Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - Research Publications
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ItemPaid Parental Leave evaluation: Phase 1(Commonwealth of Australia, 2012)
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ItemDoes having jobless parents damage a child's future?(Melbourne Institute, 2019)Growing up in a household where parents are jobless exposes many Australian children to a lifelong cycle of disadvantage. This study provides insight into the factors driving the transmission of joblessness from one generation to the next and identifies where interventions to help break the cycle would be most effective.
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ItemChanging the Life Trajectories of Australia's Most Vulnerable Children - Report No. 2 The first twelve months in the Early Years Education Program: An initial assessment of the impact on children and their primary caregivers(Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2018)This report presents initial findings on the impact on children and their primary caregivers after twelve months of enrollment in the Early Years Education Program (EYEP). EYEP is a model of early years care and education targeted at the particular needs of children who are exposed to significant family stress and social disadvantage. Children who participate in EYEP are offered three years of care and education (50 weeks per year, five hours per day each week). Key features of EYEP are high staff/child ratios, qualified and experienced staff, an infant mental health consultant in the team and a rigorously developed curriculum. A relationship-based pedagogy is used to ensure that children are ready for learning. The ultimate objective of EYEP is to ensure that at-risk and vulnerable children realise their full potential and arrive at school developmentally and educationally equal to their peers. The impact of EYEP is being evaluated through a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) as part of the Early Years Education Research Program (EYERP); otherwise referred to in this report as the ‘EYEP trial’. Children for whom consent was given to participate in the EYEP trial were randomly assigned into either an intervention group who were enrolled in EYEP or to a control group. Estimates of the impact of EYEP on children and their primary caregivers are derived from comparisons of outcomes between the intervention group and the control group. Measurement of outcomes described in this report took place twelve months after entry to the trial.
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ItemLeadership at Work: Do Australian leaders have what it takes?(Centre for Workplace Leadership, The University of Melbourne, 2016)Fuelled by the resources boom, the Australian economy has enjoyed an unprecedented 25 years of economic growth, more than doubling in real terms over that period. But, now, the Australian economy is slowing. Productivity is sluggish, employment growth is weakening, and consumer confidence is faltering. Many economists are now predicting an extended period of slow economic growth and recovery. Organisations need to adapt and adjust to this unfolding reality, improve productivity and reduce costs. However, this is just one of a number of critical challenges that Australia faces. Slower economic growth globally has intensified competitive pressures. The rate of technological change is accelerating and is having increasingly disruptive consequences. Automation is destroying jobs at a faster pace and is beginning to hollow out middle-skill jobs across sectors as diverse as manufacturing, professional services and financial services. Technological advances are leading to an unprecedented rate of innovation in products and services, creating new sources of competitive pressure – as well as enormous potential for future growth, profitability and cost reduction. Technology is spawning a new class of business models, which are disrupting established ways of working and doing business – from Uber in the taxi industry, AirBnB in accommodation services, and the emerging FinTech sector, to the spread of online training in education services and an array of service providers able to offshore increasingly complex work. At the same time, organisations have contended with a seismic shift in the competitive and regulatory environment - from competition policy and consumer protection, to the decentralisation of industrial relations and enterprise bargaining. These fundamental changes in the way organisations organise and compete will impact Australian workplaces of all shapes and sizes – small and large, private and public, for-profit and not-for-profit, and across industries. If Australia is to maintain national competitiveness and generate growth and jobs, organisations need to navigate through a phase of increased uncertainty and ambiguity, disruption and change. To survive, organisations need to innovate and adapt, and to develop new capabilities and new sources of growth. A critical question is whether Australian organisational leaders are ready to meet these new challenges. Or whether the extended period of economic growth driven by the resources boom has made Australian organisational leaders complacent and unprepared for the future? Have Australian organisations invested adequately in their leadership and management capabilities to navigate through these complex and uncertain times? If not, will these various changes have adverse and lasting effects on future growth and prosperity? These questions have informed the surveys developed for this study.
