Publications

The Costs of Doing Business in WA Rebecca Cassells, Alan Duncan, Yashar Tarverdi The cost of doing business in Western Australia has long been a rhetoric heard and discussed throughout the state, with increased economic activity in recent times exacerbating the issue. The geography of the state, with its capital – Perth, one... Read article 31 July 2015Focus on WA Read More
Beyond our Means? Rebecca Cassells, Alan Duncan, Simon Kelly, Rachel Ong ViforJ The ability of both households and governments to increase savings and manage debt has been an ongoing policy issue in Australia and throughout the world. Debt can be a good thing if it encourages real asset growth beyond that of... Read article 30 June 2015Focus on The States Read More
Gender in language and gender in employment Astghik Mavisakalyan Women lag behind men in many domains. Feminist scholars have proposed that sex-based grammatical systems in languages reinforce traditional conceptions of gender roles, which in turn contribute to disadvantaging women. This article evaluates the empirical plausibility of this claim in... Read article 17 June 2015Journal Articles Read More
Mortgage equity withdrawal and institutional settings Marietta Haffner, Rachel Ong ViforJ, Gavin Wood In this exploratory paper, we investigate whether there are links between institutional context and the development of markets in home equity conversion that are based on financial instruments facilitating mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW). Using secondary data and literature sources from... Read article 2 June 2015Journal Articles Read More
Australian demographic trends and their implications for housing subsidies Melek Cigdem, Gavin Wood, Rachel Ong ViforJ This Positioning Paper, funded by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), is the first output of a project that aims to forecast future housing subsidies that will accompany projected demographic changes and the challenges these trends may pose... Read article 31 May 2015Research Reports Read More
The Impact of Children on Australian Couples’ Wealth Accumulation Michael Dockery, Sherry Bawa Existing estimates of the cost of children focus on what parents spend on their children, which has limited relevance to parents’ financial capacity to meet those costs. An alternative indicator of the affordability of children, their impact upon couples’ wealth... Read article 7 May 2015Journal Articles Read More
When Two Worlds Collude Michael Dockery, Sherry Bawa Whether or not working from home or ‘telecommuting’ helps workers to balance work and family commitments, as opposed to providing an avenue for work to intrude on family life remains a contentious issue. On balance it seems the flexibility to... Read article 1 May 2015Working Papers Read More
Does school socio-economic status influence university outcomes? Ian W. Li, Michael Dockery This study explores the role of schools’ socioeconomic status in determining academic performance at university. Data for first year domestic undergraduates at an Australian university in 2011 to 2013 are linked to schools’ data to examine the role of student-... Read article 6 April 2015Journal Articles Read More
Does School Type Affect Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Development in Children? Hong Son Nghiem, Ha Nguyen, Khanam Rasheda, Luke B. Connelly This paper investigates the effects of primary school choices on cognitive and non-cognitive development in children using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). We militate against the measurement problems that are associated with individual unobserved heterogeneity by... Read article 1 April 2015Journal Articles Read More
Housing equity withdrawal in Australia: prevalence, patterns and motivations in mid-to-late life Rachel Ong ViforJ, Gavin Wood, Therese Jefferson, Marietta Haffner In an era of population ageing, the primary home is increasingly viewed as a personal resource that can perform a pension role in retirement. This article assesses the extent to which Australians aged 45 years and over withdraw housing equity... Read article 25 March 2015Journal Articles Read More
Exchange rate fluctuations and immigrants’ labour market outcomes Ha Nguyen, Alan Duncan In this paper, we exploit exogenous changes in exchange rates across home countries over time and panel data to identify the casual impact of exchange rate fluctuations on Australian immigrants’ labour market outcomes. We present new and robust evidence that,... Read article 2 March 2015Working Papers Read More
Macroeconomic Fluctuations in Home Countries and Immigrants’ Wellbeing Ha Nguyen, Alan Duncan In this paper we provide the first solid empirical evidence that improvements in home countries’ macroeconomic conditions, as measured by a higher GDP per capita and lower price levels, increase immigrants’ subjective well-being. We demonstrate this using 12 years of... Read article 2 March 2015Working Papers Read More