Economics - Research Publications
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ItemGambling with Stimulus Payments: Feeding Gaming Machines with Federal Dollars(Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 2013)In late 2008 and early 2009 the Australian Federal Government introduced a series of economic stimulus packages designed to maintain consumer spending in the early days of the Great Recession. When these packages were initiated the media suggested that the wide-spread availability of electronic gaming machines (EGMs, eg. slot machines, poker machines, video lottery terminals) in Australia would result in stimulating the EGMs. Using state level monthly data we estimate the degree to which the stimulus payments influenced EGM expenditure and the implications for state and territory gaming tax revenues.
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ItemSecondary School Fee Inflation: An Analysis of Private High Schools in Victoria, Australia(Carfax Publishing Ltd., 2017)The recent growth in privately administered secondary education in many developed countries has been a widely observed phenomenon. The Australian private secondary school sector has grown faster than those in any other OECD nation, even though the average tuition fees charged by these schools have increased at double the nation’s overall rate of inflation. In this paper, we employ a panel data set to estimate a set of hedonic price indices for private secondary schools that cater to different segments of the population in order to determine if and how changes in their characteristics influence the changes in fees.
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ItemInverse test confidence intervals for turning-points: A demonstration with higher order polynomials(Emerald Publishing, 2012)In this chapter we demonstrate the construction of inverse test confidence intervals for the turning points in estimated nonlinear relationships by the use of the marginal or first derivative function. First, we outline the inverse test confidence interval approach. Then we examine the relationship between the traditional confidence intervals based on the Wald test for the turning-points for a cubic, a quartic and fractional polynomials estimated via regression analysis and the inverse test intervals. We show that the confidence interval plots of the marginal function can be used to estimate confidence intervals for the turning points that are equivalent to the inverse test. We also provide a method for the interpretation of the confidence intervals for the second derivative function to draw inferences for the characteristics of the turning-point. This method is applied to the examination of the turning points found when estimating a quartic and a fractional polynomial from data used for the estimation of an Environmental Kuznets Curve. The Stata do files used to generate these examples are listed in the appendix along with the data.
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ItemThe influence of student experiences on post-graduation surveys(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2016-02-17)This study attempts to establish the extent to which in-class teaching quality instruments can be used to predict post-graduation survey results. It examines the responses for the Good Teaching Scale of the Course Experience Questionnaire administered to 10,433 students who completed their studies at a major Australian tertiary institution from 2003 to 2005 using a unique data-set that matched student records and measures of class characteristics to the individual survey responses. The findings indicate that the overall degree experiences of particular students can be predicted by measures of class differences as measured by teaching quality instruments and the grade distributions of the classes they completed. These factors are in addition to the effects of students’ own performance as measured by their grades, their field of study and their post-graduation experience. It was found that in-class administered teaching quality instruments have an asymmetric influence on post-graduation survey results. Higher than expected scores appear to have little impact, and lower than expected results were found to have a significant negative impact on post-graduation recollections. The grade distribution in classes taken was also found to be an important factor in explaining variation in degree satisfaction.
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ItemInverting the indirect-The ellipse and the boomerang: Visualizing the confidence intervals of the structural coefficient from two-stage least squares(ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA, 2017-08-01)In the just-identified model,the exact distribution of the two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimator of the coefficient of the endogenous regressor is a ratio of two normally distributed random variables. used Fieller's 1932 result to derive the density function of the estimator. In this paper, we present a novel graphical exposition of Fieller's 1954 technique to approximate the confidence interval for the 2SLS estimator. We use this approach to examine how the degree of endogeneity and instrument relevance influences the correspondence between the Fieller and traditional asymptotic confidence intervals for the estimator.
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ItemInvestment in Australian Aboriginal Art(Elsevier BV, 2020)Recent changes in Australian legislation that limit the value of how artworks that can be considered as assets in retirement funds have had an impact on the Australian Aboriginal Art market. In this paper we estimate the impact of these changes on the price index based on prices paid for 15,845 works by over 200 artists at art auctions from 1986 to 2019. Using an OLS and a quantile regression approach, we estimate hedonic price models for various segments of the Australian Aboriginal art market. These models are used to estimate price indices in order to investigate if the changes in Australian laws concerning the sale and use of art assets has influenced the potential returns for different segments of the market.
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ItemConfidence Intervals for Ratios: Econometric Examples with Stata(Elsevier BV, 2018)Ratios of parameter estimates are often used in econometric applications. However, the test of these ratios when estimated can cause difficulties since the ratio of asymptotically normally distributed random variables have a Cauchy distribution for which there are no finite moments. This paper presents a method for the estimation of confidence intervals based on the Fieller approach that has been shown to be preferable to the usual Delta method. Using example applications in both Stata and R, we demonstrate that a few extra steps in the examination of the estimate of the ratio may provide a confidence interval with superior coverage.
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ItemGrading Journals in Economics: The ABCs of the ABDC( 2018-01-01)
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ItemImpacts of graduated driver licensing regulations(Elsevier, 2020-05-01)We evaluate the impact of the Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) system introduced in Victoria, Australia as they influence both injury and fatality rates. Since 1990, the Victorian GDL scheme has undergone several modifications including the introduction of new requirements and the stricter enforcement of existing regulations. Our evaluation of the GDL is based on monthly mortality and morbidity data for drivers 18–25 for the period January 2000 to June 2017. We estimate the immediate and long-term impacts of each policy change to the GDL system. Our results indicate that several initiatives in the GDL system have had impacts on both fatalities and injuries requiring hospitalisation when differentiated by gender. In a number of cases we observe that reactions to these measures are common to both genders. These include: the signalling of the proposed GDL changes in the media, the introduction of an extra probationary year for those under 21, the total alcohol ban for the entire probationary period, and limits on peer passengers for the first year. Stricter mobile phone restrictions appear to have had no impact on injuries for either males or females although they were associated with lower fatality rates for both. In addition, we found an indication that in the period prior to the introduction of the mandatory requirement of 120 h supervised driving, there was a rise in male driver injuries possibly caused by a rush of more inexperienced learners to obtain their probationary licence.
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ItemEstimating risk premiums for regulated firms when accounting for reference-day variation and high-order moments of return volatility(Springer, 2021-04-01)In many jurisdictions, the determination of the acceptable rate of return for the assets of a regulated utility is based partially on the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) to determine risk premia. However, the traditional estimation of CAPM can be criticized for not including considerations of reference-day risk as well as the higher moments of the rates of return. In this paper, we attempt to account for both the potential variation induced by the definition of specific reference days and the higher moments of rates of return in the estimates of Beta. This paper provides a new methodology to account for reference-day variation. We construct a set of pseudo-monthly rates of return to identify the influence of reference-day choice. These pseudo-monthly asset returns are used to estimate measures of asset systematic risk for an international panel of regulated firms. To evaluate the influence of return rate volatility we examine the errors from the estimation of the CAPM with least squares, least absolute deviation and a partially adaptive maximum likelihood specification.