Using data from the 2001 Australian Census of Population and Housing, on adult men in full-time employment, this paper augments a conventional human capital earnings function with information on occupations. It also estimates models of occupational attainment. The results from both the earnings...

This paper examines the determinants of Australian university graduates’ starting salaries, with an emphasis on the institution attended and field of study. It is shown that there is little difference between the starting salaries of students who attended Go8 universities and those who...

In this paper we test the hypothesis advanced by Weiss (1995) that under sorting models the return to schooling across identical twins would decline over time compared to the return for the population as a whole. The analyses undertaken on a relatively large sample of Australian twins are...

Using an immigrant assimilation framework, this paper develops a model of the occupational mobility of immigrants and tests the hypotheses using data on adult males from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia. The theoretical model generates hypotheses regarding a U-shaped pattern of...

This paper is concerned with the determinants of English language proficiency (speaking, reading and writing) among immigrants. It presents a model of immigrant destination language acquisition based on economic incentives, exposure to the destination language, and efficiency in second language...

This paper examines the immigrant adjustment process in Australia from the perspective of the housing market. It shows that immigrant “catch-up” to the native born in the housing market is much more rapid than in the labour market. A decomposition of the estimated coefficients of a logit...

This paper examines the links between childhood conduct disorder problems and schooling and labour market outcomes net of genetic and environmental effects. The results show that individuals who experienced conduct disorder problems are more likely to leave school early, have poorer employment...

This paper is concerned with why immigrants appear to have consistently lower partial effects of schooling on earnings than the native born, both across destinations and in different time periods within countries. It uses the Over-Required-Under education approach to occupations, a new...

The aim of this paper is to quantify the determinants of happiness in university students, with information drawn from a survey conducted with students at the University of Western Australia in 2003. Ordered probit and ordinary least squares models are applied. Happiness could be measured and...

Students’ success during their first year at university is largely influenced by their university entrance score. Personal characteristics and secondary school characteristics also impact on success. This paper uses quantile regression to investigate how the effects of these factors vary along...