We compare alternative methods for estimating immigrant wage and employment assimilation using unique panel data over 2001 - 2009 for a large, nationally-representative sample of immigrants. Previous assimilation estimates have been mainly based on crosssectional data and have therefore suffered...

This paper examines the impacts of recent Australian welfare to work reforms for low income parents of school-aged children who had been in receipt of Parenting Payment for at least one year. Specifically, the reforms introduced a requirement to engage in at least 15 hours of work-related...

This paper introduces a new Lorenz dominance criterion that allows ranking income distributions according to centrist measures à la Seidl and Pfingsten (1997). In doing so, it defines a-Lorenz curves by adapting the generalized Lorenz curves to this case. In addition, it provides an empirical...

This paper examines the extent to which year-9 performance on the National Assessment Program—Language Arts and Numeracy (NAPLAN) predicts access to higher education as determined by subsequent achievement on year-12 Victoria Certificate of Education (VCE) exams. VCE performance is measured...

This paper investigates the forecasting performance of the diffusion index approach for the Australian economy, and considers the forecasting performance of the diffusion index approach relative to composite forecasts. Weighted and unweighted factor forecasts are benchmarked against composite...

A distinctive feature of the Australian labour market is a high incidence of casual employment. Almost 27 percent of Australian employees in 2006 were classified as employed on a casual basis, an alarmingly high proportion given the strong claims often made about the harmful effects that casual...

We study the link between exporting and productivity using unpublished establishment level data of the Australian manufacturing from 1994 to 2000. We find there is significant difference in the first moment as well as the whole distribution of productivity between exporters and non-exporters. At...