Michael A Kortt
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 321781 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Michael A Kortt |
| PRENOMES | Michael A |
| SOBRENOME | Kortt |
| ASSINATURA | KORTT M A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Southern Cross University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3556-3001 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 34 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 123 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 34 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2005 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Navigating the Covid-19 crisis
Extensive research has examined municipal resilience to external shocks; however, quantitative assessments of financial resilience based on performance remain limited. This paper addresses this gap by analysing financial sustainability in Victorian local governments across three phases: pre-crisis (2017/18–2018/19), the COVID-19 pandemic (2019/20–2020/21), and recovery (2021/22–2022/23). Using bias-corrected Data Envelopment Analysis, we find tha…
Intergovernmental transfers and fiscal performance
Revisiting Religion and BMI
Regulatory dark matter
This paper examines the ‘regulatory dark matter’ (RDM) concept in the Australian regulatory environment, focusing on the influence of unofficial rules, soft law, and quasi‐regulatory mechanisms on policy outcomes and compliance behaviour. Employing a document analysis approach, the study examines real‐world examples, including the suspension of Best Practice Industry Conditions in Queensland government construction projects, systemic failures in …
The Association Between Protestantism and Economic Development in Brazil
The association between BMI and self-reported health among a Brazilian sample
The other side of the local government ledger—The association between revenue growth and population growth
Population growth exerts an impact on both sides of the local government accounting ledger—expenditure and revenue. Despite this fact, the vast scholarly literature on local government finance has been myopically focussed on expenditure functions. This apparent neglect to also consider the revenue side of the ledger is problematic because many regulators across the globe have exhorted local governments to pursue growth according to the assumption…
The value of public business education in Australia
Purpose With their former role as “cash cows” under threat owing to COVID-19, Australian business schools are fighting not only to maintain their status but also their survival. This study aims to look at how the sector might best approach these challenges. Design/methodology/approach The study reviews the recent literature on business and management education in Australia and compares that with emerging trends and policy directions. Findings Thi…
Mission Impossible? Are Australian Business Schools Creating Public Value
Australian business schools provide public universities with a reliable stream of revenue to cross-subsidise more expensive course offerings. Thus, the economic narrative views business schools as ‘cash cows’. However, a competing narrative has emerged, which contests the legitimacy of business schools and their role as university ‘cash cows’. This narrative contends that business schools should focus their efforts on maximising ‘public value’. U…
Protestantism and Child Mortality in Brazil
Addressing loneliness and social isolation amongst elderly people through local co‐production in Japan
In common with many other societies with ageing populations, loneliness and social isolation have become a significant problem in contemporary Japan. The financial burden associated with an ageing population, together with ongoing fiscal austerity, has severely constrained the ability of local authorities to address the problem. As a result, policymakers have sought cost‐effective methods of tackling the problem, including local co‐production wit…
Business education in Australia
COVID-19 has significantly impacted Australia's attractiveness as an international study destination and affected public university budgets, which have increasingly relied on attracting international students through business education. The notion of business schools as an onshore export business has long been a constraint to business schools' claims of public legitimacy. COVID-19 has effectively removed the 'cash cow' status, meaning business sc…
Religion, Health, and Life Satisfaction
Religious affiliation and earnings
This article examines the relationship between wages and religious affiliation for Brazil using conventional human capital earnings functions. Data drawn from the 1991, 2000, and 2010 Brazilian Censuses were analysed for men and women. Our results indicate that Brazilian men (women) who identified as Traditional Protestants received a small wage premium 2.6% (1.4%) compared to those who identified as Catholic—the largest religious denomination in…
Economies of scale and Brazilian local government expenditure
Controversy surrounds local government reform, particularly efforts directed at reducing the number of local authorities to secure economies of scale. We examine whether economies of scale exist in local government outlays by analysing the expenditure of 398 municipalities for the Brazilian state of Paraná using a 16-year panel dataset covering the period 2002–2017. We find evidence that municipal expenditure is characterised by substantial scale…
Administering faith
Australia’s education landscape is almost unique among developed nations in having a high proportion of students taught at non-government schools by a diverse range of religious providers, which receive relatively high levels of government funding. It therefore offers the ideal setting for a study on the outcomes achieved by students at schools administered by the major faith providers relative to their peers in government institutions. We take a…
Private exit, public exit, and achievement in secondary education
