Economic Papers最新文献

The Australian Government launched the HomeBuilder Program as one of several fiscal policies designed to address the economic impact of COVID-19 on the Australian economy. This paper presents an economic analysis of the use of expansionary fiscal policy via transfer payments in the HomeBuilder Program. An overview of the HomeBuilder Program and its complements of existing Federal, State and Territory grants have been provided. Economic justifications of the HomeBuilder Program have also been presented. In addition, the paper looks at the changes in private new house sales, number of dwellings approved and new loan commitments with the introduction of the HomeBuilder Program. Finally, the paper examines the eligibility criteria of the HomeBuilder Program against three groups of applicants and finds that people who plan to purchase a house and land package or build a new home on a pre-owned vacant block benefit the most from the programme.

This study highlights recent approaches to reducing capital flow volatility using capital controls. Through a SVAR model, variance decomposition and shocks analysis, applied to 22 developed and developing countries over the period between 2000 and 2017, this study examines the effectiveness of capital controls in reducing capital flow volatility. The results show that the portfolio balance approach of capital controls can be applied and enables to predict capital inflow movements. The findings show asymmetric impacts of capital controls, where a floating exchange rate allows capital controls to be more effective compared to a fixed exchange rate. Furthermore, controls on capital inflows are more useful than controls on outflows. This study found that the exchange rate policy is more responsive to capital controls actions compared to the monetary policy.

This article discusses how U.S. monetary policy shocks can influence commodity prices. Historically, a lot of studies in the literature have investigated the impact of short-term interest rates on different types of commodity prices. This article takes a more comprehensive approach and contributes to the literature by analysing the effect of both short- and long-term interest rates as well as M2 money stock on commodity prices at aggregate and sub-indices levels. The “B-model” variant of structural vector error correction models (SVECMs) is used to estimate the restricted contemporaneous impact matrix (SR) and the restricted long-term impact matrix (LR). Furthermore, SVECMs impulse response functions are used to evaluate the extent to which monetary policy shocks explain commodity prices. In contrast with the results of previous studies, we do not find evidence of a strong response pattern of commodity prices to monetary policy shocks in the short term. However, monetary policy shocks can explain commodity prices and their components in the long term. From a policy point of view, monetary authorities should exercise caution in using short-term effects of monetary policy instruments on commodity prices, given their long-term impact is inflationary while there are no beneficial short-term effects.

A broad consensus exists that Australian economic activity is too heavily concentrated in capital cities, and regional employment creation should be encouraged. Given the magnitude of international migration to Australia, it is important to determine the impact of migration on regional development by investigating business ownership and job creation by international migrants in regional areas. This paper examines the probability that regional migrant business owners are employers – and thereby employment generators – using a multivariate logit model. We find that migrant business owners with staff are more likely to be male, married and live in regional NSW, metropolitan Victoria and regional and metropolitan Queensland.

Trading picks are a common transaction that is observed in sporting leagues that conduct player drafts. However, with its evolution, current iterations allow for the trading of picks and players, which in turn raises questions about valuing such trades. This study proposes a pick valuation system using survival analysis techniques, which was further extended to value players who were already enlisted. The model proved to be viable, allowing to evaluate trades involving both picks and players.

This study examines the impacts of trade policy uncertainties on bilateral trade balances (henceforth, BTBs) of the United States and Japan. This is achieved by using the newly created Trade Policy Uncertainty (henceforth, TPU) index and by also applying the recently created non-linear ARDL approach. The main empirical findings, in summary, are that changes in the TPU index have significant impacts on both countries’ BTBs. Furthermore, while increases in the TPU index in Japan improve US BTB, decreases worsen it. However, increases and decreases in the US TPU index have no impact on Japan’s BTB with the United States. This may lead to the interpretation that Japan’s exporters–importers or Japan’s trade policy are/is not sensitive to changes in the US TPU index, but they/it are/is sensitive to changes in Japan’s TPU index. Based on this result, we may re-classify (to some extent) Japanese exporters–importers as trade policy uncertainty avoidance people, referring to uncertainty avoidance people by Hofstede (1980), since Japanese are one of the highest uncertainty avoidance people in their socio-cultural-economic structure.

The paper presents analysis of market concentration in Australia’s stock market and explores what this might tell us about the state of competition in the real economy. It finds that, on most measures, Australia’s stock market is highly concentrated but is becoming less concentrated over time. Many studies, including leading books on competition policy, have used stock market concentration as a proxy for market concentration in the economy, usually due to data constraints. The paper warns against this. Using the stock market for competition analysis incorrectly defines markets and competition, excludes most competitors, ignores important market dynamics and leads to erroneous results. Declining stock market concentration should not be taken as a sign that competition in the economy is improving.

The paper presents an in medias res economic cost-benefit analysis of a Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) for beverage containers in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Australia. The paper examines all cost elements of the scheme – scheme design and administration, scheme coordination, beverage industry compliance, household participation, business participation and container redemption infrastructure and operating costs. The paper also examines all potential benefits – avoided waste collection and transport costs; avoided material recovery facility processing cost; avoided landfill cost; avoided street sweeping cost; value of avoided litter; and value of recyclates. A wide variety of data sources is employed, and some of the critical issues are examined via several approaches. The main finding of the paper is that the ACT CDS is clearly economically worthwhile. The in medias res CBA of the ACT CDS shows the scheme to be highly efficient and thus recommends the continuation of the scheme.

This work analyses the relationships between the banking sector and the economy as a whole in the United States between 1990 and 2016. The data are obtained from the Federal Reserve System (FED) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The methodology applied is canonical analysis, and this analysis will allow us to obtain composite indicators on the real and financial state of the economy, among other composite indicators. This study’s main contribution and originality is centred on this new way of addressing financial and economic stability. Its contributions to macroprudential policy, as well as the financial and economic stability measures it creates, are valuable.