Sitting on the other side of the world, I’ve felt rather removed from budget commentary, though I’ve found much to agree with in Nicholas Gruen’s called for harsher cuts in middle-class welfare (can we means-test the first homeowners’ grant too?), Andrew Norton’s call for fewer cuts in basic statistical provision (would Lindsay Tanner mind if we took some of the higher education fund and used it to patch up his cuts t Read more »
I’m in Stockholm this week, visiting the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), as the guest of Daniel Waldenstrom. The main purpose of the visit is a workshop on inequality - something Swedes don’t have much of, but seem very keen to talk about. At the same time, I hope to find out how Daniel manages to get a CV like this while working 14 hours a week (he’s been on paternity leave since Aug 2006). Read more »
It goes without saying that there is plenty of exploitation in the people-smuggling business. But it’s wrong to think that the smuggler has all the power. A new paper looking at migrants smuggled from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the UK finds arrangements that mirror what large companies in developed countries often do: if you don’t trust the party on the other side of the transaction, put the money in escrow until the deal is done. Read more »
My opinion piece today is on the multifarious uses for income contingent loans. Full text over the fold.
My father flew with budget carrier Tiger Airways from Canberra to Melbourne yesterday, and had the exciting experience of having his window fall out mid-flight. Fortunately, it was the inside portion of the window, rather than the outside part. As he puts it: Read more »
With my colleagues Chikako Yamauchi and Xin Meng, and thanks to the generous support of AusAID, I’m co-organising an ANU conference on New Techniques in Development Economics on 19-20 June. We have a bevvy of international speakers, and the discussion should be relevant for anyone working on improving our foreign aid programs. Read more »
According to today’s press, the Baby Bonus is about to be means-tested:
But yesterday Mr Rudd began the speculation the baby bonus and other forms of so-called middle-class welfare would be means-tested in the budget.
“I say people at the upper end of the income spectrum don’t actually need direct support from the government, much,” he told radio 3AW. Read more »
I’ve recently completed two chapters for a forthcoming Oxford University Press Handbook on Economic Inequality. They’re rather long, but anyone who’s interested in a survey of the literature on top incomes, or health and inequality (coauthored with Christopher Jencks and Tim Smeeding), may be interested in them.
Last week, I wrote up the 2020 summit idea of providing a HECS discount in exchange for volunteering in a disadvantaged community. In today’s Higher Ed section of the Australian, Andrew Darbyshire claims credit for the notion. I don’t doubt that his idea was original, but I’m not so sure it was the first. The AmeriCorps program (which sounds a lot like the Australian proposals) was created by President Clinton in 1993. Read more »
Harry Clarke, the only economist in the country who consistently blogs on drugs (sorry Harry, couldn’t resist) posts on Australian drug use trends. It’s a fascinating read. Frankly, I’m a little surprised that usage of most drugs seems to be falling. With rising incomes and (in most cases) declining prices, it seems an extraordinary testament to law enforcement efforts.
My economics group - in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University - is seeking PhD students. Here’s a one-page flyer, and a more detailed document about our program.
My friend and coauthor Joshua Gans has two blogs. When he’s not blogging about new innovations in economics on Core Econ, he’s offering new insights on parenting at Game Theorist (which has led to a book, Parentonomics, forthcoming in August 2008).
One of my favourite of Joshua’s parenting suggestions is this one: Read more »
Marianne Bertrand, Rema Hanna, Sendhil Mullainathan present new evidence on the impact of affirmative action in university admissions - this time not from racial AA in the US, but caste AA in India. They find a neat equity-efficiency tradeoff, illustrating the political complexity of such programs. Read more »
My economics group (the Economics Program in the Research School of Social Sciences at the ANU) has a story up on the website this week, on the share of professors who are women. The good news is that the answer is 3/7 (43%), which is higher than any other economics group in Australia. The bad news is that even the most feminised economics group in the country has more men than women.
(Note: I don’t have a stable URL for this, so the story will probably be gone by early-May.)
I just recovered a dozen non-spam comments from Akismet. Apologies to those whose comments were caught, and thanks to Matt C for alerting me to the problem. If it recurs, please drop me an email.
