Research
Theme 4
Productive
Australia in the World Economy
Convenor:
Andrew Leigh
Description
| Events | Projects
| Grants | Visitors
The
wealth of any nation resides in its citizens’ flexibility,
skills, talent, and knowledge. Fostering the productive skills
of the population and designing institutions to allow these skills
to be used efficiently and equitably are central to Australia’s
– or indeed any country’s – ability to sustain
an increasing standard of
living. The theme includes four components —
Participation
and Equity
How do institutions
affect labour market outcomes? How will immigration and ageing
affect developed nations? What affects the economic participation
of income-support recipients? How does imperfect competition affect
labour markets? What do we know about inequality and social mobility,
and how government policies affect these outcomes? How can we
improve the life chances of Indigenous Australians?
Knowledge
and Health
Can we improve educational productivity through different systems
of school and higher education financing, or improving teacher
quality? How should we evaluate educational reform? What are the
major issues in work-related training and lifelong learning? How
do physical and mental health outcomes interact with economic
and social participation?
Economic
and Social Institutions
How should
we evaluate immigration policy, income-support policy, and Indigenous
policy? What is the conceptual basis for government fi nancial
intervention? Can we apply different funding models for government
investment, including in areas of maternity leave, child care
and aged care?
Economic
Growth and Public Policy
What are the
major issues in productivity growth within firms and across economies?
What microeconomic factors affect industry development? What should
be the role of government in the provision of infrastructure?
What constitutes optimal macroeconomic policy? How does regulation
affect market efficiency? What drives research and innovation
in firms?
Events
Conferences
25-26 April
2008
11th
Australasian Labour Econometrics Workshop
19-20 June
2008
New
Techniques in Development Economics
8-10 December
2008
Economics
and Democracy
Past
Conferences
28-29 November
2007
ANU Economics Showcase
Speakers will include some of the University’s ‘star’
economists, plus early career researchers. The conference will
bring together economists across ANU, including from the College
of Business and Economics, College of Asia and the Pacific and
the College of Arts and Social Sciences. Further
details.
5 February
2007
The Economics of Teacher Quality
Speakers included: Eric Hanushek (Stanford), Jonah Rockoff (Columbia)
and Hamilton Lankford (University at Albany). Full
program.
30 November
and 1 December 2006
An International Perspective on Immigration and Immigration
Policy
Speakers included: David Card (University of California Berkeley),
Christian Dustmann (University College London) and Barry Chiswick
(University of Illinois). Full
program.
2 November
2006
Inequality in Australia
Speakers: Christopher Jencks (Harvard), Peter Saunders (University
of New South Wales) and Bob Gregory (ANU). Full
program.
Seminars
28 May 2007
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Indigenous Crime
Speakers: Jennifer Clarke (College of Law), Boyd Hunter (College
of Arts and Social Sciences), Tim Rowse (College of Arts and Social
Sciences). Moderator:
Peter Radoll (Director, Jabal Indigenous Higher Education Centre).
30 April 2007
The
End of Monetarism
Presenter: William Coleman (College of Business and Economics).
Discussant: David Gruen (Australian Treasury)
Projects
Usage
of child care by child support customers
This research
examines child care usage patterns of child support payers and
payees in order to:
- provide
baseline information for determining child care usage by Child
Support customers prior to the implementation of reforms to
the Child Support Scheme;
- provide
Australian estimates of child care usage to feed into policy
development around models, which may assist in assessing changes
to child support amounts, associated with high child care costs;
- identify
how patterns might change over time post reform, as this will
provide input to updates of the cost of children calculations
that underpin the formula; and
- provide
information to feed into policy development to cater for parents
with greater than average child care costs.
The research
will analyse the following questions:
- What are
the patterns of child care usage and type and the costs of the
different types of child care for child support customers?
- How do
patterns of child care differ in relation to different levels
of care arrangements (e.g. shared care, full care, etc.), and
on average do child support customers use child care more or
less often than other parents?
- How do
different child support entitlements relate to different patterns
of child care?
- What effects
do child care costs have on workforce participation of child
support customers?
