Small firms' finances: effects on employment, wages and growth. The project aims to estimate how difficulties in accessing financial and credit markets affect small and medium enterprise (SME) decisions about employment, wages, entry and exit. Although the SME sector is Australia’s largest employer, the extent to which financial constraints affect these firms' market performance and their ability to create and sustain employment is unknown. The project plans to use an econometric analysis of fir ....Small firms' finances: effects on employment, wages and growth. The project aims to estimate how difficulties in accessing financial and credit markets affect small and medium enterprise (SME) decisions about employment, wages, entry and exit. Although the SME sector is Australia’s largest employer, the extent to which financial constraints affect these firms' market performance and their ability to create and sustain employment is unknown. The project plans to use an econometric analysis of firm level panel data to fill this gap. The intended outcome is micro-econometric findings tailored to improve targeted labour and financial policy. The expected benefit is to provide input to policy responses that support employment, productivity and wages in volatile market conditions.Read moreRead less
Price-Setting Rules and Allocative Efficiency in Oligopolies. This project aims to investigate under which circumstances restrictions on how often firms can change prices increase competition in an oligopoly and bring down prices. For this, we propose the use of laboratory experiments with a novel design followed by field experiments and a real price-data analysis for external validation. This study will result in both the advancement of theory describing how firms compete in dynamic oligopolies ....Price-Setting Rules and Allocative Efficiency in Oligopolies. This project aims to investigate under which circumstances restrictions on how often firms can change prices increase competition in an oligopoly and bring down prices. For this, we propose the use of laboratory experiments with a novel design followed by field experiments and a real price-data analysis for external validation. This study will result in both the advancement of theory describing how firms compete in dynamic oligopolies and practical policy advice on how price setting rules can be used to improve consumer welfare. This project has the potential to generate sizable benefits to Australian consumers, as the resulting policy advice would be applicable to large markets such as those for petrol, groceries and online retail.Read moreRead less
Price Transparency, Search, and Collusion in Markets. Online search platforms and 'open data' policies are emerging to empower consumers with price information for decision-making in markets, yet also can enable collusive pricing. This project aims to study the competitive impact of search platforms by combining large, real-time datasets on firm pricing and consumer search with natural and field experiments. The project expects to facilitate the development of new models of collusion, consumer s ....Price Transparency, Search, and Collusion in Markets. Online search platforms and 'open data' policies are emerging to empower consumers with price information for decision-making in markets, yet also can enable collusive pricing. This project aims to study the competitive impact of search platforms by combining large, real-time datasets on firm pricing and consumer search with natural and field experiments. The project expects to facilitate the development of new models of collusion, consumer search, and platform adoption. This should yield substantial benefit by modernizing competition policy for the digital age through novel data-driven screens for collusion, and policies to encourage platform adoption and enable consumers’ use of data in decision-making to increase competition in markets.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE160101242
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$358,000.00
Summary
Market responses to behavioral consumer policy: Experimental study. This project aims to investigate the effectiveness of regulatory policies such as industry standards, optimal defaults and third-party comparison services in supporting consumer decision-making. In complex market environments, consumers often struggle to make good purchasing decisions and can be vulnerable to exploitation by firms. Understanding how regulatory consumer policy directly affects consumer decisions and the dynamic s ....Market responses to behavioral consumer policy: Experimental study. This project aims to investigate the effectiveness of regulatory policies such as industry standards, optimal defaults and third-party comparison services in supporting consumer decision-making. In complex market environments, consumers often struggle to make good purchasing decisions and can be vulnerable to exploitation by firms. Understanding how regulatory consumer policy directly affects consumer decisions and the dynamic strategies of participating firms is important to improve our markets, inform consumer policy and provide evidence-based policy recommendations. This is particularly important in the increasingly complex market domains such as health, insurance and household finance.Read moreRead less
Big data: implications for competition, privacy and regulation. This project aims to provide economic analyses of the costs and benefits of business strategies driven by consumer data, while considering consumers’ privacy concerns. This is highly relevant and timely given the vast amount of consumer data collected, shared and used in the digital era. Expected outcomes include better understanding of how data may lead to market power and how to safeguard against abuse of market power and privacy ....Big data: implications for competition, privacy and regulation. This project aims to provide economic analyses of the costs and benefits of business strategies driven by consumer data, while considering consumers’ privacy concerns. This is highly relevant and timely given the vast amount of consumer data collected, shared and used in the digital era. Expected outcomes include better understanding of how data may lead to market power and how to safeguard against abuse of market power and privacy breach. This project should make significant contributions to the nascent academic research and policy discussions in this area. This should also place Australia at the forefront of international scientific community and policy circle on the regulation of data-driven business strategies and privacy regulation. Read moreRead less
Economic analyses of partial equity ownership arrangements: theory, evidence, and policy implications. Partial equity ownership (PEO) arrangements have become prevalent and significant phenomena in modern economies. This project will develop comprehensive analytical frameworks for antitrust agencies, including the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, to analyse the antitrust consequences of PEO arrangements and assess their impacts on consumers and society.
