Economics - Research Publications
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ItemDiscrete hours labour supply modelling: Specification, estimation and simulation(John Wiley & Sons, 2005)The assumption behind discrete hours labour supply modelling is that utility-maximising individuals choose from a relatively small number of hours levels, rather than being able to vary hours worked continuously. Such models are becoming widely used in view of their substantial advantages, compared with a continuous hours approach, when estimating and their role in tax policy microsimulation. This paper provides an introduction to the basic analytics of discrete hours labour supply modelling. Special attention is given to model specification, maximum likelihood estimation and microsimulation of tax reforms. The analysis is at each stage illustrated by the use of numerical examples. At the end, an empirical example of a hypothetical policy change to the social security system is given to illustrate the role of discrete hours microsimulation in the analysis of tax and transfer policy changes.
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ItemModeling and calculating the effect of treatment at baseline from panel outcomes(ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA, 2007-10)
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ItemGlobal challenges for land administration and sustainable development( 2006)An important government activity of all nation states is building and maintaining a land administration system (LAS) with the primary objective of supporting an efficient and effective land market. This includes cadastral surveys to identify and subdivide land, land registry systems to support simple land trading (buying, selling, mortgaging and leasing land) and land information systems to facilitate access to the relevant information, increasingly through an Internet enabled e-government environment. For most countries a cadastre is at the core of the LAS providing spatial integrity and unique land parcel identification in support of security of tenure and effective land trading. For many cadastral and land administration officials and for much of society, these are the primary, and in many cases the only roles of the cadastre and LAS. However the role, and particularly the potential of LAS and their core cadastres, have rapidly expanded over the last couple of decades and will continue to change in the future. But what is a land market in a modern economy? Since our LAS were developed, land commodities and trading patterns have undergone substantial changes: they have become complex, corporatised and international. Are our current LAS designed to support a modern land market that trades in complex commodities such as mortgage backed certificates, water rights, land information, time shares, unit and property trusts, resource rights, financial instruments, insurance products, options, corporate development instruments and vertical villages? Modern land markets involve a complex and dynamic range of activities, processes and opportunities, and are impacted upon by a wide range of restrictions and responsibilities imposed on land especially since WW II. These restrictions are continually evolving, primarily in response to economic, energy and sustainable development objectives. They are equally being driven by developments in information and communications techn
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ItemRegional Differences in the Severity of Recessions in the UK(Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemThe Optimal Composition of Government Expenditure(Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemThe truncated core for games with limited aspirations(Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemInefficient policies and incumbency advantage( 2007-06)We study incumbency advantage in a dynamic game with incomplete information between an incumbent and a voter. The incumbent knows the true state of the world, e.g., the severity of an economic recession or the level of criminal activities, and can choose the quality of his policy. This quality and the state of the world determine the policy outcome, i.e., the economic growth rate or the number of crimes committed. The voter only observes the policy outcome and then decides whether to reelect the incumbent or not. Her preferences are such that she would reelect the incumbent under full information if and only if the state of the world is above a given threshold level. In equilibrium, the incumbent is reelected in more states of the world than he would be under full information. In particular, he chooses inefficient policies and generates mediocre policy outcomes whenever the voter's induced belief distribution will be such that her expected utility of reelecting the incumbent exceeds her expected utility of electing the opposition candidate. Hence, there is an incumbency advantage through ine±cient policies. We provide empirical evidence consistent with the prediction that reelection concerns may induce incumbents to generate mediocre outcomes
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ItemFalse alarm? terror alerts and reelection( 2007)We study a game with asymmetric information to analyze whether an incumbent can improve his reelection prospects using distorted terror alerts. The voters’ preferred candidate depends on the true terror threat level, and the voters are rational and therefore aware of the incumbent’s incentive to distort alerts. In equilibrium, a moderately “Machiavellian” incumbent reports low and high threat levels truthfully, but issues the same distorted alert for a range of intermediate threat levels. He thereby ensures his reelection for some threat levels at which he would not be reelected under full information.
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ItemAn Analysis of the Questions on University Teaching Surveys and the Universities that Use Them: The Australian Experience( 2007-05)This paper is the first attempt to perform an analysis of the internal Quality of TeachingSurveys (QTS) used in all Australian Universities by investigating how they compareacross Universities. We categorize the questions on each university’s QTS into one of 18types and then define a proximity measure between the surveys. We then use anagglomerative cluster analysis to establish groupings of these institutions on the basis ofthe similarity of their QTSs as well as groupings of question types by their frequency ofuse. In addition, we also determine if the form of the survey is related to the responsesrecorded by the Course Evaluation Questionnaire (CEQ) that is administered to allgraduates of Australian Universities. This was done by the use of regression analysis toestablish if the form of the questionnaire is related to the overall good teaching scoresearned by the universities from the CEQ..
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ItemCooperative R&D under uncertainty with free entry( 2007-08)In the last few decades, the effects of cooperative R&D arrangements on innovation andwelfare have played an important role in policy making. The goal of this paper is to analyzethe effects of cooperative R&D arrangements in a model with a stochastic R&D process andoutput spillovers. Our main innovation is to allow for free entry in both the R&D race andthe product market. To determine the desirability of cooperation in R&D environments,we compare three different ways of organizing R&D activities: R&D competition, R&Dcartels, and RJV cartels. In contrast with the literature, we assume that cooperative R&Darrangements do not have to include all of the firms in the industry. We show that sharingof research outcomes is a necessary condition for the profitability of cooperative R&Darrangements with free entry. The profitability of RJV cartels depends on their size. Theimpact of cooperative R&D arrangements on the aggregate level of innovation depends onwhether there are participants in the R&D race who are a part of the cooperative R&Darrangement. If some outsiders choose to participate in the R&D race, the aggregate rate ofinnovation remains unaffected by the formation of a cooperative R&D arrangement. Otherwise,it increases. R&D cartels may be welfare-improving in cases when they cause theaggregate rate of innovation to increase. In such cases, it may be desirable to subsidizethem. Since sharing of R&D outcomes affects the equilibrium number of firms in the productmarket after the R&D race, the consumer welfare effects of RJV cartels are sensitiveto the specification of consumer preferences. Subsidies may be desirable in cases of largerRJVs since they are the ones which are less likely to be profitable.