Just to echo what other economists have already said, the mooted cuts to the Australian Bureau of Statistics budget seem to me a false economy. As economist Barry Hughes told SMH journalist Jessica Irvine:
This is a very bizarre time to be cutting back your statistical indicators at a time when, if we’re not sailing through a fog, we’re certainly sailing through a period of reduced visibility Read more »
My AFR oped tomorrow is on the summit. I’ll post it in the morning, but here are a few quick observations. Read more »
A great oped from Nicholas Kristof talks about the problems of echo-chambers in the blogosphere. Read more »
I just took a call from an Australian political journalist whose work I’ve admired since the 1980s. The topic of this journalist’s story for tomorrow’s paper: the politics of the 2020 summit. I did something I’ve never done before, and basically said “why on earth are you writing about this?”. Read more »
ANU has today released the results of our first ‘ANU Governance Poll’. Full results are on the poll website, but here are a few of my favourite facts: Read more »
Can anyone suggest academics who might enjoy speaking to the Australian media about macroeconomics? I tend to decline interviews on this topic, but I’d like to be able to direct journalists to other academic economists. Feel free to nominate others (or yourself) in comments.
One more summit idea, this one from Alan Wu, who is in the governance stream.
The Australia Commitments
Like the Millennium Development Goals, but for AustraliaI believe that governments should be optimistic and ambitious - they should encourage and welcome high expectations. Read more »
Here’s a few Imagining Australia ideas on nation-building. Not so much the bricks-and-mortar kind; more of the bodies-and-minds stuff.
We note that while nation-building has been an integral part of the Australian story, the nation-building spirit is largely absent from today’s public discourse. Although there are challenges facing our country today that demand unprecedented levels of attention and commitment, talk of nation-building rarely transcends rhetoric. Read more »
A few ideas on strengthening Australian democracy, from Imagining Australia.
We believe that Australia needs to rekindle its spirit of democratic innovation and experimentation. We present proposals to reform our democratic institutions and processes to encourage greater public participation, improve the quality of decision-making, and reinvigorate our democracy. Read more »
Here are Nicholas Gruen’s 2020 answers (you can discuss them here too if you prefer).
1. If you could do one thing in your stream area what would it be? What is it that you think would make the most difference? Read more »
Following on from the Imagining Australia ideas on national identity, here are a few that relate to revamping our international engagement. Read more »
Four years ago, I coauthored Imagining Australia: Ideas for Our Future, with David Madden, Macgregor Duncan and Peter Tynan. One of the things we argued was that Australians should more often ask the question “what should the place look like in 2020?”. A few of our suggestions have come to pass (writing in mid-2004, we suggested the idea that some cabinet ministers might be non-elected, and proposed that Peter Garrett would make a good environment minister, and Malcolm Turnbull a good treasurer). But most of our ideas are still up for grabs. Read more »
Economists spend a lot of time talking about money inequality, but here’s the flipside. Read more »
My AFR oped today is on randomised policy trials, with a particular discussion of what I think is the most fascinating randomised trial now in place in Australia - the Head Injury Retrieval Trial. I’m grateful to commenter Mark, who first drew HIRT to my attention, to Nicholas Gruen for comments on an earlier draft, and to Alan Garner for taking the time to talk with me about it. Full text over the fold. Read more »
My friend and coauthor Amy King is in the governance stream for the Australia 2020 summit, and has kindly allowed me to post her 100-word big idea for the summit.
Question: If you could do one thing in your stream area, what would it be? What is it that you think would make the most difference? Read more »
I’m giving a talk on Monday, presenting preliminary results from a couple of discrimination experiments. Details below.
Are racial and ethnic minorities disadvantaged in Australia? Evidence from two randomized field experiments
Alison Booth, Andrew Leigh, and Elena Varganova
12.30-2pm, Monday 7 April
Seminar Room D, HC Coombs Building, ANU
All welcome. The talk will be on a not for citation basis, as we’re keen to get plenty of feedback on it before releasing it publicly.
