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Alcohol taxation is an important policy instrument for correcting for market failures associated with excessive alcohol consumption. This paper examines the beverage‐specific negative externalities by providing empirical evidence linking ten alcoholic beverage types to drink‐driving and hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviours when intoxicated, using data from six waves of an Australian recreational drug survey. We find that regular‐strength beer and pre‐mixed spirits in a can rank the highest in their links to negative behaviours, followed by mid‐strength beer, cask wine, and bottled spirits. Conversely, drinking low‐strength beer or fortified wine reduces the probability of these risky and unlawful behaviours. Bottled wine is shown to be associated with an elevated chance of drink‐driving but a reduced chance of other negative behaviours. In contrast to the existing volumetric tax rates for per litre of alcohol, of all harmful beverage types, cask wine appears to be significantly undertaxed relative to its external costs to society. We also note that regular‐ and mid‐strength beer are comparable to pre‐mixed drinks in terms of external costs, and yet there is a significant disparity across their tax rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents ways of improving the allocation of land between speculators and users in Australia. Influence of land speculation on the operation of the land market; Efficiency using land resources; Consideration of capital gains as taxable income.

Presents several abstracts on economics. 'Organization and Innovation,' by F.J. Willet; 'Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Countries,' by D.H. Whitehead; 'Some Development Problems in Asian Countries,' by A.M. Kerr.

This paper uses Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data linked to administrative data to track the educational and labour market outcomes of young people. Students with lower skills have lower rates of participation in further education. While low‐skilled men out‐earn their higher‐skilled counterparts when they are very young, their earnings are overtaken by those with higher skills when they are in their early 20s, and they earn around 15 per cent less by the age of 25. The differences among women are substantially larger – women with low skills earn approximately 35 per cent less than their higher‐skilled counterparts by age 25. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Tony was an accomplished economic theorist, his passion was applied public policy and the contribution economics could make to improving the economic welfare of Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. I By Professor Martin Richardson, Australian National University, and Professor Binh Tran-Nam, University of New South Wales i VII Vale Professor Anthony John Makin Anthony John Makin was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, on 7 June 1955 and passed away on 26 November 2021 at the age of 66. He made important contributions to four related areas of studies: natural resources and environmental economics; international trade; theory of dynamic games and dynamic optimisation; and applied microeconomic theory, particularly industrial organisation theory and public economics. Tony was Professor of Economics in the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics at Griffith Business School, Griffith University, and Director of Griffith's APEC Study Centre. [Extracted from the article]

DSGE models incorporate attractive theoretical specifications of the behaviour of forward‐looking consumers facing an uncertain future. Central to these specifications is the idea that consuming agents decide their consumption level in year t by applying a function (policy rule) whose arguments represent information available in year t. Using the insight that, under certain conditions, the policy rule (but not the resulting policy) is invariant through time, DSGE modellers have developed the perturbation and other methods for quantitatively specifying policy rules. They have applied these methods in models with limited sectoral disaggregation. In this paper we adapt the perturbation method so that it can be used to specify a policy rule for consumption in a full‐scale CGE model. A novel feature of our method is the use of specially constructed CGE simulations to reveal key parameters used in deriving the policy rule. We apply our method in illustrative simulations of the effects of a technology shock in a 70‐sector version of the USAGE model of the US economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the writings of Peter Lloyd, one of Australia's best-known economists, who has been elected Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia. It notes the importance of his work, mostly done jointly with Herbert Grubel, on intra-industry trade, and his extensive contributions to trade theory. In addition there have been many papers on the global trading system and regionalism, and on the Australian and New Zealand economies. It describes his approach to economics and his many professional activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyses citations in the work of a large number of PhD students. We show that the pattern of citations of journal articles, books and other reference material differs substantially across areas within economics. An investigation of reciprocal citations reveals a surprisingly low degree of communication among the Group of Eight universities and a high propensity to cite authors from the same institution, especially supervisors. We also analyse the Australian share of cited works, and identify journals, articles and authors that PhD students value highly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to provide new empirical evidence that demonstrates the importance of digital technologies in promoting economic growth, drawing on the literature on advances in growth and leveraging a broader and more robust country-level panel dataset. In