We analyse why Taiwanese families during the Ch'ing Dynasty still held communal assets vested in worship associations (chi ssu kung yeh) even after the division of family assets. Our analysis shows that worship associations benefitted the living as well as the dead. Although the high cost of managing common assets meant the associations were established infrequently, they arose often in a response to clan feuds and served as martial-style corporations for the protection of family property before the twentieth century.

The story of wages in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Australia has largely been told through official published statistics and the experiences of skilled artisans and construction labourers. Utilising wage book data from an early successful manufacturing plant – a biscuit factory – we reveal the earning histories of several neglected groups of Australian workers. We specifically investigate the effects of the 1890s depression, the introduction of a wages board, and shifting demographics on the wages of unskilled factory hands, women, juvenile workers, and commercial clerks. We demonstrate that typical Australian wage series studies have misinterpreted the impact of these phenomena.

In this article, we analyse the industrial impacts of monetary shocks since the introduction of inflation targeting in Australia in 1990. These impacts are quantified by constructing a structural vector autoregressive model for a small open economy. Our results show that construction and manufacturing industries exhibit a significant reduction in gross value added after an unanticipated rise in the official cash rate. However, the finance and insurance industry, and the mining industry, seem to be unaffected by these shocks.

Research into the environmental impacts of gold rushes has tended to be limited, with only a small number of broad descriptive studies. This article provides a new approach in three ways. First, it is confined to a specific small time period – the initial five years – rather than trying to cover all aspects of a long period. Second, it analyses the environmental impacts in terms of the activities undertaken by the miners. A focus on activities was chosen in preference to types of impact as a means of centring attention on humans as agents of change. Third, it utilises a wide range of accounts by miners to examine the changes they observed.

Wild European rabbits are serious agricultural and environmental pests in Australia; myxoma virus and rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus have been used as biocontrol agents to reduce impacts. We review the literature on changes in rabbit numbers together with associated reports on the economic benefits from controlling rabbits on agricultural production. By using loss–expenditure frontier models in with and without biocontrol scenarios, it is conservatively estimated that biological control of rabbits produced a benefit of A$70 billion (2011 A$ terms) for agricultural industries over the last 60 years. The consequences for ongoing rabbit control and research investment are discussed.