Patterns
of care post separation – the impact of the Child Support
Scheme
This research
will analyse the following questions:
- What are
the patterns of ‘regular contact’ and ‘shared
care’ between post-separated parents who are child support
customers?
- What factors
encourage agreement on ‘regular contact’ and ‘shared
care’ and what factors hinder this agreement?
- What are
the levels of conflict for parents with different care arrangements
and what are the factors associated with high conflict?
- Are there
any differences in outcomes for children with different levels
of contact and for those living in high or low conflict arrangements?
A
structural model of the effect of child care arrangements on children’s
developmental outcomes
This project
aims to investigate causal links between the mode and the intensity
of care and children’s development in Australia. To this
end we are building and estimating a structural model using LSAC
data over the next two years.
It is becoming
increasingly clear that the early childhood experience is vital
to children’s development and their success later in life.
A significant feature of early childhood is child care. Researchers
are currently trying to understand the effect of child care on
children’s development. While the debate continues, a consensus
seems to emerge that non-parental child care can be beneficial
for children’s development, provided the care is of “high
quality”. In this research we propose to investigate causal
links between the mode and the intensity of care (child care hours)
on the one hand and children’s development on the other.
The bulk of empirical evidence today is gathered in other countries.
Since the quality of child care in Australia is relatively high
in comparison with other countries, it is not clear that international
results are applicable in Australia. It is therefore important
to consider the Australian case directly.So, the aim of this project
is to investigate causal links between the mode and the intensity
of care and children’s development in Australia.
Factors
influencing fertility goals and patterns over time
This projects
attempts to answer the following research questions: How do fertility
patterns change over time, and what factors are associated with
these changes? Why do people’s fertility intentions change
over time or what prevents them from meeting their fertility goals?
Using HILDA
data, we will explore the role of the following factors in influencing
fertility plans and the extent to which they will be achieved:
- education,
socio-economic and employment status;
- geographic
factors (urban vs rural);
- macro-economic
factors;
- financial
security, including job stability, costs of housing and education;
- relationship
formation and stability (including length of time between relationship
formation and first child, length of time between first child
and subsequent child/ren),
- work environment,
including gender equity and family friendliness;
community supports; and
- social
and personal preferences, and
- differences
between women and men.
- A particular
issue of interest are factors associated with having a particular
number of children (eg. Having only one child, having two children,
three children or more).
Informal
care and labour market participation
This project
examines the affect of caring on labour market participation.
Many Australians
provide care to older relatives and people with a disability.
In 2003, 2.5 million people (16% of the population aged 15 years
and over) provided such care to 2.1 million people (ABS
Social Trends 2005).
Since a significant
portion of informal care is provided by people of working age,
an important policy question is to understand how caring affects
labour market participation. According to ABS data, 21% of primary
carers were employed part-time and 17% full-time. Some respondents
say that their caring duties were the main reason they left the
labour market.
In this project,
we are using panel data to look at the association between changes
in caring for the elderly or disabled, and changes in labour force
participation. We also propose to look at whether an increase
in caring obligations is associated with a change in self-reported
life satisfaction.
The
relationship between income support history and the characteristics
and outcomes of Australian youth
This project
investigates young people’s characteristics and outcomes
in relation to the income support history for the family. The
research takes advantage of new survey data collected as part
of the Youth in Focus project to assess the relationship between
a young person’s characteristics and outcomes on the one
hand and the income support history of his or her family on the
other. In particular, we are interested in the following questions:
- How do
the characteristics of young people vary by income support history?
- Do the
labour market and educational outcomes of young people vary
with the extent to which their families accessed the income
support system as they were growing up?
- Is health—i.e.,
self-assessed health, health behaviours, etc.—related
to income support history?
- How are
youths’ attitudes towards education, work, and income
support related to their experiences of the income support system?
This research
will provide a broad picture of the ways in which income support
histories might matter for young people and will be important
identifying the most important areas for future research. Moreover,
this exercise will be fundamental to developing a deeper understanding
of the strengths and weaknesses of the Youth in Focus Survey data
themselves.
This will
be a descriptive analysis of the survey data arising from the
Youth in Focus project. As such, it will provide a foundation
for identifying the key research areas to be pursued in the future.