Another reason why fluoridation is good for you, and why women who grew up in Queensland might earn lower wages. Read more »
It seems to be my week for being in the firing line. Below the fold is an article from the Launceston Sunday Examiner by Fran Voss. Yet again, my coauthor (in this case, Joshua Gans) seemed to dodge the bullet.
Joshua Gans has a theory that I attract more critics than the average academic. Judging by today’s Age, he may be right. Read more »
Joshua Gans reports on worrying new research about the effect of tax payments on the gender mix of children. More here.
And in unrelated news, Google Sydney has just announced gDay with MATE. From the release:
Using MATE’s™ machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques developed in Google’s Sydney offices, we can construct elements of the future. Read more »
One interesting idea that I’ve heard recently is that education training should move towards the medical model. Just as they have ‘teaching hospitals’, we might think about designating particular schools as being those where most teachers do their practicums (and maybe even spend their first 1-2 years in the teaching workforce).
Now Jonah Rockoff has some evidence on the efficacy of mentoring programs, which would be a key element in such a strategy. Read more »
8pm last night featured a conversation in our house that may have resonated elsewhere:
Spouse: OK, 8pm, time to turn off the lights and put on candles.
Me: But we have energy-saving bulbs, so surely the candles produce more carbon than the electricity used to power our light globes?
Spouse: But it’s about making a statement. Read more »
In tonight’s Economics for Government class, I mentioned Ian Ayres’ work on racial bias in taxi tipping. Here’s his Freakonomics blog post on the topic. Read more »
My AFR oped today is on school funding. Perhaps because I’ve been reading too many speeches by Barack Obama, I set out four principles that I thought all sides in the education debate should be able to agree on. I’d be curious if blog readers think that these are actually points upon which it might be possible to achieve consensus. Read more »
I’ve been arguing recently that one idea which should be randomly trialled in Indigenous communities in Australia is a cash payment for attending school. Blog reader Brendan Duong points out that I should get some succor from the success of a similar program in Colombia. Read more »
My group - the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU - has a handful of PhD scholarships on offer. Details below.
The Research School of Social Science has a number of PhD scholarships available which must be taken up by the end of August 2008. The scholarships are available to Australian citizens, Australian permanent residents and New Zealand citizens. The value of the stipend is $20,00 per annum for 3 years, subject to satisfactory progress.
Scholarships are offered in the areas: -
Read more »
As we draw near to budget time, there has been plenty of talk about what “middle Australia” will get. But where exactly is the middle? To provide a more precise sense, I’ve tabulated the pre-tax annual income distributions for individuals and households, in the 2008-09 tax year. My raw data is the 2006 HILDA survey, which was roughly coincident with the 2006-07 tax year. Those numbers are then inflated by 8%, which is roughly what the budget papers suggest nominal wage growth has been over the past two years. Read more »
I popped into the ABC studios on my ride to work today to do a pre-record with Life Matters this morning on why the Baby Bonus is bad policy and should be scrapped. Cycling into work afterwards, a thought occurred to me. There are approximately a quarter of a million babies born in Australia each year, and approximately a quarter of a million teachers. Read more »
…comes from Paul Collier, commenting on a Martin Wolf column about the food crisis in the FT. There’s this: Read more »
My colleagues up the road are looking for an economics lecturer. Details over the fold.