Perceptions of declining academic achievement have motivated a number of governments worldwide to introduce greater school choices to parents in the hope of fostering competition and thus arrest the apparent decline in educational achievement. Exit provides dissatisfied citizens with a decisive mechanism to signal their views regarding the quality of public education institutions. Private exit – abandoning the public education system entirely – i…
Does religious affiliation influence trust
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate and explore how religious affiliation may influence general and local trust in contemporary society. Design/methodology/approach This paper employs data from the 2010 and 2014 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. The association between religious affiliation and trust was estimated using an ordered logistic regression and conventional ordinary least squares model.…
Population size or population density? An empirical examination of scale economies in South Australian local government, 2015/16
Advocates of amalgamation typically claim that substantial scale economies flow from municipal mergers, which generate larger local government entities by population size. We examined whether economies of scale exist in council outlays by analysing the expenditure of 68 South Australian local government areas using data from the 2015/16 financial year. However, given the correlation between population size and population density it is important t…
No Aladdin’s Cave in New South Wales? Local Government Amalgamation, Scale Economies, and Data Envelopment Analysis Specification
Local government structural reform programs are often based on the purported benefits of increased scale. We examine this question in relation to the proposed amalgamation program for New South Wales (NSW) by the NSW Independent Local Government Review Panel using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We find evidence that a significant proportion of municipalities scheduled for amalgamation already exceed optimal scale and that the great majority of …
Recasting Leadership Reform in Australian Local Government
Changes to elected leadership in Australian local government have seen greater authority assigned to mayors in several jurisdictions. A Discussion Paper recently released under the auspices of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Local Government (ACELG) has recommended further reforms, arguing inter alia that mayors ought to enjoy a personal mandate and a stronger strategic role. This paper places these suggested reforms into context by devel…
Municipal Mergers in New Zealand
Local government policymakers across the developed world have frequently employed municipal amalgamation to improve the operation of local councils, and New Zealand is no exception. This paper empirically examines claims made in Potential Costs and Savings of Local Government Reform in Hawke’s Bay that the merger of the five local authorities in the Hawke’s Bay Region of New Zealand would generate significant cost-savings. We empirically test for…
Did the Big Stick Work? An Empirical Assessment of Scale Economies and the Queensland Forced Amalgamation Program
In 2007, the Queensland Government imposed forced amalgamation with the number of local authorities falling from 157 to just 73 councils. Amalgamation was based inter alia on the assumption that increased economies of scale would generate savings. This paper empirically examines pre- and post-amalgamation (2006/07 and 2009/10) for scale economies. For the 2006/07 data, evidence of economies of scale was found for councils with populations up to 9…
Is Biggest Best? A Comparative Analysis of the Financial Viability of the Brisbane City Council
Structural reform through forced mergers has been a dominant feature of Australian local government for decades. Advocates of compulsory consolidation contend that larger municipalities perform better across a wide range of attributes, including financial sustainability. Although empirical scholars of local government have invested considerable effort into investigating these claims, no one has yet examined the performance of Brisbane City Counci…
Determining the Optimal Size of Local Government
We estimated the optimal size of the most significant functions performed by Tasmanian councils between 1999 and 2008 using a non‐parametric technique based on the shared input data envelopment analysis model. The principal advantage of this technique is that it not only provides an overall estimate of efficiency but it also allows for the estimation of ‘partial efficiencies’ and ‘cost shares’ when one input is shared among multiple outputs. Our …
Did the Big Stick Work? An Empirical Assessment of Scale Economies and the Queensland Forced Amalgamation Program
In 2007, the Queensland Government imposed forced amalgamation with the number of local authorities falling from 157 to just 73 councils. Amalgamation was based inter alia on the assumption that increased economies of scale would generate savings. This paper empirically examines pre- and post-amalgamation (2006/07 and 2009/10) for scale economies. For the 2006/07 data, evidence of economies of scale was found for councils with populations up to 9…
A Cautionary Tale
Contemporary Australian public policy has come to rely increasingly on technical reports produced by commercial consultants in contrast to the traditional approach, which employed disinterested public servants to generate the specialist information required to inform decision makers. This approach is fraught with problems, not least the fact that ‘hired guns’ have strong incentives to create the ‘answers’ sought by their employers. By way of a ‘c…
Economies of Scale and Local Government Expenditure
Controversy surrounds structural reform in local government, especially efforts aimed at involuntarily reducing the number of local authorities to secure scale economies. We examined whether scale economies exist in local government outlays by analyzing the expenditure of 152 New South Wales councils. Initially, council expenditure is characterized by scale economies. However, given the correlation between population and population density, it is…