It will result in a broad overview of the ways in which income
support histories affect the outcomes of young people.
Measurement
of income mobility
This project
looks at the question of how much of the apparent year-to-year
mobility in income in Australia is based on real changes in the
incomes of individuals and how much on ‘noise’ in
the measurement of income.
There are
good reasons for expecting individuals to move around the income
distribution from year-to-year. These include: changes in employment
status; changes in the jobs of those employed, including promotion;
improved job performance and consequent higher wages associated
with increased experience; changes in living arrangements associated
with lifecycle factors, such as partnering and family formation;
transitions from study to the full-time workforce; variation in
the return on financial assets from year to year; and health shocks,
among other factors. The impacts of these factors vary in the
extent to which they are ‘permanent’ or ‘temporary’,
but constitute ‘real’ sources mobility in income from
year-to-year. Measurement error might arise where individuals
guess their income, or round their income to nearby aggregates
(say the nearest ‘000) or deliberately and/or systematically
over- or understate their reports from year to year. While this
error does not contribute to true income mobility, it may act
to inflate artificially measured income mobility.
The research
aims to estimate what part of the variance in the change in income
from year-to-year that arises from measurement error. This estimate
can then be used to estimate the contribution to apparent income
of measurement error via simulation methods. Data from the first
five waves of HILDA will be used to do this.
Does
fertility respond to child care benefits in Australia?
This project
investigates the impact of the Child Care Benefits (CCB) on fertility
of Australians , using micro-data at the individual and the household
levels. This study builds on our 2006 research project designed
to explore how fertility responds to income incentives provided
by child-related schemes in Australia, where we found that Australians
do adjust their birth decisions in reaction to public programs
that offer financial incentives associated with children. Thus,
the CCB, as another principal family support scheme in Australia,
may also stimulate fertility by reducing the cost , though indirectly,
of raising children , especially for women who would also like
to participate in labour market.
Disparities
in children’s outcomes
This project
investigates characteristics of groups of children showing different
developmental outcomes.
It looks at
the question of which groups of children face developmental and
social problems. Whilst it is recognized that Australia’s
health, education and social systems are effective for the majority
of children, there is rising concern over the most vulnerable
and at risk groups for whom these systems may not work so well.
For example, childhood disabilities, child abuse and neglect,
psychological and psychosocial conditions remain problems for
today’s Australian children, which appear to be associated
with social adversity. Evidence on the prevalence and distribution
of these problems among Australian children is crucial in informing
policy development about targeting and funding. By analysing the
distribution of these problems using a rich and representative
dataset, this study aims to contribute to the policy discussion.
Explaining
changes in the number of children in lone parent families
This project
examines the changes over time of numbers of children living in
families reliant on government income assistance.
Longitudinal
Data Set (LDS) data indicate that the trend increase in the number
of lone mothers on low incomes has continued since the mid 1990s,
increasing by 132,000 or 48 per cent between 1995 and 2005. In
the eighteen months following June 2005, and for the first time
in two and half decades, there has been a remarkable change. The
number has fallen 38,000. What explains this strong trend growth
and the sudden change? This project is directed towards answering
this question.
The project
will:
- investigate
changes in the characteristics of lone parents over the last
twelve years to document the source of growth and trend reversal.
- explore
whether the growth in the number of lone parents and the trend
reversal was generated primarily by changes in the rate of inflows
to income support or changes in the length of stay on income
support.
- explain
why the changes have occurred with special emphasis on the recent
trend reversal in the number of lone parents
- assess
the economic, social and policy implications of the recent trend
reversal.
Do neighborhood resources matter? Accessibility and availability
of childcare
Accessible
and affordable childcare is an important factor in achieving the
goal of balancing work and child-rearing. This project will estimate
how the number of childcare places (capacity), staff-child ratio
(quality), and hourly fee (cost) are associated with changes in
the likelihood that families perceive difficulties in finding
a place at the childcare centre of their choice, finding good
quality childcare, dealing with the cost of childcare, and finding
care during school holidays. More detailed measures of capacity,
quality, and cost of childcare may be integrated into the analysis.
