We use unique data in which both partners report about household finances to demonstrate that there is often disagreement about whether the household has experienced financial difficulty in the past year. Four alternative explanations for this disagreement are tested using the data. The results...

We propose a new decomposition method for analysing aggregate productivity changes. The main improvement in our proposed method is that we are clearly able to separate out pure productivity changes of a hypothetical average firm from changes in the share of output or value added between firms....

Australian industry is characterised by differences across firms, entry of new firms and exit of unsuccessful firms. These facts highlight the inappropriateness of measuring productivity using aggregate production functions based upon representative firms. In this study, we model heterogeneous...

Welfare reform in Australia centres on both economic and social participation. The policy concern is that people who fail to participate in economic and social life may become entrenched in disadvantage. In 2000-2001, a randomised trial was conducted by the Department of Family and Community...

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 learn substantially more about the gender wage gap in France through this...