particular, this paper estimates the long-run economic impact of digital technologies using mobile phone penetration and internet usage as broad indicators. The empirical results suggest that, between 2004 and 2014, the diffusion of digital technologies significantly improved economic output in Australia and abroad, contributing to steady-state gross domestic product per capita growth of approximately 5.8 per cent on average. These findings could serve as the starting-point for predictions about the likely impact of future technologies, providing a better understanding for policy-makers in prioritising initiatives that will continue to lift living standards in the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the difference in academic performance of the oldest (treated) and youngest (control) students in a given grade. We employ Queensland Department of Education school administration panel data for the population of 2008–2016 state school students. Academic performance is measured using standardised test scores (National Assessments Program in Numeracy and Literacy) and teacher‐assessed measures of performance and effort for individuals in grades 3, 5 and 7. The empirical analysis employs a regression discontinuity design based on birth date relative to administrative rules on age of school enrolment. The class‐assigning mechanism operates via a known cut‐off date and results in the oldest child in the grade being almost a year older than the youngest. However, lack of enrolment compliance implies the regression discontinuity design is fuzzy rather than sharp, identifying the local average treatment effect rather than the average treatment effect. In particular, given the one‐sided nature of non‐compliance, we employ the partially fuzzy estimator of Battistin and Rettore (Journal of Econometrics, 142, 715–30, 2008). Exploiting a 2008 enrolment cut‐off date reform, which delayed school starting age by 6 months, we find a large increase in enrolment compliance. This exogenous change in the enrolment age enables one to gauge the importance of enrolment non‐compliance in estimating the treatment effect of being older versus younger in cohort. We find that pre‐reform the treatment effect is small and generally statistically insignificant and post‐reform it is sizeable and statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the two‐way interaction between central banks and financial markets using a beauty contest framework. The analysis identifies when asset prices reveal useful information about fundamentals and when they reflect back the central bank's pronouncements. In equilibrium, the central bank is overly dependent on financial market signals and the information value of asset prices is diminished. Our results highlight the need to guard against giving undue prominence to market signals during monetary policy deliberations, but they can be specific to the mathematical model employed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the nature of earnings dynamics in Australia, using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey 2001–2020. Our results indicate that the distribution of earnings shocks displays negative skewness and excess kurtosis, deviating from the conventional linearity and normality assumptions. Wage changes are strongly associated with earnings changes and account more for the dispersion of earnings shocks; meanwhile, the contribution of hour changes is largely absent in upward movement and relatively small in downward movement of earnings changes. Furthermore, family and government insurance plays distinct roles in reducing exposure to earnings risk. Government insurance embedded in the targeted transfer system is important in mitigating the dispersion of shocks, whereas family insurance via income pooling and adjustment of secondary earners' labour market activities is dominant in reducing the magnitude and likelihood of extreme and rare shocks. The magnitude and persistence of earnings risk as well as the insurance role of family and government vary significantly across gender, marital and parental status. Accounting for these non‐Gaussian and non‐linearity features is important for evaluating the insurance role of government transfer programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID‐19 pandemic has had widespread impacts on the labour market and on individuals' well‐being. This paper examines gender differences in the relationship between labour market outcomes and well‐being over the pandemic. We draw on longitudinal data from the ANUpoll survey that has been conducted before COVID‐19 and at several points throughout the pandemic. We find higher levels of well‐being among those who are employed relative to most other labour market outcomes, controlling for individual random effects. These gaps in well‐being are greatly reduced or disappear after controlling for financial circumstances and health. We also observe gender differences in the relationship between well‐being and labour market outcomes, in particular: (i) life satisfaction is more closely related to labour market outcomes for females relative to males, and (ii) there is a stronger association between being unemployed and not actively looking and serious mental distress for males relative to females. Well‐being tends to be lower during lockdowns and during the Omicron wave in January 2022, particularly among females. Our findings have implications for ongoing and future pandemic policies. Where restrictions that reduce employment are necessary, we show that during a pandemic financial support has the potential to reduce or in some cases potentially close the gap in well‐being between those who are employed and those in other employment activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides the first estimates of the extent of common ownership of competing firms in Australia. Combining data on market shares and substantial shareholdings, we calculate the impact of common ownership on effective market concentration. Among firms where we can identify at least one