Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 15
-
ItemDynamic Relationships in the Australian Labour Market: Heterogeneity and State Dependence( 2000-03)In this study, individual labour market dynamics are analysed using the Australian Longitudinal Survey. A random utility framework for analysing discrete choices is adopted. In this context, a model incorporating a state dependent relationship between employment outcomes is estimated. The influence on individual employment outcomes of additional variables including education, gender and unemployment benefits is also investigated. It is found that, even after controlling for observable and unobservable differences between individuals, there is strong evidence of state dependence. In certain key respects, the findings of this study differ markedly from those of other Australian labour market studies. It is expected that these findings will provide further insight into the causes of contemporary unemployment, and may constitute further evidence of a 'scarring' effect of unemployment.
-
ItemModelling Export Activity of Eleven APEC Countries( 2000-03)The gravity model has long been used for modelling and predicting trade flows. This paper generalises the gravity model allowing for proper representation of local and target country effects and also the business cycle. The new approach is based on a panel data framework (instead of a simple cross sectional or time series approach) where the additional information available from using both types of data (ie. cross sectional and time series) is utilised to properly model all the specific effects. The model is applied to a panel of APEC countries.
-
ItemModelling the Impact of Environmental Regulations on Bilateral Trade Flows: OECD, 1990-96( 2000-07)Since the early seventies an increasing attention has been paid to the impact environmental policy has on foreign trade. One of the most important issues is whether countries with relatively strict environmental regulations tend to experience a deterioration of international competitiveness and thus a fall in the exports, and a rise in the imports, of the pollution-intensive commodities or, on the other hand, benefit from the improvement in environmental quality and are likely to develop new comparative advantages in the environmentally more sensitive industries. So far, most empirical studies have concluded that the proportion of environmental costs to the total production costs is still so marginal that environmental policies have hardly any effect on comparative advantage patterns and thus on foreign trade. One of the few exceptions is Van Beers and Van den Bergh (1997), who found that stricter regulations have some negative impact on bilateral trade flows between OECD countries. The aim of this paper is to show that this outcome is partly due to model mis-specification. The analysis is based on a triple indexed fixed-effects model and on its variant's. It is found that, as so on as both the importing and exporting country specific effects are taken into consideration, the relationship between stricter regulations and foreign trade becomes statistically insignificant. This suggests that environmental costs do not have a real impact, neither negative nor positive, on foreign trade.
-
ItemA dynamic panel analysis of the profitability of Australian tax entities( 2000-11)This paper investigates the determinants of profitability of Australian tax entities over the period 1993/94 to 1996/97 for each of 91 three-digit ANZSIC industries. The theoretical model is based on that of Cowling and Waterson (1976). However, it is augmented by the inclusion of lagged profitability to allow for habit persistence in entity profitability. The so-called operational Wansbeek-Bekker estimator is used to control for endogeneity of this lagged dependent variable, whilst simultaneously controlling for observed and unobserved entity heterogeneity. Aggregate results suggest that profitability in the previous year, entity capital intensity, and barriers to entry have the expected positive association with current profitability measured by the price-cost margin. Entity market share-and to a lesser extent concentration-are found to have a U shaped relationship with profitability.
-
ItemHabit Persistence in Effective Tax Rates: Evidence Using Australian Tax Entities( 2000-09)This paper uses administrative data from the Australian Tax Office, to model the effective tax rates (ETRs) of large Australian corporates. The extent to which there is any habit persistence in ETRs is also examined. The results suggest that unobserved entity heterogeneity is important in explaining ETRs. In terms of observed heterogeneity, entity size, level of leverage, capital intensity, foreign income and R&D, are all important explanators of ETRs. There is also evidence of a significant amount of habit persistence, implying that ETRs converge monotonically towards the statutory rate of corporation tax.
