Publications
The Impact of Children on Australian Couples’ Wealth Accumulation
Abstract Existing estimates of the cost of raising children mainly focus on what parents spend on their children. This paper challenges the conceptual basis for this approach, and instead investigates how the presence of children impacts upon couples’ wealth accumulation using the life-cycle... Read article
Two Billion Dollars a Week: The Global Resources Boom and Western Australia
Western Australia (WA) has a long association with resource-driven growth, beginning with the Kalgoorlie gold rush of the 1890s which drew people from all over Australia and the world. That boom underpinned the rapid development of what was still a... Read article
Development Priorities in an Emerging Decentralized Economy
Based on a data set of 217 communities in Armenia, this paper studies the choice of priority directions in local development programs in the years 2003–2005. The scope of programs is presented and discussed relative to good practices in local... Read article
Educational Attainment Across Generations
This paper analyses educational attainment among immigrant and native-born youth in Australia. We find that young Australians from non-English-speaking-background (NESB) immigrant families have an educational advantage over their English-speaking-background (ESB) immigrant and Australian-born peers. The educational advantages associated with immigrant... Read article
Quality, quantity, spending and prices
One measure of the change in the “quality” of consumption is the degree to which the consumption basket as a whole moves towards more luxurious goods, away from necessities. We introduce two related measures based on the luxury/necessity distinction. One... Read article
Monetary Transfers from Children and the Labour Supply of Elderly Parents
In the absence of a broad-based pension scheme, the elderly in developing countries may rely on monetary transfers made by their children and on their own labour supply. This article examines whether monetary transfers from children help to reduce elderly... Read article
School Completion
This paper examines how disadvantage affects educational outcomes, in this instance, Year 12 completion. While previous studies have found a strong link between parental education or occupational status and Year 12 completion, this research was able to capture a broader... Read article
Immigration and school choice in Australia
This article examines the relationship between the share of immigrants in a locality and private versus public school choices of natives and immigrants in Australia. Using the 2001 Australian Census data, it finds that private school attendance among native-born Australians... Read article
The spatial and distributional impacts of the Henry Review recommendations on stamp duty and land tax
This report is the second Final Report of a project that examines the impact on supply and affordability from implementation of the Henry Review recommendations in relation to negative gearing, land tax and stamp duty. There are two main recommendations... Read article
World food demand
Long-term projections of global food demand are heavily dependent on which functional form of the food demand equation is used. Given that real incomes can change substantially over the long-term, key elements are the dependence of the income elasticity on... Read article
Immigration, public education spending, and private schooling
This article examines the impact of immigration on private school enrolment through the mechanism of public education spending. It finds that the immigrant share of population raises private school enrolment across countries by leading to a decrease in the share... Read article