Investigating the impact of these perceived difficulties could
shed light on the causes behind the actual behavioural decisions
on labour force participation and childcare utilization.
Grants
Australian
Research Council Discovery grant - publication
In 2001 the Australian Research Council awarded a grant for research
into Public Policy Immigrant Settlement to Dr Deborah Cobb-Clark
of The SPEAR Centre, and Dr S. E. Khoo of The Australian Centre
for Population Research. The
results of this research appeared in 2006 in a 264 page book “Public
Policy and Immigrant Settlement”, edited by Deborah Cobb-Clark
and Siew-Ean Khoo, and published by Edward Elgar. This book examines
the role of immigration policy, and of economic and social policies
in promoting the settlement of immigrants to Australia. It is
based on research on two groups of recent immigrants who arrived
six years apart during the 1990s holding a range of visas including
family reunion, skilled and humanitarian visas. Contributors include
B.R. Chiswick, D.A. Cobb-Clark, T. Gørgens, S. Kennedy,
S.-E. Khoo, A.T. Le, J.T. McDonald, P.W. Miller, P.J. Thapa.
ARC
Linkage Grant
The Intergenerational Transmission of Dependence on Income Support:
Patterns, Causation and Implications for Australian Social Policy
Research is a 5-year ARC Linkage Grants-funded project in which
the ANU is working with the Australian Government Department of
Family and Community Services. The researchers on this project
are Dr Deborah Cobb-Clark, Dr Robert Breunig, Dr Tue Gørgens
of the Australian National University, Professor Jeff Borland
of the University of Melbourne, and Professors Robert Haveman
and Barbara Wolfe of The University of Wisconsin. The aim of this
project is to examine the consequences of growing up in an income-support
family. The first stage will describe the relationship between
parents’ and children’s income-support receipt to
determine whether these children are more likely to access income-support
programs themselves. Stage 2 will identify the causal mechanisms
through which parental income-support receipt influences children’s
outcomes. Identification of these transmission mechanisms is a
necessary first step in formulating policies targeted towards
breaking any cycle of welfare dependence. This project is innovative
in its use of survey data merged to unique administrative data
that link the income-support records of some 53,000 young Australians
and their parents . A pilot for the study, which will involve
surveying approximately 2,000 Australian youths and parents, is
scheduled for mid-2005.
Visitors
2008
Robert
Fairlie, University of California, Santa Cruz, 7 December
2007 - 31 January 2008
Allan
Wurtz, University of Aarhus, 7-25 January 2008
Rebecca
Brown, The Treasury, 29 January-September 2008
Philip
Clarke, University of Sydney, January-10 February; 15
April - tbc, 2008
Chris
Skeels, University of Melbourne, 7-14 January 2008
Robert
Haveman, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 9 January-14
February 2008
Bobbi
Wolfe, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 9 January-14
February 2008
Lixin
Cai, Melbourne Institute, February-July 2008
Michael
Baker, University of Toronto, 25 February-14 March 2008
Francesca
Cornaglia, Queen Mary, University of London/LSE, 10-31
March 2008
David
Prentice, Latrobe University, 24 March-4 April 2008
Jeffrey
Williamson, Harvard University, 29 March-6 May 2008
Myoung-jae
Lee, Korea University, 17-27 April 2008
Leah
Brooks, McGill University, April 2008
Robert
Schoeni, University of Michigan, 11-17 May 2008
David
Gray, University of Ottowa, early-20 June 2008
Steven
Haider, Michigan State University, 10 August-15 December
2008
Lee
Alston, University of Colorado at Boulder, August-October
2008 (8-12 wks)
Alan
Hamlin, University of Manchester, October-November-December
2008
Christian
Dustmann, University College London, December 2008
Victor
Lavy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, week to be confirmed,
2008
2007
Rob
Fairlie, University of California Santa Cruz, December
2007-January 2008
David
Neumark, University of California Irvine, August 2007
Jonah
Rockoff, Columbia University, February 2007
Continuing
Visitors
Michael Keating
Emeritus Prof
John Pitchford
Dr Peter Stemp | 