owner, 31 per cent share a substantial owner with a rival company. Analysing 443 industries, we identify 49 that exhibit common ownership, including commercial banking, explosives manufacturing, fuel retailing, insurance and iron ore mining. Across the Australian economy, common ownership increases effective market concentration by 21 per cent. Our estimates imply that if listed firms seek to maximise the value of their investors' portfolios, then they place the same value on $3.70 of their competitors' profits as on $1 of their own profits. We discuss the limitations of the available data, and the potential implications of common ownership for competition in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper quantifies the factors contributing to Australia's gender gap in superannuation balances. Around 60 per cent of the gap can be attributed to the prior stock of superannuation, for respondents who had superannuation balances in both 2014 and 2018 in the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. This is partly due to the accumulation of the prior gap with investment returns. Financial literacy and risk aversion explain around 7 per cent of the gap in total, such as through impacts on subsequent investment returns. Work patterns and wage rates affect contributions and explain approximately 30 per cent of the superannuation gap in total. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of the 2008 financial crisis on Taiwan's fertility by exploiting a natural experiment in which public‐sector workers are unaffected due to job security. The financial crisis reduces the number of children by increasing the first‐birth interval, which leads to a lower probability of first birth. Women aged 33–38 experienced the largest decline in the probability of first birth, increasing the risks of permanent childlessness. Low‐income households and those with less‐educated spouses have a greater increase in the first‐birth interval. The number of children and the probability of first birth remain significantly lower 9 years after 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the gender gap in financial literacy and pension savings is examined in this paper. In Australia, individuals have considerable discretion with respect to how their pension savings are managed. We argue that financial literacy should have a positive impact on the profitability of these decisions. Analysis based on micro‐data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey suggests that a sizable share of the gender gap in pension savings can be attributed to the gender gap in financial literacy. Therefore, policies aimed at improving the financial literacy of women should help improve the living standards of women in retirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journal ranking is a hazardous endeavour even if it is based on objective criteria. Additional problems arise from the use of an opinion-based bucket classification of journals. As a bucket classification system, the ABDC list encourages rent-seeking and arbitrage whereby a researcher goes for the lowest-quality journal within each bucket or moves to another bucket. The quality of research output should not be judged on the basis of a predetermined list. It would be beneficial if the Australian Business Deans Council list were abandoned for the same reasons that led to the abandonment of the Excellence in Research for Australia list. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Economic Record announces the 54th Australian Conference of Economists, to be held in Sydney from July 6-9, 2025, hosted by the Economics Society of Australia, NSW branch. The conference will focus on the role of economics in addressing pressing issues such as climate change, inequality, healthcare, and resource management. The event will also celebrate the centenary of the Economic Society of Australia, recognizing the contributions of economists to Australian society over the past 100 years. Submissions for papers on these topics are welcome, with selected papers to be published in a special issue of the Economic Record. [Extracted from the article]

The article reports on developments which are of interest to economists. The Program Committee for the 2005 Australian Conference of Economists has bestowed the Economic Society's prize of Best Paper to Ralph Bayer and Susana Iranzo. The A. R. Bergstrom Prize in Econometrics for 2005 has been given to Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy and Leo Krippner. The Economic Society of Australia is calling on economists to participate in the 35th Australian Conference of Economists which will be held on September 25-27, 2006 at the Curtin University of Technology.

This paper provides new data of personal consumption expenditure at current and constant prices from 1900 to 1938–1939. The series is linked in with the official estimates, available from 1948–1949, to provide a broadly consistent series of estimates of consumers’ expenditure from Federation, based on new series of data. We comment on the differences in estimates often used to compare trends in real incomes, and attribute the differences as being mainly due to limitations of official data. We use the present results to describe the changes in the pattern of expenditure by main functional groupings, and compare the changes in real per capita expenditure in Australia with that in the UK and USA since the end of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do ethnic enclaves assist or hinder immigrants' economic performance? The empirical literature on this question is inconclusive. In this paper we extend the literature by constructing a dynamic variable from micro‐panel data to capture the effects of spatial networks of immigrants' ethnic‐specific resources. We account for endogeneity of the network and other variables. Using the HILDA data set, and a suite of robustness checks, results show that immigrants' earnings are positively associated with the concentration and resources of their country‐of‐birth group. The effect