In this paper we test the hypothesis advanced by Weiss (1995) that under sorting models the return to schooling across identical twins would decline over time compared to the return for the population as a whole. The analyses undertaken on a relatively large sample of Australian twins are...

The oldest university still in operation is approximately 1,750 years old (wordiQ.com, 2004). When compared to firms, universities have stood the test of time, while firms seem to lack longevity. The oldest listed firm still operating is around 225 years old (O’Hara and Mandel, 2004), a...

The large US-China trade imbalance is a common cause for concern and regularly blamed on the undervaluation of the RMB. We estimate a simple model of the trade balance and simulate the long-run effects on the trade balance of RMB revaluations in the range of 10-50%. We find that improvements in...

During the past two decades, the Australian economy has experienced fundamental changes influenced by the increasing propagation of globalisation. Globalising forces have reduced barriers to labour mobility across countries and economies. Concurrently there has been an increase in the importance...

Survey of literature on PPP up to July 2000. Includes a geogetric analysis of PPP theory, issues related to deviations from parity and an examination of empirical evidence on PPP.

Using an immigrant assimilation framework, this paper develops a model of the occupational mobility of immigrants and tests the hypotheses using data on adult males from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia. The theoretical model generates hypotheses regarding a U-shaped pattern of...

Building on purchasing power parity theory, this paper proposes a new approach to forecasting exchange rates using the Big Mac data from The Economist magazine. Our approach is attractive in three aspects. Firstly, it uses easily-available Big Mac prices as input. These prices avoid several...

Regional unemployment disparities are widely observed, appear to persist through time and are often a reason for concern on the part of both regional and national governments. This paper constructs a small two-region general-equilibrium model and uses it to assess the effectiveness of...