-
ItemA Model for Ordered Data with Clustering of Observations( 2000-01)There is no qualitative dependent model that can simultaneously account for data sets in which the variable of interest has both a multi-modal distribution and is potentially ordered. Such a multimodal distribution may be the result of individuals being captive to particular choices. Such a case arises when there is digit preferencing (particular numbers, such as 0, 5 and 101 are often favored in many survey-based data sets). This paper introduces a new discrete choice model, the Digit Ordered Extreme Value (DOGEV), that does account for both ordering and digit preferencing in the data, and applies it to an Australian Inflationary Expectations data set.
-
ItemConsumer Sentiment and Australian Consumer Spending( 2000-11)There is a growing literature that seeks to analyse the relationship between consumer sentiment and economic variables, primarily because of the pervasive belief that consumers' opinions and expectations can influence the direction of-or signal changes in the direction of-the economy. There has been little previous empirical work on Australian consumer sentiment, either in determining its explanatory power, or examining the factors that influence consumer sentiment. This research aims to fill part of this gap by providing a clearer understanding of the relationship between consumer attitudes and 'real' economic variables. Specifically, the predictive power of the consumer sentiment index for consumption will be examined using the methods proposed in Carroll, Fuhrer and Wilcox (1994). Private consumption expenditure accounts for a large proportion of GDP; hence, early detection of possible shifts in consumer spending could assist policy makers in smoothing out the business cycle. Our results suggest that the causal relationship between consumption and sentiment in Australia is more complicated than what Carroll et al suggest, and that the behaviour of consumption in Australia looks more like the permanent income hypothesis than it does in the US.
-
ItemUnderstanding Innovative Firms: An Empirical Analysis of the GAPS( 2000-05)This paper uses data from the Growth and Performance Survey of Australian firms to investigate the determinants of innovation. The measure of innovation is based on whether the firm introduced a new product or process in 1997. Various determinants are investigated including market structure, export status, the use of networks, and training. Regression analysis is conducted separately for manufacturing and non- manufacturing firms, and within each sector by firm size groups. Overall, the results show there is persistence in innovative activities (i.e. firms that innovated in 1995 are more likely to innovation in 1997); small manufacturing firms which use networks tend to be more innovative; and medium sized manufacturing firms that export are also more innovative. However, the main conclusion of the analysis is that many of the explanatory variables are not significant. Moreover, the results vary dramatically across firm size and sector, suggesting that the process of innovation is complex.
-
ItemAnalysing Firm-Level Labour Productivity Using Survey Data( 2000-06)This paper investigates the determinants of firm-level labour productivity in the manufacturing sector using GAPS data. These data are from a stratified survey, where the strata are based on industry and firm size. The paper focuses on whether weights should be applied in the regression analysis. Augmented Cobb-Douglas production functions are estimated, where a set of dummies are used as proxies for firm-level knowledge stocks. The regression results show that there are significant differences between the parameters estimated by weighted least squares (WLS) and OLS, particularly for the variables union density and training expenditure. These differences can be caused by parameter heterogeneity (across strata); in theoretical terms this means that applying the same production function across all firms is not appropriate. Given this parameter heterogeneity, both the OLS and WLS methods do not estimate parameters of interest. Instead, there is a requirement to estimate sub-sample regressions. These are presented in the second part of the empirical results.
-
ItemThe effects of wages on aggregate employment: a brief summary of empirical studies( 2000-09)This paper provides non-technical summaries of theories which posit a relationship between aggregate employment and real wages and presents results from Australian and selected overseas empirical studies. Neoclasssical supply side theories assume that real wages, for given endowments of physical capital, primarily influence the cost of employing labour, and have an inverse relationship to aggregate employment. Keynesian demand side theories maintain that real wages affect both demand for labour as well as the relative costs of employing different techniques of production. Most estimations of the wage elasticity of demand for labour assume that real output is fixed and are thus not proper elasticities of demand. Recent Australian estimates range from -0.15 to -1.0 but the equations are not long run estimates as they include either output or the capital stock as an explanatory variable.