Publications
Job Keepers and Job Seekers: How many workers will lose and how many will gain?
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
Potential Job Losses in the COVID-19 Pandemic
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
BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update – February 2020
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
Physical Isolation: Staying Connected During COVID-19
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
Paradise Postponed: Future Tense and Religiosity
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
Macroeconomic fluctuations in home countries and immigrants’ well-being
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
BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update – January 2020
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
BCEC Monthly Labour Market Update – December 2019
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
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
BCEC Quarterly Economic Commentary – December 2019
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
Can bribery buy health? Evidence from post-communist countries
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
The unintended consequences of increasing returns to scale in geographical economics
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