Publications

Job Keepers and Job Seekers: How many workers will lose and how many will gain? Rebecca Cassells, Alan Duncan In response to the predicted job losses and business closures brought on by responses to COVID-19, the government has announced an unprecedented Job Keeper package at a cost of $130 billion. The package is expected to reach more than 6... Read article 31 March 2020COVID-19 Insights  |  Workforce and Skills Read More
Potential Job Losses in the COVID-19 Pandemic Rebecca Cassells, Michael Dockery, Alan Duncan, Daniel Kiely, Astghik Mavisakalyan The necessary government response to COVID-19 saw tens of thousands of Australians out of a job and lines stretching down the footpaths of Centrelink offices across the nation. Workers immediately impacted by new trading regulations are those employed primarily in... Read article 30 March 2020COVID-19 Insights  |  Workforce and Skills  |  COVID-19 Insights Read More
BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update – February 2020 Alan Duncan, Rebecca Cassells, Michael Dockery The BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update provides expert insights and analysis around the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) labour force data release, focusing on employment patterns across state and territories. Key findings from February 2020 data include: BCEC Monthly Labour Market... Read article 28 March 2020Monthly Labour Market Update Read More
Physical Isolation: Staying Connected During COVID-19 Rebecca Cassells, Alan Duncan, Daniel Kiely, Astghik Mavisakalyan Most of our Social Interactions are already Digital – So will Physical Isolation Change Anything? Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that there are new rules around how we should interact with each other. There are strict limitations... Read article 26 March 2020COVID-19 Insights  |  Health and Wellbeing  |  Social Issues  |  COVID-19 Insights Read More
Paradise Postponed: Future Tense and Religiosity Astghik Mavisakalyan, Yashar Tarverdi, Clas Weber This paper identifies a new source of differences in religiosity: the presence of future tense marking in language. We argue that the rewards and punishments that incentivise religious behaviour are less effective for speakers of languages that contain future tense... Read article 25 March 2020Working Papers Read More
Macroeconomic fluctuations in home countries and immigrants’ well-being Ha Nguyen, Alan Duncan This article exploits plausibly exogenous changes in macroeconomic conditions across home countries over time and panel individual data to examine the causal impact of home countries’ macroeconomic conditions on immigrants’ well-being in Australia. We present new and robust evidence that... Read article 1 March 2020Journal Articles Read More
BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update – January 2020 Alan Duncan, Rebecca Cassells, Michael Dockery The BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update provides expert insights and analysis around the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) labour force data release, focusing on employment patterns across state and territories. Key findings from January 2020 data include: Reaching 150,000 jobs by... Read article 21 February 2020Monthly Labour Market Update Read More
BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update – December 2019 Alan Duncan, Rebecca Cassells, Daniel Kiely The BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update provides expert insights and analysis around the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) labour force data release, focusing on employment patterns across state and territories. Key findings from December 2019 data include: Labour market holds steady... Read article 24 January 2020Monthly Labour Market Update Read More
BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update – November 2019 Welcome to the November 2019 edition of the BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update (MLMU). This latest MLMU release provides expert insights and analysis around the latest ABS Labour Force data release for November 2019, focusing on employment patterns across state... Read article 20 December 2019Monthly Labour Market Update Read More
BCEC Quarterly Economic Commentary – December 2019 Daniel Kiely, Silvia Salazar, Alan Duncan This Western Australia Quarterly Economic Commentary analyses the most recent data on economic and social indicators for WA. Key findings from this edition include: Mixed economic tidings for WA this Christmas With the recently announced Mid-Year Financial Projections Statement, WA Treasurer Ben... Read article 19 December 2019Economic Commentary  |  Quarterly Economic Commentary Read More
Can bribery buy health? Evidence from post-communist countries Astghik Mavisakalyan, Vladimir Otrachshenko, Olga Popova Corruption is pervasive, but we know little about its effects on individual lives. This paper examines whether living in a corrupt society has deleterious effects on health. Using individual-level data from 28 post-communist countries, we demonstrate that bribing for public... Read article 17 December 2019Working Papers Read More
The unintended consequences of increasing returns to scale in geographical economics Steven Bond-Smith Increasing returns to scale is now fundamental to both economics and economic geography. But first generation theories of endogenous growth imply an empirically-refuted scale effect. This scale effect and assumptions to negate the scale effect both imply unintentional spatial consequences.... Read article 3 December 2019Working Papers Read More