Population size or population density? An empirical examination of scale economies in South Australian local government, 2015/16
Advocates of amalgamation typically claim that substantial scale economies flow from municipal mergers, which generate larger local government entities by population size. We examined whether economies of scale exist in council outlays by analysing the expenditure of 68 South Australian local government areas using data from the 2015/16 financial year. However, given the correlation between population size and population density it is important t…
No Aladdin’s Cave in New South Wales? Local Government Amalgamation, Scale Economies, and Data Envelopment Analysis Specification
Local government structural reform programs are often based on the purported benefits of increased scale. We examine this question in relation to the proposed amalgamation program for New South Wales (NSW) by the NSW Independent Local Government Review Panel using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We find evidence that a significant proportion of municipalities scheduled for amalgamation already exceed optimal scale and that the great majority of …
Can't Get No Satisfaction? The Association Between Community Satisfaction and Population Size for Victoria
Traditionally, the problem of determining the optimal size in local government has been empirically assessed by estimating the relationship between population size and the costs of services (usually measured in terms of per capita expenditure). These studies, however, have proved largely inconclusive. In comparison, an empirical analysis based on the relationship between the size of government and community satisfaction offers a potentially fruit…
A Normative Model for Local Government De-Amalgamation in Australia
Ongoing local community dissatisfaction in some newly amalgamated local government areas resulting from the 2007 Queensland forced amalgamation program has raised the prospect of de-merger in that state. One catalyst has been the Opposition's commitment to de-amalgamation should it acquire government. Apart from some descriptive discussion of actual de-amalgamation episodes, almost no prescriptive analysis exists on the optimal form any de-merger…
Recasting Leadership Reform in Australian Local Government
Changes to elected leadership in Australian local government have seen greater authority assigned to mayors in several jurisdictions. A Discussion Paper recently released under the auspices of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Local Government (ACELG) has recommended further reforms, arguing inter alia that mayors ought to enjoy a personal mandate and a stronger strategic role. This paper places these suggested reforms into context by devel…
Municipal Mergers in New Zealand
Local government policymakers across the developed world have frequently employed municipal amalgamation to improve the operation of local councils, and New Zealand is no exception. This paper empirically examines claims made in Potential Costs and Savings of Local Government Reform in Hawke’s Bay that the merger of the five local authorities in the Hawke’s Bay Region of New Zealand would generate significant cost-savings. We empirically test for…
Addressing loneliness and social isolation amongst elderly people through local co‐production in Japan
In common with many other societies with ageing populations, loneliness and social isolation have become a significant problem in contemporary Japan. The financial burden associated with an ageing population, together with ongoing fiscal austerity, has severely constrained the ability of local authorities to address the problem. As a result, policymakers have sought cost‐effective methods of tackling the problem, including local co‐production wit…
Business education in Australia
COVID-19 has significantly impacted Australia's attractiveness as an international study destination and affected public university budgets, which have increasingly relied on attracting international students through business education. The notion of business schools as an onshore export business has long been a constraint to business schools' claims of public legitimacy. COVID-19 has effectively removed the 'cash cow' status, meaning business sc…
Economies of scale and Brazilian local government expenditure
Controversy surrounds local government reform, particularly efforts directed at reducing the number of local authorities to secure economies of scale. We examine whether economies of scale exist in local government outlays by analysing the expenditure of 398 municipalities for the Brazilian state of Paraná using a 16-year panel dataset covering the period 2002–2017. We find evidence that municipal expenditure is characterised by substantial scale…
The Home Insulation Program
The public concern surrounding the Australian Government Home Insulation Program (HIP) continues despite the abrupt termination of the program in the light of its deleterious safety consequences and fiscally wasteful management. This enduring unease has been reflected in a variety of official inquiries and reports including the Hawke Review (2010) , an inquiry by the Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts References Committee (2010), a p…
Is There a Case for Mandating Directly Elected Mayors in Australian Local Government? Lessons from the 2012 Queensland Local Government Elections
A ‘semi‐executive’ model for Australian mayors, inclusive of direct election, is presently being explored in the Australian local sector (see, in particular, Sansom, 2012). This paper takes advantage of the differences across Australia's federation to examine the recent experience of directly elected mayors in Queensland, especially the results of local government elections held in 2012. It is argued that several factors contributed to the high t…
Religion and Life Satisfaction
Determining the Optimal Size of Local Government
