This paper examines the interaction of fiscal and current account balances in open economies subject to monopolistic competition with sticky price-setting behavior, adjustment costs for investment, and distortionary labor income taxes. We find that the elasticity of exports with respect to the...

This paper compares the effects of pro and counter-cyclical government spending on income inequality and welfare in a small open economy. We examine the consequences of alternative government spending rules following shocks to productivity, domestic interest rates, terms of trade and export...

This paper examines the welfare implications of managing asset-price with consumer-price inflation targeting by monetary authorities who have to learn the laws of motion for both inflation rates. The central bank can reduce the volatility of consumption as well as improve welfare more...

This paper examines the relationships between the Gini coefficient, trade-openness, foreign aid and foreign direct investment flows. Panel data estimates show that trade openness can be effective for changing income inequality, but its effectiveness depends on the stage of development....

This paper presents an analysis of labour market dynamics, in particular of flows in the labour market and how they interact and affect the evolution of unemployment rates and participation rates, the two main indicators of labour market performance. Our analysis has two special features. First,...

This paper relates indicators of household financial stress to household income and expenditure with the objective of identifying household stress thresholds and comparable equivalence scales. A model is proposed whereby households try to absorb income shocks or shifts by shrinking consumption...

A forecasting model for unemployment is constructed that exploits the time-series properties of unemployment while satisfying the economic relationships specified by Okun's law and the Phillips curve. In deriving the model, we jointly consider the problem of obtaining estimates of the unobserved...

A time-varying Phillips curve was estimated as a means to examine the changing nature of the negative relationship between wage inflation and the unemployment rate in Australia. The implied equilibrium unemployment rate was generated and the analysis showed the important role played by...

In this paper, we set out a model of labour productivity which distinguishes between shocks which change productivity permanently and shocks which have transient affects on productivity. We show that this model is a type of unobserved components model –a random walk with drift plus noise...

In this paper we explore a new approach to understanding the evolution of the unemployment rate in Australia. Specifically, we use gross worker flows data to explore the consequences of assuming that there is no unique equilibrium rate of unemployment but rather a continuum of stochastic...