This article explores the arguments for and against the use of government debt to finance large-scale public investments. Relative to the options of higher taxation or lower other expenditures, debt finance means that both the costs and the benefits of the investment fall on future generations....

The paper compares and contrasts the pay-as-you-go system of government provided age pensions funded from recurrent tax revenue with the pre-paid system based on a compulsory superannuation levy funding an actuarially fair retirement income. Under special assumptions, including constant levels...

This paper summarises a large project involving many studies to evaluate the effects on employment and unemployment in Australia of macroeconomic, wage restraint, taxation and social security systems, and of education and training policies. One set of studies finds that the NAIRU is an uncertain...

This paper provides pictures of low pay adult employees in Australia in 2004 drawing on data from the HILDA survey. The low waged are disaggregated into full-time and part-time employees. It is conservatively estimated that approximately 13 per cent of employees can be classified as low waged...

This paper evaluates the effects of budget consolidation on the Australian economy in the 1990s by using a modified version of TRYM. By identifying the effects on long-term interest rates of the expected reduction in budget deficits in the 1996/97 financial year, the paper simulates the model...

In this paper we explore a new approach to understanding the evolution of the unemployment rate in Australia. Specifically, we use gross worker flows data to explore the consequences of assuming that there is no unique equilibrium rate of unemployment but rather a continuum of stochastic...

Developing the institutional details for markets which will improve the allocation of scarce water as proposed in recent government initiatives is still a work in progress, and the designers face many challenges. Differences in the relevant market time interval, the important effects of...

This paper compares five alternative policy options with the January 2006 tax and social security system. Each option is designed to cost a similar amount of 5 billion dollars to the government at the current level of labour supply. The five options are: reducing the lowest income tax rate,...

This paper evaluates different policy options to reduce unemployment by using a version of the TRYM model. For the purpose of this paper, the TRYM model has been modified in several respects, particularly by combining the private business and government trading enterprise sectors. For the long...

It is important to understand how labour markets in different regions are affected by 'common’ or 'national' shocks including national macroeconomic, monetary and fiscal policies. This paper applies a new econometric approach - involving an unobserved components model - to identify the...