We estimated the optimal size of the most significant functions performed by Tasmanian councils between 1999 and 2008 using a non‐parametric technique based on the shared input data envelopment analysis model. The principal advantage of this technique is that it not only provides an overall estimate of efficiency but it also allows for the estimation of ‘partial efficiencies’ and ‘cost shares’ when one input is shared among multiple outputs. Our …
The other side of the local government ledger—The association between revenue growth and population growth
Population growth exerts an impact on both sides of the local government accounting ledger—expenditure and revenue. Despite this fact, the vast scholarly literature on local government finance has been myopically focussed on expenditure functions. This apparent neglect to also consider the revenue side of the ledger is problematic because many regulators across the globe have exhorted local governments to pursue growth according to the assumption…
Does religious affiliation influence trust
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate and explore how religious affiliation may influence general and local trust in contemporary society. Design/methodology/approach This paper employs data from the 2010 and 2014 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. The association between religious affiliation and trust was estimated using an ordered logistic regression and conventional ordinary least squares model.…
Estimating Utility Values for Health States of Overweight and Obese Individuals Using the SF-36
A Normative Model for Local Government De-Amalgamation in Australia
Ongoing local community dissatisfaction in some newly amalgamated local government areas resulting from the 2007 Queensland forced amalgamation program has raised the prospect of de-merger in that state. One catalyst has been the Opposition's commitment to de-amalgamation should it acquire government. Apart from some descriptive discussion of actual de-amalgamation episodes, almost no prescriptive analysis exists on the optimal form any de-merger…
The Home Insulation Program
The public concern surrounding the Australian Government Home Insulation Program (HIP) continues despite the abrupt termination of the program in the light of its deleterious safety consequences and fiscally wasteful management. This enduring unease has been reflected in a variety of official inquiries and reports including the Hawke Review (2010) , an inquiry by the Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts References Committee (2010), a p…
A Cautionary Tale
Contemporary Australian public policy has come to rely increasingly on technical reports produced by commercial consultants in contrast to the traditional approach, which employed disinterested public servants to generate the specialist information required to inform decision makers. This approach is fraught with problems, not least the fact that ‘hired guns’ have strong incentives to create the ‘answers’ sought by their employers. By way of a ‘c…
Religion and BMI in Australia
Economies of Scale and Local Government Expenditure
Controversy surrounds structural reform in local government, especially efforts aimed at involuntarily reducing the number of local authorities to secure scale economies. We examined whether scale economies exist in local government outlays by analyzing the expenditure of 152 New South Wales councils. Initially, council expenditure is characterized by scale economies. However, given the correlation between population and population density, it is…
Is Biggest Best? A Comparative Analysis of the Financial Viability of the Brisbane City Council
Structural reform through forced mergers has been a dominant feature of Australian local government for decades. Advocates of compulsory consolidation contend that larger municipalities perform better across a wide range of attributes, including financial sustainability. Although empirical scholars of local government have invested considerable effort into investigating these claims, no one has yet examined the performance of Brisbane City Counci…
Determining the Optimal Size of Local Government
We estimated the optimal size of the most significant functions performed by Tasmanian councils between 1999 and 2008 using a non‐parametric technique based on the shared input data envelopment analysis model. The principal advantage of this technique is that it not only provides an overall estimate of efficiency but it also allows for the estimation of ‘partial efficiencies’ and ‘cost shares’ when one input is shared among multiple outputs. Our …
Is There a Case for Mandating Directly Elected Mayors in Australian Local Government? Lessons from the 2012 Queensland Local Government Elections
A ‘semi‐executive’ model for Australian mayors, inclusive of direct election, is presently being explored in the Australian local sector (see, in particular, Sansom, 2012). This paper takes advantage of the differences across Australia's federation to examine the recent experience of directly elected mayors in Queensland, especially the results of local government elections held in 2012. It is argued that several factors contributed to the high t…
Can't Get No Satisfaction? The Association Between Community Satisfaction and Population Size for Victoria
Traditionally, the problem of determining the optimal size in local government has been empirically assessed by estimating the relationship between population size and the costs of services (usually measured in terms of per capita expenditure). These studies, however, have proved largely inconclusive. In comparison, an empirical analysis based on the relationship between the size of government and community satisfaction offers a potentially fruit…
Religion and Life Satisfaction
Recasting Leadership Reform in Australian Local Government
Changes to elected leadership in Australian local government have seen greater authority assigned to mayors in several jurisdictions. A Discussion Paper recently released under the auspices of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Local Government (ACELG) has recommended further reforms, arguing inter alia that mayors ought to enjoy a personal mandate and a stronger strategic role. This paper places these suggested reforms into context by devel…
