Effects of Maternal Work, Day Care Use and Other Investments in Children on Child Cognitive Outcomes. Later life outcomes due to investments by individuals and/or society in children is crucial to many countries, including Australia. Appropriate policy responses require reliable and valid estimates of the likely effects of individual investments and policy interventions. Despite many research reports on this topic, almost all do not control for selection bias (eg, high achieving mothers tend to ....Effects of Maternal Work, Day Care Use and Other Investments in Children on Child Cognitive Outcomes. Later life outcomes due to investments by individuals and/or society in children is crucial to many countries, including Australia. Appropriate policy responses require reliable and valid estimates of the likely effects of individual investments and policy interventions. Despite many research reports on this topic, almost all do not control for selection bias (eg, high achieving mothers tend to put children in day care), which is a feature of our work. Thus, our empirical results will have major policy implications, and will suggest ways to obtain similar results for Australian environments. Read moreRead less
Understanding and Modeling Individual Choices in Applied Economics. The fellowship will create a critical mass of researchers in choice modeling theory and methods in areas that Australia needs to sustain economic progress and plan for the future. It will significantly advance knowledge in several major areas: design of health insurance markets; tests for adverse selection in insurance markets; ability of people to plan for retirement (superannuation choices); ability of people to plan and choos ....Understanding and Modeling Individual Choices in Applied Economics. The fellowship will create a critical mass of researchers in choice modeling theory and methods in areas that Australia needs to sustain economic progress and plan for the future. It will significantly advance knowledge in several major areas: design of health insurance markets; tests for adverse selection in insurance markets; ability of people to plan for retirement (superannuation choices); ability of people to plan and choose in dynamic environments; and decisions to adopt new technologies/products in evolving technology markets. The outcome will be new ways to understand and predict choices that can significantly improve practices in business and other organisations.Read moreRead less
Distributional Consequences of Mass-Market Higher Education in Business. Increased access to tertiary education has not been evaluated for its effects on the full spectrum of individuals served by the tertiary sector. Using longitudinal data on entire student populations at university business faculties, this project will provide the first Australian evidence on the trade-offs amongst the educational success of students with different levels of preparation that occur when those with poorer prep ....Distributional Consequences of Mass-Market Higher Education in Business. Increased access to tertiary education has not been evaluated for its effects on the full spectrum of individuals served by the tertiary sector. Using longitudinal data on entire student populations at university business faculties, this project will provide the first Australian evidence on the trade-offs amongst the educational success of students with different levels of preparation that occur when those with poorer preparation are added to classrooms. Short-term performance and medium-term attrition, a recent educational policy focus, will be evaluated. Theoretically grounded recommendations will result for undergraduate program design to suit a student population with varying levels of university preparation.Read moreRead less
Bayesian choice modelling. Discrete choice models are important as they provide tools to help understand choice processes of decision makers. It remains a challenge to specify models with covariance structures flexible enough to capture complex patterns of cross-substitution between choices while being able to capture heterogeneity present in individual behaviour. We will develop a Bayesian approach to choice modelling that uses covariance selection to overcome these problems. This will train re ....Bayesian choice modelling. Discrete choice models are important as they provide tools to help understand choice processes of decision makers. It remains a challenge to specify models with covariance structures flexible enough to capture complex patterns of cross-substitution between choices while being able to capture heterogeneity present in individual behaviour. We will develop a Bayesian approach to choice modelling that uses covariance selection to overcome these problems. This will train researchers and raise the profile of Australia in an active research area that is important in the social sciences; substantive applications will be in health economics, but developments will also be relevant to cognate areas of biostatistics, epidemiology, and ecology.Read moreRead less
Building flexible multivariate models and their application in Finance. The project will develop methods for analyzing the properties of dependent measurements that may evolve through time. The new methods will significantly improve on current best statistical practice and will be applied to important problems in the financial sector such as asset allocation and risk management. The financial sector is a vital part of the Australian economy and it is important to understand the joint behavior of ....Building flexible multivariate models and their application in Finance. The project will develop methods for analyzing the properties of dependent measurements that may evolve through time. The new methods will significantly improve on current best statistical practice and will be applied to important problems in the financial sector such as asset allocation and risk management. The financial sector is a vital part of the Australian economy and it is important to understand the joint behavior of financial assets in order to understand and allow for risk. The methods will have immediate application in other disciplines such as medicine, engineering and the environmental sciences. The project will train a postdoctoral student and three PhD students in cutting edge financial econometrics. 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