In the past 200 years, the world has experienced unprecedented economic development as well as profound demographic changes. Many dimensions of these dynamic processes are not well understood. What are the underlying forces behind the different dimensions of economic and demographic development,...

Issues to be addressed include: What is special about the public sector? Public sector efficiency. Public debt sustainability. Changes in the role and size of public sector. Incentives in the public sector. Tax-spending mix. Optimal public policy. Delay of reforms. Rent seeking, tax evasion and...

A new generation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) is in the making: larger and deeper than most that have been signed earlier. Their focus has moved away from the elimination of tariffs to regulatory cooperation and a WTO-Plus agenda. At the same time, theoretical and empirical modelling...

Behavioural political economy uses behavioural concepts in explaining decisions of politicians, candidates for political office, voters, lobbyists, and others in the political and policymaking arena. Decision-makers may be subject to bounded rationality. Utility maximisation may be based on...

Subsidies to fossil energies are largely wasteful as they serve to increase carbon emissions, weaken public budgets and importers’ energy security, and in most cases impact income distribution adversely. Reform of energy subsidy policies is sorely needed in many countries, and is an important...

The training will then cover the following topics: - Accessing the data - Finding the right data - Visualising the data - Merging household and individual data - Dealing with missing values - Using imputed values - Creating analysis variables from HILDA data - Using weights - Generating...

The course will use examples from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey and will include a hands-on lab session using Stata. The topics covered include: - Basic introduction to panel data. - Introduction to statistical modelling (within and between group analysis,...

The aim of the conference is to provide a forum for the discussion of research based on the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. Attendance at the conference is open to all, but should be of special interest to both users of the HILDA Survey data and persons with an...

A hands-on introductory HILDA Survey training course will be held on 30 September – 2 October 2013 at the University of Melbourne, just before the HILDA Survey Research Conference on 3-4 October 2013. The training will then cover the following topics: - Accessing the data - Finding the right...

Papers from economists and researches from other disciplines working on issues of language policy are solicited. The following is a non-exhaustive list of possible specific themes of individual contributions: - languages and economic efficiency (e.g. languages in the labor market, language as a...