Municipal Mergers in New Zealand
Local government policymakers across the developed world have frequently employed municipal amalgamation to improve the operation of local councils, and New Zealand is no exception. This paper empirically examines claims made in Potential Costs and Savings of Local Government Reform in Hawke’s Bay that the merger of the five local authorities in the Hawke’s Bay Region of New Zealand would generate significant cost-savings. We empirically test for…
Did the Big Stick Work? An Empirical Assessment of Scale Economies and the Queensland Forced Amalgamation Program
In 2007, the Queensland Government imposed forced amalgamation with the number of local authorities falling from 157 to just 73 councils. Amalgamation was based inter alia on the assumption that increased economies of scale would generate savings. This paper empirically examines pre- and post-amalgamation (2006/07 and 2009/10) for scale economies. For the 2006/07 data, evidence of economies of scale was found for councils with populations up to 9…
No Aladdin’s Cave in New South Wales? Local Government Amalgamation, Scale Economies, and Data Envelopment Analysis Specification
Local government structural reform programs are often based on the purported benefits of increased scale. We examine this question in relation to the proposed amalgamation program for New South Wales (NSW) by the NSW Independent Local Government Review Panel using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). We find evidence that a significant proportion of municipalities scheduled for amalgamation already exceed optimal scale and that the great majority of …
Administering faith
Australia’s education landscape is almost unique among developed nations in having a high proportion of students taught at non-government schools by a diverse range of religious providers, which receive relatively high levels of government funding. It therefore offers the ideal setting for a study on the outcomes achieved by students at schools administered by the major faith providers relative to their peers in government institutions. We take a…
Private exit, public exit, and achievement in secondary education
Perceptions of declining academic achievement have motivated a number of governments worldwide to introduce greater school choices to parents in the hope of fostering competition and thus arrest the apparent decline in educational achievement. Exit provides dissatisfied citizens with a decisive mechanism to signal their views regarding the quality of public education institutions. Private exit – abandoning the public education system entirely – i…
Does religious affiliation influence trust
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate and explore how religious affiliation may influence general and local trust in contemporary society. Design/methodology/approach This paper employs data from the 2010 and 2014 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. The association between religious affiliation and trust was estimated using an ordered logistic regression and conventional ordinary least squares model.…
Population size or population density? An empirical examination of scale economies in South Australian local government, 2015/16
Advocates of amalgamation typically claim that substantial scale economies flow from municipal mergers, which generate larger local government entities by population size. We examined whether economies of scale exist in council outlays by analysing the expenditure of 68 South Australian local government areas using data from the 2015/16 financial year. However, given the correlation between population size and population density it is important t…
Religion, Health, and Life Satisfaction
Religious affiliation and earnings
This article examines the relationship between wages and religious affiliation for Brazil using conventional human capital earnings functions. Data drawn from the 1991, 2000, and 2010 Brazilian Censuses were analysed for men and women. Our results indicate that Brazilian men (women) who identified as Traditional Protestants received a small wage premium 2.6% (1.4%) compared to those who identified as Catholic—the largest religious denomination in…
Economies of scale and Brazilian local government expenditure
Controversy surrounds local government reform, particularly efforts directed at reducing the number of local authorities to secure economies of scale. We examine whether economies of scale exist in local government outlays by analysing the expenditure of 398 municipalities for the Brazilian state of Paraná using a 16-year panel dataset covering the period 2002–2017. We find evidence that municipal expenditure is characterised by substantial scale…
The value of public business education in Australia
Purpose With their former role as “cash cows” under threat owing to COVID-19, Australian business schools are fighting not only to maintain their status but also their survival. This study aims to look at how the sector might best approach these challenges. Design/methodology/approach The study reviews the recent literature on business and management education in Australia and compares that with emerging trends and policy directions. Findings Thi…
Mission Impossible? Are Australian Business Schools Creating Public Value
Australian business schools provide public universities with a reliable stream of revenue to cross-subsidise more expensive course offerings. Thus, the economic narrative views business schools as ‘cash cows’. However, a competing narrative has emerged, which contests the legitimacy of business schools and their role as university ‘cash cows’. This narrative contends that business schools should focus their efforts on maximising ‘public value’. U…
Protestantism and Child Mortality in Brazil
Economics (20 obras) · Political science (18 obras) · Government (linguistics (15 obras) · Sociology (15 obras) · Local government (14 obras) · Demography (13 obras) · Public Administration (13 obras) · Public Administration (12 obras) · Business (11 obras) · Geography (11 obras)