is prominent for immigrants born in non‐English‐speaking countries and for high‐skilled immigrants, highlighting positive ethnic network spill‐over effects for these groups. Moreover, accounting for the network variable provides a viable explanation for the divisions in previous international results on ethnic concentration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non‐pecuniary rewards to work, or psychic income, are a pervasive phenomenon in several labour markets, yet they have been little investigated either theoretically or empirically. Creative industries are a particular case where non‐monetary incentives are widely observed. These are also industries where moonlighting commonly occurs because artistic or creative activity is generally low paid, such that workers have to balance their chosen pursuit with another job to make ends meet. In this paper we propose a labour supply model that accounts for the psychic income derived from creative work, monetary remuneration and heterogeneity between occupations in a multiple job‐holding context. The model is estimated using three‐stage least squares, allowing us to control for simultaneity bias due to the constraint of time and the tendency for multiple job‐holdings. We estimate the model using data from a survey of Australian book authors. The use of a proxy for psychic income, measured as the disparity between an author's monetary compensation and a shadow price of labour, enables us to gauge the effects of non‐pecuniary benefits on the labour supply decisions of this type of creative worker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inflation leads individuals to work harder to spend and not carry their money holdings. Two alternative margins have been used to model this effect: the extensive margin (the frequency of shopping per period) and the intensive margin (the average shopping time per trip). This paper investigates how inflation affects these two margins. It deviates from the previous literature by allowing individuals to vary both margins simultaneously. The analysis reveals that the impact of inflation on these two margins is determined by the interaction between the opportunity cost of carrying money and direct search costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the decisions made in designing a new Australian macroeconometric model to be used for both policy analysis and forecasting. Serving these dual functions requires a reasonable level of consistency with both macroeconomic theory (emphasised in New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models) and macroeconomic data (emphasised in vector autoregression models). The key decisions made in modelling household, business, government and foreign behaviour are explained. The design decisions taken are reflected in the new model, which is the latest in a series developed by the author. The use of the latest model is illustrated in optimal control simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the predictive performance of several models of risk aversion and time preferences in experimental settings. Models are evaluated on the basis of out‐of‐sample prediction rather than in‐sample fit. For preferences over risk, with the exception of very small sample sizes, allowing the estimation procedure to select between constant relative risk aversion and constant absolute risk aversion improves prediction beyond that of a single model. Moreover, adding a behavioural parameter such as disappointment aversion improves prediction further. This contrasts with time preferences, where adding the present‐bias parameter worsens prediction for all sample sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that the recent trend of separating macroprudential and monetary policies (M&Ms) into two autonomous institutions is undesirable. A strategic (game of chicken type) conflict is likely to occur, whereby each M&M ignores exuberant credit booms, trying to induce the other institution to tighten conditions. This has been observed, for example, in Sweden and Norway after 2010. We postulate a generalised concept of stochastic leadership and argue that greater rigidities give the prudential authority the upper hand strategically on the central bank. We show how this leads to a second type of unpleasant monetarist arithmetic and costly economic fluctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a fiscal database for Australia including measures of government spending, revenue, deficits, debt and various sub‐aggregates as initially published and subsequently revised. The data vintages are collated from various sources and provide a comprehensive description of the Australian fiscal environment as experienced in real time. Methods are described which exploit the richness of the real‐time data sets, and they are illustrated through an analysis of the extent to which stated fiscal plans are realised in practice and through the estimation of fiscal multipliers which draw a distinction between policy responses and policy initiatives. We find predictable differences between plans and actual fiscal policy and a larger multiplier for policy initiatives than for implementation errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs related to some of announcements made by the Economic Society of Australia. The society has announced that Ross Garnaut had been elected to receive the Distinguished Fellow award for the year 2009. The society has announced that the Annual Conference of Economists (ACE10) will be held from 27-29 September, 2010. The article also reports on the application process for the ninth A R Bergstrom Prize in Econometrics.

The article offers world news briefs. The Best Paper Prize for the best paper in "The Economic Record" for 2005 was awarded to Denise Doiron and Guyonne Kalb for the article "Demands for Child care and Household Labour Supply in Australia." The 36th Australian Conference of Economists will be held from 24th to 26th September 2007. The call for applications for the A R Bergstrom Prize in Econometrics for 2007.