Adrian Wong has asked me to remind people about the RBA Essay Competition, open to all economics students presently studying at Australian universities. This year’s topic:
Housing Costs and Affordability in Australia
Housing is an important component of household expenditure and household balance sheets. Essays should discuss:
a) how housing costs and affordability have changed in Australia over the past two decades, and the factors that have contributed to these changes; and Read more »
At 39, Dalton Conley is the chair of the New York University department of sociology. He’s also one of my favourite sociologists, having written about race, class, health, and biology. His work ranges across lived experience (including Honky, a superbly written book about race in America). But Dalton also uses natural experiment techniques much beloved of economists. Read more »
According to ABC news, Australia is to get another thinktank, with the Commonwealth and Victorian governments announcing the establishment of the University of Melbourne-based Australian Institute for Public Policy. Read more »
In his column today, Canberra Times journalist Peter Martin draws attention (with a HT to the SMH’s Jessica Irvine) to the soon-to-be-announced government’s first home saver accounts. Here’s how they work. Read more »
Economics RSSS will be hosting our first video seminar tomorrow (Tue 29th), featuring John Quiggin. It will take place in the Baume Theatre in ANU’s Peter Baume Building . Frustratingly, the seminar clashes with a prior engagement of mine (I’m speaking at the Melbourne Institute’s quarterly luncheon in the Hyatt), but you are encouraged to attend if you would like to see (a) Quiggin, and/or (b) your first videoseminar. Read more »
My co-author Bruce Chapman has substantial administrative responsibilities, which are invariably urgent, and therefore tend to crowd out research. Our paper requires some relatively minor edits before going out to a journal, and the necessary changes are up his alley. So he emails me the following request:
Impose on me a strict deadline in the very short run to do the revision, and somehow manage to publicly humiliate me if I don’t make it. Read more »
I’ve spent the last couple of days at the Australasian Labour Econometrics Workshop, which I co-organised with my ANU colleague Bob Breunig. Here’s the program, if anyone is interested. We don’t have the papers up on a website, but you can email authors and see if they’ll share drafts with you (my paper is still under wraps, but will be out in the next couple of months). Read more »
Writing today in Eureka Street, Daniel Donahoo makes a key point about the difference between universal and targeted early childhood intervention. Key quote:
At the centre of the discussion is the name Dr James Heckman. Heckman was the Nobel Laureate for Economics in 2000. His work extends across human capital and productivity. He is interested in lifelong learning and this led him to research early childhood development. Read more »
My AFR oped today is on the 2020 summit. Full text below (and remember - contributors don’t write their own headlines).
The latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) carries some extraordinary stories of drug companies writing research papers, and then offering to add academics as coauthors - without requiring the academics to do any work on the articles. From the editorial: Read more »
In the weekend AFR, Dierdre Macken has an article on the steady expansion of economic research into non-traditional areas (or as she calls the phenomenon, ’Everythingonomics’). The article profiles Justin Wolfers, Tim Harford, and yours truly; and also has some commentary from Australian Sociological Association president Michael Gilding.
Jeff Williamson, the man who taught me economic history, is 73 and still researching as actively as ever (his CV lists his first published paper as 1957). On Wednesday the 23rd, Jeff is speaking on the topic of ‘the great divergence’. He’s a splendidly enthusiastic speaker - the talk is free and open to the public, so if the topic interests you, do come along. Read more »
Former ACER researcher Molly de Lemos just emailed me her 2020 ideas for the education/productivity stream. They’re over the fold. And a regular commenter also drew my attention to the submission from the Catholic Social Service and Justice Agencies, which can be found here. And Miriam Lyons has featured 5 100-word summaries on her blog (3 of which have not previously appeared on this blog). Read more »
Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers have a new paper out that debunks the Easterlin Paradox. It’s a classic Stevenson-Wolfers style “throw all the data we can find at the problem” paper, and it concludes that (a) rich people are happier than poor people; (b) richer countries are happier than poorer countries; and (c) as countries get richer, their people become happier. Read more »
My wife is American, and we’ve often commented that we’re glad that she could give birth in Australia (where 1-week hospital stays are quite common) rather than the US (where the norm is more like 2-3 days). But a new NBER working paper suggests that perhaps our concerns are misplaced. I can’t fault the empirical strategy, though in an ideal world I would have liked more fine-grained outcome measures than readmission and infant mortality. Read more »
Today brings the sixth and final bunch of Imagining Australia ideas: focusing on inequality and social policy.
While Australia has long prided itself as a fair, just, and egalitarian nation, the reality is that our social fabric is not what it used to be. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing and the tapestry of identities that binds us together as a people is fraying at the edges. Read more »
Today brings the penultimate tranche of Imagining Australia ideas - these ones on growth and the economy.
We envisage a dynamic and innovative Australia, with a sustainable economy to underpin the high standard of living enjoyed by all Australians.
