, the forecast error variance decomposition is used to quantify the percentage contribution of the total variation in real house and stock prices to each structural shock in the models for different forecast periods. The findings support the optimists’ view in the asset meltdown debate. Predictions that population ageing, or more specifically, changes in age structure particularly due to retiring Baby Boomers, will lead to pronounced downward pressure on real house or real stock price in Australia are rejected. The findings suggest that Baby Boomers are unlikely to sell enough housing and financial assets in retirement to precipitate a market meltdown, or a sudden and sharp decline in real house or stock prices. With the benefit of hindsight, we also see that the one fourth of the Baby Boomers are already retired and the Australian housing market and stock market does not show signs of collapse or substantial price decreases. Poterba (2001) provides a possible explanation for these findings, namely, even though changes in age structure affect asset demand, these effects are simply too small to be detected among the other shocks to house and stock prices. Moreover, the anomaly as revealed by asset ownership statistics, that the older population cohort continues to hold or accumulate assets rather than de-accumulate as originally predicted by the life cycle hypothesis sheds light on why population ageing does not exert a pronounced downward pressure on asset prices in Australia.