Transport and productivity, a study on Australia's largest trading partner. This project aims to study how transport infrastructure supports innovations, productivity gains, and industrial development. This project will study the effects of this development on productivity and resource allocation in the manufacturing sector, output and efficiency growth, and the spatial allocation of capital and labour inputs. The project expects to build a geospatial database covering China's full transportatio ....Transport and productivity, a study on Australia's largest trading partner. This project aims to study how transport infrastructure supports innovations, productivity gains, and industrial development. This project will study the effects of this development on productivity and resource allocation in the manufacturing sector, output and efficiency growth, and the spatial allocation of capital and labour inputs. The project expects to build a geospatial database covering China's full transportation network from 1993-2014, merge this database with manufacturing plants’ longitudinal data, and apply (quasi)-natural experiments for analyses. Knowledge derived from this project will be significant for Australia because China’s productivity, resource allocation, and competitive advantage directly impact Australia’s industrial development, employment and sustainable economic growth.Read moreRead less
Economic efficiency and the provision of incentives for information acquisition and disclosure: a mechanism design approach. By uncovering what determines information acquisition, highlighting what allows experts and insiders to manipulate market outcomes, and studying the efficiency gains obtainable with the use of a variety of incentives schemes, this research will provide valuable insights for public policy concerning information diffusion and market transparency.
The economics of cooperative behaviour. Free-riding and rent-seeking, such as tax avoidance and nepotism, are group-undermining activities that societies including Australia continuously struggle with. The aim of this project is to develop a fuller understanding of how to protect human groups from these socially damaging group-related behaviours. Drawing on a conceptual grounding that combines ideas from across social science, the project aims to implement a suite of economic experiments to deve ....The economics of cooperative behaviour. Free-riding and rent-seeking, such as tax avoidance and nepotism, are group-undermining activities that societies including Australia continuously struggle with. The aim of this project is to develop a fuller understanding of how to protect human groups from these socially damaging group-related behaviours. Drawing on a conceptual grounding that combines ideas from across social science, the project aims to implement a suite of economic experiments to develop a view of humans' cooperative behaviour that unites several strands of economics literature and offers new insights about how institutions that counter free-riding and rent-seeking arise and are maintained.Read moreRead less
Optimal Policy Design with Entry: A Model of Aggregative Oligopoly Games. This project aims to develop a theory of endogenous market structures using aggregative oligopoly games to engage issues in competition, trade and innovation policy. Effective and innovative policy design is crucial for economic growth and productivity. Policy analysis with endogenous market structures is in need of better tools. The toolkit of aggregative games, in which each player’s profit can be written as a function o ....Optimal Policy Design with Entry: A Model of Aggregative Oligopoly Games. This project aims to develop a theory of endogenous market structures using aggregative oligopoly games to engage issues in competition, trade and innovation policy. Effective and innovative policy design is crucial for economic growth and productivity. Policy analysis with endogenous market structures is in need of better tools. The toolkit of aggregative games, in which each player’s profit can be written as a function of own action and an aggregate variable, would greatly simplify the analysis of oligopoly interaction. This would lead to a tractable but general welfare analysis yielding new results. The framework is designed to allow us to examine complex policy questions in a simplified way, accommodating models with heterogeneous players and entry, and generalising models with different types of competition and demand specification.Read moreRead less