Economics - Research Publications
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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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ItemCommon cycles in labour market separation rates for Australian states( 2007-04)There is a considerable body of evidence showing that it is the inflow intounemployment that drives the unemployment rate up and down and so from a policy point ofview an important question is whether or not movements in state inflow reflect the impact ofstate-specific shocks or common shocks affecting the entire economy This paper reports theresults of using principal components analysis to search for a common cycle in time series datafor the rate at which people are leaving employment and moving to unemployment in the sixstates of Australia. It is concluded that there is a common cyclical component to each of thestate’s separation rates but that it accounts for only a small part of the total variation weobserve in the data set. In addition there are large idiosyncratic variations especially in the caseof three of the six states. These findings strengthen the case for regional labour market policyin Australia.
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ItemInvestment, profits and employmentin Kalecki & Keynes( 2007-03)This paper sets out my response to the articles by Paul Davidson in the Journal of PostKeynesian Economics in 2000 and 2002 dealing with the (supposed) superiority of Keynes’sexplanation of the “ultimate cause” of unemployment over that of Kalecki. I show that thereare a number of serious errors in Davidson’s explanation of Kalecki’s theories. I also arguethat we would have less of this sort of nonsense if ‘post keynesians’ like Davidson were torecognize that, for Keynes as for Kalecki, aggregate demand shocks are profit shocks. In thefinal section of the paper I explain why it is that I none-the-less agree most emphatically withDavidson when he says that Kalecki and Keynes had quite different ideas on the ‘causes’ or‘origins’ of (involuntary) unemployment in a capitalist economy.
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ItemUnemployment Rate Dispersion in Melbourne: The Regional Dimension(Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemModels of labour services andestimates of Total Factor Productivity( 2007-01)This paper examines the manner in which labour services are modelled in the aggregateproduction function, concentrating on the relationship between numbers employed and averagehours worked. It argues that numbers employed and hours worked are not perfect substitutesand that conventional estimates of total factor productivity which, by using total hours workedas the measure of labour services, assume they are perfect substitutes, will be biased whenthere are marked changes in average hours worked. The relevance of the theoretical argumentis illustrated using data for the United States and the United Kingdom.
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ItemUnemployment Rate Dispersion within Australian Cities(Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemThe Cyclical Dynamics and Volatilityof Australian Output and Employment( 2006-07)In this paper we examine the volatility of aggregate output and employment in Australia withthe aid of a frequency filtering method (the Butterworth filter) that allows each time series to bedecomposed into trend, cycle and noise components. This analysis is compared with moretraditional methods based simply on the examination of first differences in the logs of the rawdata using cointegration-VAR modelling. We show that the application of univariate AR andbivariate VECM methods to the data results in a detrended series which is dominated by noiserather than cyclical variation and gives break points which are not robust to alternativedecomposition methods. Also, our conclusions challenge accepted wisdom in relation to outputvolatility in Australia which holds that there was a once and for all sustained reduction inoutput volatility in or around 1984. We do not find any convincing evidence for a sustainedreduction in the cyclical volatility of the GDP (or employment) series at that time, but we dofind evidence of a sustained reduction in the cyclical volatility of the GDP (and employment)series in 1993/4. We also find that there is a clear association between output volatility andemployment volatility. We discuss the key features of the business cycle we have identified aswell as some of the policy implications of our results.
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ItemSurvival on the Titantic: Illustrating Waldand LM Tests for Proportions and Logits( 2006-06)Students are very interested in lecture examples and class exercisesinvolving data connected to the maiden voyage and the sinking of the liner Titanic.Information on the passengers and their fate can be used to explore relationshipsbetween various tests for differences in survival rates between different groups ofpassengers. Among the concepts examined are tests for differences of proportionsusing a normal distribution, a chi-square test for independence, a test for the equalityof two logits and a test for the significance of the coefficient of a binary variable inlogit model. The relationship between Wald and LM test statistics is also examined.Two related examples are given, one to be used for step by step instructional purposesand one to be given as an exercise to students.
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ItemCaryle, Malthus and Sismondi: The Origins ofCarlyle’s Dismal View of Political Economy( 2006-06)While it is correct to say that Carlyle first applied the exact phrase “dismalscience” to political economy in his 1849 article on plantation labour in the West Indies,I argue that Carlyle came to the view that political economy was “dismal” well beforethat time. Indeed, his negative attitude can be seen quite clearly in his earlier publishedreactions to the writings of Malthus (and Sismondi, amongst others) on populationgrowth and its consequences and also to the perceived ‘materialistic’ nature of thesubject matter of political economy.
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ItemAn employment equation for Australia(ECONOMIC SOC OF AUSTRALIA BROWN PRIOR ANDERSON PTY LTD, 2005-09)