Job retention and advancement of disadvantaged job-seekers. This project will use empirical methods to help determine what is necessary for job retainment and career advancement of disadvantaged jobseekers. Job retainment and advancement are essential to prolonged workforce participation and the development of human capital of disadvantaged jobseekers re-entering the workforce. Understanding and supporting the drivers of workforce participation is identified as a National Research Priority. Ther ....Job retention and advancement of disadvantaged job-seekers. This project will use empirical methods to help determine what is necessary for job retainment and career advancement of disadvantaged jobseekers. Job retainment and advancement are essential to prolonged workforce participation and the development of human capital of disadvantaged jobseekers re-entering the workforce. Understanding and supporting the drivers of workforce participation is identified as a National Research Priority. Therefore, the project findings will be of considerable importance to employment policy development in Australia to help ensure that future policy developments improve the human capital of disadvantaged entrants to the labour market and alleviate longer-term poverty and social exclusion. Read moreRead less
Measuring Hospital Performance: Outputs, Quality of Care, Competition and Efficiency. Hospitals are a critical component of the health infrastructure. An understanding of the performance of hospitals is important in shaping an overall health care strategy. Unfortunately, assessing hospital performance has been fraught with difficulties. A major obstacle is in defining and measuring the outputs and quality of hospitals. Collaborating with the Victorian Department of Human Services, and using t ....Measuring Hospital Performance: Outputs, Quality of Care, Competition and Efficiency. Hospitals are a critical component of the health infrastructure. An understanding of the performance of hospitals is important in shaping an overall health care strategy. Unfortunately, assessing hospital performance has been fraught with difficulties. A major obstacle is in defining and measuring the outputs and quality of hospitals. Collaborating with the Victorian Department of Human Services, and using the Department's VAED datasets, we aim to develop a framework within which unobservable quality dimensions can be estimated, so that hospital output and quality can be accounted for. The framework will be useful for addressing pertinent health policy issues, including hospital funding, specialisation, and competition issues.Read moreRead less
Regional Comparisons of Prices, Income and Growth in Australia. We will measure how much the cost of living and rates of inflation differ across the eight capital cities in Australia, and then test whether real per capita income levels across cities are converging or diverging over time. To make such comparisons, the ABS's databases on each capital city must first be harmonized. While doing this we will review the ABS's current procedures for data construction and quality assessment. A further a ....Regional Comparisons of Prices, Income and Growth in Australia. We will measure how much the cost of living and rates of inflation differ across the eight capital cities in Australia, and then test whether real per capita income levels across cities are converging or diverging over time. To make such comparisons, the ABS's databases on each capital city must first be harmonized. While doing this we will review the ABS's current procedures for data construction and quality assessment. A further aim is to show how statistical modelling using spanning-tree methods can resolve the conflict that arises for price indexes constructed on panel data sets between temporal and spatial consistency.Read moreRead less