type="main" xml:id="ecor12059-abs-0001" <p>New regulations to improve the quality of early childhood education and care came into force in Australia in 2012. Using a simultaneous, structural model of labour supply and child care demand we predict the effects on the labour supply of partnered women,...</p>

We explore a methodological improvement to the standard dynamic demand model for petrol - a general model which allows for slowly evolving, unobservable habits. If this habit formation model is correct, then standard estimation techniques produce inconsistent estimates. We find price...

The commonly used survey technique of clustering introduces dependence into sample data. Such data is frequently used in economic analysis, though the dependence induced by the sample structure of the data is often ignored. In this paper, the effect of clustering on the non-parametric, kernel...

Australia’s productivity performance is characterized by important differences across continuing firms, frequent entry of new firms, and substantial exit of firms which, for one reason or another, decide to cease production. These basic facts call into question the appropriateness of measuring...

We use a semi-parametric method to decompose the difference in male and female wage densities into two parts-one explained by characteristics and one which is attributable to differences in returns to characteristics. We demonstrate that one learns substantially more about the gender wage gap in...

We examine the case for maintaining welfare and income redistribution programs even when their adverse general equilibrium effects reduce total earnings of poor households. Using a Cournot model of intra-household decision-making, we show that even if welfare cutbacks generate large increases in...

In this paper we examine a database assembled from an Australian public register of 553 merger decisions taken between March 2004 and July 2008. Mergers may be accepted without public assessment, accepted in conjunction with publication of a Public Competition Assessment, or rejected. We...

We study the work hours of Australian couples, using a neoclassical labour-supply model in which couples choose from a small, realistic set of possible wife-husband working hour combinations. We introduce three improvements to this standard model. First, we allow partners' preferences about...