Research to date has failed to generate a comprehensive understanding of the source of the gender gap in financial literacy in adulthood. Using microdata from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey and an analysis covering four age groups (15–19, 20–24, 25–29 and 30–34), this paper suggests that the gender gap starts young and well before individuals enter adulthood. The analysis also suggests that that raw (unadjusted) gender gap likely underestimates the underlying gap. It is important to establish whether the gap begins before or after children enter school, since policy aimed at addressing it would be very different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian Federation in 1901 entailed the formation of a customs union among its formerly tariff‐autonomous colonies. Although the elimination of tariff barriers to intercolonial/interstate trade would have been welfare‐enhancing, Australia's common external tariff was set considerably higher than the tariffs on external goods imported by the pre‐Federation colonies, implying a welfare reduction. Using a dataset of 3,584 commodity‐ and colony‐disaggregated imports, this paper estimates trade restrictiveness indices and welfare losses for the Australian colonies and Commonwealth. Despite the high external tariff post Federation, the customs union produced a net static welfare gain conservatively estimated to have been 0.17 per cent of GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of migration on the food expenditure and household food security status of migrant-sending households using data from eastern Indonesia. We find that migration significantly increases food expenditure and overall household expenditure. Combining the food frequency and food consumption module of the Indonesia Family Life Survey (East), this paper shows that having at least one migrant in the family increases the composite index of Food Consumption Score, as well as the family's food security. Evaluation of food diversity also shows that migration increases expenditure on six out of ten food groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper determines the role of teenage motherhood and the likely channels through which teenage motherhood contributes to lifetime health disparities between teenage mothers and other women. We apply fixed‐effects regressions, including a broad range of background characteristics, to control for prior disadvantage associated with teenage motherhood. We find that teenage motherhood is negatively associated with both mental and physical health and that the impacts worsen in later life stages. We identify several mediating factors that partly explain the impact of teenage motherhood for mental health; the strongest pathways are through social support, family and economic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As advanced economies worldwide experience slowing productivity growth, the time is ripe for new research on innovation policy. Their basic idea is to assess changes in the GDP (gross domestic product) path resulting from total research and development (R&D) investment, which implicitly aggregates across the many spillover margins of innovation. In Chapter 5, Hall focuses on the main "direct" innovation tax measures: R&D tax credits (which reduce R&D costs) and intellectual property (IP) boxes (which reduce taxes on profits earned from eligible IP). [Extracted from the article]

Many elements of Japan's economic stagnation in the 1990s are reasonably well explained in a modern, 'synthesis type', new-Keynesian model. The actual occurrence of some of the elements, such as deflation and zero interest rates, was, however, rare in contemporary experience. As a result there has been a disconnect between what is theoretically understood by economists and the public discourse about Japan's 'lost decades'. The implications for policy are not very controversial in theory - fiscal policy should work and monetary policy could work but not via interest rate transmission. But the length of time that Japan remained below its potential GDP fuelled a debate about the effectiveness of traditional policy measures. This gave rise to real questions about the first 'lost decade' (1991-2001): why didn't policy work? Was this some new mystery ailment for which known remedies were ineffective? These questions are still debated and they remain important because the popular reading of Japan's experience is ill-informed and is being mis-applied to current policy settings. This paper argues that Japan's economic experience of the last two decades does not provide unambiguous evidence that demand stimulus policies are ineffective. The paper describes the ways in which economic theory has been changed by the lessons from Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that the 'Edgeworth box' diagram, as presented in textbooks, was not devised by Francis Ysidro Edgeworth but by Vilfredo Pareto. The scholarly literature on the derivation of the box diagram published over the last thirty years has continued to attribute the diagram to Edgeworth, textbooks have implied the same attribution when noting that it is named after Edgeworth. This new history of the Edgeworth box diagram, however, provides teachers with a basis for overviewing the derivation of the Edgeworth box when introducing their students to that diagram. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines competition in the print newspaper advertising market in New Zealand, which involves paid daily and free weekly titles. This is the first study to explore how different ownership structures across two newspaper segments affect the competitive forces in local geographic markets. We do so by constructing an original dataset of advertising rates. Our analysis has particular relevance in light of the Commerce Commission's recent rejection of the proposed NZME–Fairfax merger, and Fairfax's subsequent closure of 15 newspaper titles. We find strong evidence for competition between overlapping free weekly suburban titles. It is associated with an 11 per cent decrease in the tabloid full‐page display advertising rate. We also find evidence of joint profit maximisation between co‐owned free weeklies and paid dailies. Our results support the Commission's decision and crucially imply that small and large display advertisements in free weekly titles constitute two separate markets with different clients. The large display ad market also includes advertising in paid daily titles. This market is competitive and would probably have suffered had the merger been permitted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an intuitive rationale for late bidding in online venues. The expected surplus from bidding on subsequent auctions for equivalent items creates an option value to losing the current auction. This option is dynamic due to the stochastic arrival of new auctions and early bids on later‐closing auctions. We demonstrate that late bidding can be optimal given the decentralised and heterogeneous nature of online auctions, in which the option value is exogenous to an individual bidder's actions. Late bidding precludes the bidder from being locked into a suboptimal bid as her opportunity set evolves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adds to what was previously known about Phillips’ life between his departure from Australia in 1937 until he became an academic in 1950. The paper includes new information about Phillips’ MBE and the attack on the Empire Star, the conditions at the Bandoeng prisoner of war camp in Java, and his operation of secret radios during the three and a half years of his imprisonment. The paper also attempts to explain Phillips’ notorious Pass degree in Sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on articles published in the June 2003 issue of the journal 'Economic Records.' Selection of papers from the 31st National Conference of Economists held in Adelaide from September 30 to October 4, 2002; Help by Australian economists for publishing this issue.

