We discuss selected research contributions of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research, to fifty years of welfare policy for those of work force age and focus particularly on the policy focus of R. F. Henderson, the inaugural director. Following the spirit of his 1960s...

This paper presents for the .rst time the properties of optimal piece-wise linear tax systems for two-earner households, based on joint and individual incomes respectively. A key contribution is the analysis of the interaction of second earner wage di¤erences, variation in prices of bought-in...

A major economic impact on Australia of the rise of Asia has been through the resources sector. Australia is experiencing the biggest and most sustained resources boom in its history, and over the past decade has sustained economic growth well in advance of its developed country comparators. The...

Historical experience suggests that when a period of rising immigration is followed by a sudden slump, this can trigger a policy backlash. This has not occurred in the current recession. This paper examines three links in the chain between the slump and immigration policy. First, although...

We examine the effect of single-sex classes on the pass rates, grades, and course choices of students in a coeducational university. We randomly assign students to all-female, all-male, and coed classes and, therefore, get around the selection issues present in other studies on single-sex...

This paper provides an overview of asylum migration from poor strife-prone countries to the OECD since the 1950s. I examine the political and economic factors in source countries that generate refugees and asylum seekers. Particular attention is given to the rising trend of asylum applications...

One of the continuing areas of controversy surrounding higher education is affirmative action. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Fisher v. Texas, and their ruling may well influence universities' diversity initiatives, especially if they overturn Grutter and rule that diversity is no longer a...

Most developed countries have experienced rising wage inequality and falling wage shares, which are often blamed on the same forces - globalisation, technical change, and weakening labour market institutions. This paper shows, however, that wage inequality has risen the most in those countries...

In 2009 the Australian government delivered approximately $8 billion in direct payments to households. These payments were preannounced and randomly allocated to households based on postal codes over a 5-week period. We exploit this random allocation to estimate the causal response of...

We examine bias corrections which have been proposed for the Fixed Effects Panel Probit model with exogenous regressors, using several different data generating processes to evaluate the performance of the estimators in different situations. We find a best estimator across all cases for...