Changing Institutions to Mitigate Gender Leadership Gaps: Power of Defaults. This project aims to improve diversity in organisations by investigating a simple yet novel institutional change that can increase women’s participation in leadership. This involves a change in the default used for leadership selection, from an opt-in to an opt-out mechanism. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of diversity and inclusion by showing how appropriate choice of defaults can reduce lab ....Changing Institutions to Mitigate Gender Leadership Gaps: Power of Defaults. This project aims to improve diversity in organisations by investigating a simple yet novel institutional change that can increase women’s participation in leadership. This involves a change in the default used for leadership selection, from an opt-in to an opt-out mechanism. This project expects to generate new knowledge in the area of diversity and inclusion by showing how appropriate choice of defaults can reduce labour market gaps and inequality. Expected outcomes include understanding mechanisms underlying the gender default effect both in the short and long run which will help identify appropriate interventions that can be scaled up. Insights gained should provide significant benefits by improving workplace diversity and productivity.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE150100035
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$376,000.00
Summary
Affirmative action & its unintended effects: an experimental investigation. Affirmative action policies traditionally favour members of disadvantaged groups in labour markets such as women, elderly, and non-white. They are widely implemented internationally in employment, contracting, and education often despite a lack of knowledge about societal impacts. This project aims to use both field and laboratory experiments to study how individuals react to affirmative action and investigate sabotage, ....Affirmative action & its unintended effects: an experimental investigation. Affirmative action policies traditionally favour members of disadvantaged groups in labour markets such as women, elderly, and non-white. They are widely implemented internationally in employment, contracting, and education often despite a lack of knowledge about societal impacts. This project aims to use both field and laboratory experiments to study how individuals react to affirmative action and investigate sabotage, cooperation, and competition between disadvantaged and advantaged groups. The main hypothesis is that affirmative action can increase sabotage, harm cooperation and push competition in ways that endanger the well functioning of labour markets. This project aims to provide new insights for policy makers and managers on the relevance of unintended effects of affirmative action.Read moreRead less
Are claims of transparency to be believed? This project tests if leaders, when given a choice, actually reveal a preference for transparency (that is to share all relevant information with their followers). This project analyses the circumstances under which leaders choose transparency and how their decisions and their reputations for transparency affect followers' behaviour and overall group cooperation.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE160100141
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$385,000.00
Summary
Creating food environments that encourage healthy eating. The aim of this project is to trial scalable and sustainable interventions that encourage healthy purchasing and eating behaviours in supermarket settings. Most food in Australia is purchased in supermarkets and unhealthy eating is the greatest contributor to Australian life years lost. The project will assess the effect of a range of interventions on purchases of healthy and unhealthy foods and the financial impact on the retailer in eig ....Creating food environments that encourage healthy eating. The aim of this project is to trial scalable and sustainable interventions that encourage healthy purchasing and eating behaviours in supermarket settings. Most food in Australia is purchased in supermarkets and unhealthy eating is the greatest contributor to Australian life years lost. The project will assess the effect of a range of interventions on purchases of healthy and unhealthy foods and the financial impact on the retailer in eight supermarkets and a novel virtual supermarket. The economic analysis aims to ensure that successful public policy interventions are translatable to other retailers.Read moreRead less
Tertiary admissions: towards a healthier university system. The project aims to identify the demand for university places, quantify the gains from the Australian semi-centralised admissions system and propose measures to increase these gains. The effectiveness of any tertiary education system depends critically on the quality of the match between students and courses, with mismatches resulting in millions of dollars of wasted public resources and life dissatisfaction of graduates in occupations ....Tertiary admissions: towards a healthier university system. The project aims to identify the demand for university places, quantify the gains from the Australian semi-centralised admissions system and propose measures to increase these gains. The effectiveness of any tertiary education system depends critically on the quality of the match between students and courses, with mismatches resulting in millions of dollars of wasted public resources and life dissatisfaction of graduates in occupations misaligned with their interests. Using an Australian tertiary admissions dataset containing both student preferences and rankings of students by courses, the project aims to empirically assess the trade-off between the efficiency of a match, an equitable welfare distribution and equal access to higher education. It then plans to propose the best system to balance these objectives.Read moreRead less
Super Financial Security: Improving Flexibility, Trust and Communication. This project aims to address the significant worldwide challenge of how to safeguard financial wellbeing at older ages. In doing so it aims to investigate three important and interconnected influences on retirement preparation: flexible choice architecture, trust formation and effective communication. The project aims to use a combination of innovative modelling, experimental and field-based approaches. The principal expec ....Super Financial Security: Improving Flexibility, Trust and Communication. This project aims to address the significant worldwide challenge of how to safeguard financial wellbeing at older ages. In doing so it aims to investigate three important and interconnected influences on retirement preparation: flexible choice architecture, trust formation and effective communication. The project aims to use a combination of innovative modelling, experimental and field-based approaches. The principal expected outcomes are insights into the factors that guide superannuation choice, build trust with superannuation providers, and ensure clear and effective communication with members.Read moreRead less
Reaching for tax breaks: Household financial decisions and tax policy. The project aims to investigate how two tax incentives – franking credits and negative gearing of investments – impact individual taxpayer risk-taking behaviour, voluntary savings and retirement outcomes. The project will develop a new measure of tax efficiency based on if, and how, individuals take advantage of franking credits and negative gearing. It will identify what factors drive the use of franking credits and negativ ....Reaching for tax breaks: Household financial decisions and tax policy. The project aims to investigate how two tax incentives – franking credits and negative gearing of investments – impact individual taxpayer risk-taking behaviour, voluntary savings and retirement outcomes. The project will develop a new measure of tax efficiency based on if, and how, individuals take advantage of franking credits and negative gearing. It will identify what factors drive the use of franking credits and negative gearing and whether their use is associated with better retirement outcomes. The findings of the project will potentially lead to an improvement in individuals’ financial literacy, retirement outcomes and reduce reliance on the aged pension.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE190100585
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$370,000.00
Summary
Women, task allocations, and advancement in the labour market. This project aims to investigate the origins and labour market consequences of gender differences in willingness to perform low-promotability tasks. The design of practices and institutions that can close gender gaps in the labour market and promote the advancement of the highest quality workforce in organisations requires information about the factors that affect career advancement. This project will study the allocation of tasks th ....Women, task allocations, and advancement in the labour market. This project aims to investigate the origins and labour market consequences of gender differences in willingness to perform low-promotability tasks. The design of practices and institutions that can close gender gaps in the labour market and promote the advancement of the highest quality workforce in organisations requires information about the factors that affect career advancement. This project will study the allocation of tasks that do not enhance prospects for promotion. The project will provide new insights regarding how organisations and the government can design programs to reduce the under-representation of women in leadership positions and in traditionally male-dominated fields.Read moreRead less
Macro and micro level subjective expectations information and economic behaviour. This project examines the importance of economic expectations on the future state of the economy in decision making. It focuses on large life decisions such as going into retirement, paying for a university education and buying a house. The project also assess the extent to which people are able to make these predictions accurately.
Combating HIV/AIDS in Indonesia: understanding the behaviour of sex workers and their clients. The aim of this project is to improve our understanding of the behaviour of sex workers and their clients in Indonesia, which has the fastest growing HIV epidemic in Asia. A comparison of the behavioural characteristics of sex workers and their clientele will tell us which groups are likely to be more responsive to particular types of policies.