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ItemProbing the Effect of the Australian System of Minimum Wages on the Gender Wage Gap(Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2017-12-04)When wage setting is more regulated, the gender wage gap tends to decrease. We examine whether this holds for a complex system of occupation- and industry-specific minimum wages, which cover both low-pay and high-pay segments of the labour market. The system has the potential to close the gender wage gap by ensuring equal minimum pay for equal jobs, but i also has the potential to widen it by discriminating against jobs more commonly held by women. We carefully describe wage levels as well as returns to experience and their association with individual gender as well as the male employment share in the individual’s field (industry or occupation) of work. We find that the gender wage gap among employees receiving a minimum wage is less than half the magnitude of the gap among other employees. Despite this, there is nonetheless evidence that, within the minimum-wage system, there is a wage penalty for employment in jobs more commonly held by women, although only for employees without university degrees. Our results suggest that, for university-educated women, the regulated setting of minimum wages helps to close the gender wage gap and counteracts the undervaluation of work typically undertaken by women. However, for less-educated women, who comprise approximately 82% of female minimum-wage employees, minimum wages could do more to close the gender wage gap if they were neutral with respect to the gender composition of jobs.
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ItemMaking ‘good’ choices: the impact of entitlement models on upskilling later in life(National Centre for Vocational Education Research, 2017)
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ItemThe Power of Self-Interest: Effects of Education and Training Entitlements in Later-Life(Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2017)Education and training among the working-age population has become an increasingly important policy issue as working lives have lengthened and the pace of technological change has quickened. This paper describes the effects of a reform that replaced a supply-driven model, in which government selected the number and providers of publicly subsidised Vocational Education and Training (VET), with a demand-driven approach that broadened access to adult training and gave working-age individuals greater freedom of VET course choice. Difference-in-differences analysis reveals that the large-scale reform, which was introduced in the Australian state of Victoria from 2009, substantively increased participation in VET among the population aged 25-54, and corresponded with an improved match between VET courses taken and objective ex ante measures of labour market demand. Indeed, the scheme was so popular that it resulted in a budget over-run by 2012 of $400 million (AUD, on a total budget of $1.3 billion).
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ItemUncertainty and Monetary Policy in Good and Bad Times(Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2017)We investigate the role played by systematic monetary policy in tackling the real effects of uncertainty shocks in U.S. recessions and expansions. We model key indicators of the business cycle with a nonlinear VAR that allows for different dynamics in busts and booms. Uncertainty shocks are identified by focusing on historical events that are associated to jumps in financial volatility. Uncertainty shocks hitting in recessions are found to trigger a more abrupt drop and a faster recovery in real activity than in expansions. Counterfactual simulations suggest that the effectiveness of systematic monetary policy in stabilizing real activity is greater in expansions. Finally, we provide empirical and narrative evidence pointing to a risk management approach by the Federal Reserve.
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ItemWhat Happens to Students with Low Reading Proficiency at 15? Evidence from Australia(Wiley, 2017-12)While is it widely accepted that adults with poor reading skills have inferior labour market outcomes, little is known about whether low reading proficiency in school is a precursor to inferior labour market outcomes in adulthood. We fill this gap in the literature using education and labour market information to age 25 years for participants in the 2003 Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) who were tracked from age 15 in the 2003 Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth. We find no difference in full-time employment rates or earning capacity of jobs attained at age 25 between those who had low and medium reading proficiency at age 15. Supporting analysis suggests that high rates of participation and positive outcomes from vocational education and training (VET) among those with low reading proficiency helps them avoid any negative effects from poor achievement in school. These results highlight the role of accessible VET pathways in facilitating the labour market participation of youth who may become disengaged from learning in school.
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ItemVocational Education and Training: A Pathway to the Straight and Narrow(Melbourne Institute of Applied and Economic Social Research, 2016)