The article reports several issues and events related to economics in Australia. The South Australian Branch of the Economic Society of Australia invites all economists to attend the 38th Australian Conference of Economists (ACE) 2009 held in Adelaide, South Australia on September 28-30, 2009. The History of Economic Thought Society of Australia (HETSA) announces that the organization will already accepting applications for the 2009 (HETSA) Prizes award. The Economic Society of Australia has two publications entitled "The Economic Record and Economic Papers" and "Economic Papers: A journal of applied economics and policy."

This paper briefly outlines the many achievements of Professor Maureen Brunt, who was elected Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia in 2006. It describes both her academic career, and her major contributions to competition law in Australia and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the market‐wide impact of utility‐scale renewables on Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM) wholesale prices from 2009 to 2020. The goal is to understand the medium‐run impact of renewable generation, as opposed to the short‐run impact of weather‐driven changes in renewable output. The focus is, therefore, on the relationship between renewable generation (and its growth) and wholesale prices over a long period of time. In particular, we exploit the half‐hourly nature of wholesale price setting in the NEM to uncover the impact of solar and wind daily production on the distribution of prices throughout the day. In contrast to the merit‐order effect literature, which focuses on the short‐run (contemporaneous) impact of renewables, our results suggest that the total daily solar production has a positive, although not always significant, impact on wholesale prices throughout the day during an early development stage of solar generation. For a more recent period, following a substantive increase in utility‐scale solar generation, the results are more in line with the merit‐order effect literature with total daily solar production reducing wholesale prices for most of the day. This impact, however, is of several orders of magnitude lower than that predicted in the literature. We also show that the daily production of wind has a small negative impact on wholesale prices for most of the day, throughout the entire period of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a simple model of the Australian economy to empirically examine the consequences of parameter uncertainty for optimal monetary policy. Optimal policy responses are derived for a monetary authority that targets inflation and output stability. Parameter uncertainty is characterised by the estimated distribution of the model coefficient estimates. Learning is ruled out, so the monetary authority can commit to its ex ante policy response. For certain shocks, taking account of parameter uncertainty can recommend more, rather than less, activist use of the policy instrument. While this finding is specific to the model specification, parameter estimates and the shocks analysed, it contrasts with the widely held belief that the generic implication of parameter uncertainty is more conservative policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dependent economy model is also known as the 'Australian model' and the 'Salter-Swan-Corden-Dornbusch model' but neither title adequately conveys the scope and sequence of contributions that were instrumental to its development. In this paper attention is given to indispensable contributions made by the Australian public servant Roland Wilson and the British economist James Meade. The model's development is placed in the broader context of the evolution of balance of payments theory, and the paper highlights a vital Australian contribution to international trade theory, namely, the identification of the real exchange rate as the critical relative price in balance of payments adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a new explanation of the recent Australian wage inequality and unemployment experience. Building on a standard international trade model, it is argued that trade affects wage inequality and unemployment through changes in the bargaining power of different groups of workers in the presence of hiring and firing costs. This allows previously puzzling aspects of the trends to be explained, including the inconsistency of the existing Stolper-Samuelson trade explanation with rising relative skilled wages at the same time as rising skilled labour intensity of production. Considering differences in labour market institutions, in particular hiring and firing costs and minimum wages, allows differences between the experiences of Australia, the USA and Europe to be explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper addresses two questions. First, how does exchange rate overshooting affect hysteresis in trade and competitiveness? Second, how does ‘short-termism’ alter the magnitude of such hysteresis effects? The paper models the dynamic processes of hysteresis in trade and competitiveness in terms of the presence of discrete, asymmetric lump-sum costs of entry, in response to unanticipated foreign policy shocks. The paper produces some important new insights into the role of short run adjustment processes in understanding persistence effects in key macroeconomic indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]