We explain that economic growth is important, not because it is an end in itself, but because of the potential it has to help improve our lives. We detail how the reforms of the last twenty years have improved the standard of living in Australia and why it is important to continue to improve our economy. Read more »
Gregory Nelson, a 2020 participant in the national security stream, has sent me his idea that he thought might interest people. He’s happy to read comments below, or for people to email him at gregnelson {AT} iypf.org. Read more »
One more pair of 100-word blurbs, these from Bob Gregory.
Big idea: Read more »
The SMH today reports on an exchange of letters between Reverend Richard Lane and High Court Justice Michael Kirby.
The rector of St Stephen’s Church in Bellevue Hill, the Reverend Richard Lane, denounced the judge for calling himself a Christian Anglican while living in an openly gay relationship and warned as a “messenger, watchman and steward of the Lord in the Anglican Church of Australia”, he faced God’s judgment. Read more »
My friends Bryan Gaensler and Macgregor Duncan have given me permission to post their 2020 ideas. Bryan is in the productivity stream; Mac is in the governance stream.
Bryan Gaensler
What is your idea for the Summit? Read more »
The Australia 2020 summit has asked participants for a big idea and an issue upon which they’ve changed their minds. On Monday, I posted big ideas and mindchanging experiences from Amy King and Joshua Gans. Here are mine.
What’s your big idea? Read more »
Former Hawke-Keating minister John Button has just died. The Australian has a long obituary on their website. Read more »
Don Arthur at Club Troppo (the closest thing in Australia to a nineteenth-century debating salon) has a splendid post on inequality, shedding light on the simple but ferociously difficult question: how much is too much?
On 19-20 April, I’m fortunate enough to be a participant in the national 2020 summit. I had a prequel of what it might be like via the ACT 2020 summit today. There were 300 participants, divided into 20 groups. Not surprisingly, I joined one of the three education streams. I learned a lot from the discussion, but quickly found things descending into consultant-speak. With a group of 15 people, it’s easier to get up a vague idea than a concrete proposal. Read more »
Kim at Larvartus Prodeo kicks off a long comments thread talking about my education research, and the limitations of economic imperialism. Worth reading.
Dani Rodrik recently posted a picture from Larry Bartels’ latest book – in which Bartels shows that in the US, inequality rises under Republicans, and falls under Democrats. Here’s the key graph:
At Crikey, Simon Chapman suggests an intriguing health policy idea: why not pay Indigenous Australians to quit smoking? At the very least, I think this one merits a randomised trials. The critics might say that it will induce start-quit cycles, but that’s perfectly testable too.
I blogged two April fool jokes this morning - from Joshua Gans and Google. Now that noon has passed, we can ask the question, was I wise to do so? Fortunately, new academic research on the topic sheds direct light on the question. Read more »
A couple of years ago, I read a paper by Roland Fryer and Steve Levitt (non-technical version here), which found that the black-white test score gap in the US widened after children hit school.* With my colleague Xiaodong Gong, we decided to look at the issue in Australia. Since we only have one study on test score gaps at a very young age, we have to compare our results with the existing literature. Read more »
Supercrunchers author Ian Ayres was on the BBC program “The Interview” today. For anyone who’s interested in how statistics can change the world, the podcast is here.
I spoke today at the Melbourne Institute’s conference on the topic of labour supply and labour shortages. For anyone who’s interested, here’s my powerpoint. I shared the stage with Judith Sloan, Jeff Lawrence, Heather Ridout and Guyonne Kalb, which made for a fun panel. Read more »
My coauthor Joshua Gans is a well-deserved invitee to the 2020 summit, and blogs on the ideas he’ll bring to the table. For Joshua, I think the tradeoff will be between contributing to every policy debate on offer; versus making a strong intervention on his number one issue (innovation policy).
I had been planning to hold a conference on happiness at the ANU on 2 June, but have decided to cancel it. Something similar may go ahead in 2009. Apologies to anyone who had been eagerly awaiting it.
Under current legislation, the Australian government has created an odd incentive. If you have your child on 30 June 2008, you’ll receive $4258. If you have it on 1 July 2008, you’ll get $5000. Read more »
