Planning strategies that maximize the Human Development Index (HDI) tend towards minimizing consumption and maximizing non-investment expenditures on education and health. Interestingly, such strategies also tend towards equitable outcomes, even though inequality aversion is not modelled in the...

In New Zealand, excise taxes are levied on three commodity groups: alcohol, tobacco and petrol. The 2001 Tax Review, published by the New Zealand Treasury, argued that excises are inequitable and inefficient, and advised that these taxes should be removed and the revenue replaced by raising the...

In this paper I set some information derived from data on the gross flows of males between labour market states in Australia. The data, which is monthly, has been seasonally adjusted so as to more clearly reveal underlying trends. I begin with a brief review of the labour market for males over...

A number of studies have shown that peer punishment can sustain cooperation in public good games. This paper shows that the format used to give subjects feedback is critical for the e¢ cacy of punishment. Providing subjects with infor- mation about the earnings of their peers leads to lower...

Unexpected variation in emissions can have a substantial impact on the prices and efficiency of tradable emission permit markets. In this paper we report results from a laboratory experiment in which subjects participate in an emissions trading market in the presence of emissions uncertainty....

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When the prices of goods that form a relatively large proportion of the total expenditure of low income households rise in relation to all other goods, the inequality of the real income distribution increases. This paper models the effect on inequality and welfare if, ceteris paribus, Australian...

We study the pro-competitive gains from international trade in a quantitative model with endogenously variable markups. We find that trade can significantly reduce markup distortions if two conditions are satisfied: (i) there is extensive misallocation and (ii) opening to trade exposes hitherto...