Economic Papers最新文献

Positive externalities of education on health have been widely studied in the prior literature. However, the focus has been on the count of years of schooling rather than the levels of schooling, which is a commonly overlooked yet meaningful way of assessing the education – health relationship. Further, the role of health beliefs in determining the relation between education and health has been understudied, particularly for women. We address these two important questions by using a large-scale household survey data from India. We find that education levels have differential impact on health beliefs and the impact is highest for individuals with higher levels of education. These findings indicate how educational interventions at lower levels can be effective in improving health beliefs to encourage appropriate health behaviour from early stages of life.

During the post-COVID period, demand augmenting policies were needed and have been exercised by the Government of India to prevent the Indian economy from falling into recession. However, these demand augmenting policies seem to be inflationary as in the recent past high inflation has been observed in India. Thus, optimum combination of monetary and fiscal policies is needed to simultaneously achieve the objectives of demand growth and price stability. This paper proposes combinations of the two policies based on the results of a sign-restricted vector autoregressive (VAR) modelling framework. The experimentation was performed using sign restrictions on macroeconomic target variables viz. demand growth and inflation rate while leaving the policy variables free to suggest proposed stances to achieve desired objectives. On the basis of the empirical findings, the proposed stances of monetary and fiscal authorities were then compared with the actual stances and requisite correction in the policy behaviours has been suggested in terms of improvements to the magnitude and frequency of contraction and expansion.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic brought economic recession that affected nations, businesses, and households globally. The severity of this global economic crisis is large and the impact has been asymmetric across socioeconomic groups. We examine the distributional effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across household types using a specially-designed model that combines macro (computable general equilibrium) and micro (heterogenous households) approaches. Computable general equilibrium models are able to capture behavioural changes in macroeconomic and sectoral variables but they often lack the rich distributional detail found in microsimulation models. In this paper, we address this limitation by incorporating 10,046 actual households into a computable general equilibrium model to capture the heterogeneity through which the pandemic may influence household behaviour. We find that the income effects are asymmetric across income groups leading to a slight increase in income inequality. The distributional effects are more progressive for non-wage income sources and uniform for wage income. For younger cohorts, income changes are dominated by employment effects whereas income changes for older cohorts are dominated by changes in capital rentals and government transfers. Spatially, the income effects follow a similar pattern for city and non-city dwellers.

This study examines how Australian public universities have a presence in the various discipline areas recognised by the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Using the prism of public value, we interpret how universities articulate the legitimacy of teaching humanities. Through a careful audit of available secondary data, we advance a typology of humanities education. Our principal finding is that Australia's humanities presence is surprisingly homogenous, with only a few universities proposing a specialised offering. We contend that this creates an environment where universities may be forced to consider abandoning their humanities offerings unless a higher degree of differentiation takes place.

For most of the past decade, unconventional monetary policies (UMPs) have affected the wealth of savers, renters and younger generations. These policies, which enlarge central bank balance sheets – supporting credit expansion in the economy – but have no reliable mechanism for reversal, raise the simultaneous risk of higher inflation and deflation. In this paper, we critique UMPs by drawing on extant literature and empirical data that elucidate the undesired economic effects they cultivate. In particular, we focus on the implications of UMPs on efficient portfolio holdings by proposing an intuitive ex-ante measure of dynamic efficiency loss that has applications for future research.

First Nation community well-being is examined with a lens on the role of geographic location and financial indicators as potential determinants of well-being. Regression analysis makes use of data from the 2016 Canadian Census and First Nation government financial statements to examine six well-being indices for 446 First Nation communities. The results suggest that geographic location is the most critical factor explaining well-being with more remote and northern communities experiencing relatively lower levels of measures of well-being, with the exception of Indigenous language. Numerous well-being distinctions are also identified among the Canadian provinces and regions. The financial indicators assessing transfer revenue from First Nation entities and Nation-owned business activity are found to be positively associated with community well-being. These insights are valuable to public policy-makers and Indigenous leaders, in Canada and other countries, as they shape policy for the benefit of First Nation people.

Australian living standards, relative to the rest of the world, have been highest in eras of economic openness. Openness can also increase equality. Tariffs tend to be regressive, so poor households benefit most from trade liberalisation. In the case of immigration, skilled permanent migrants tend to earn considerably more than the Australian-born population, so any wage pressures are felt at the upper end of the distribution. Foreign investment can also have an equalising effect, by raising wages and lowering the rate of return on domestic capital. An approach of engaged egalitarianism – ensuring that the gains from globalisation are broadly shared – will benefit the most disadvantaged Australians.

Health at birth is an important indicator of human capital development over the life course. This paper uses longitudinal data from the Young Lives survey and employs instrumental variable regression models to estimate the effect of birth weight on cognitive development during childhood in India. We find that a 10 per cent increase in birth weight increases cognitive test scores by 0.11 standard deviations at 5–8 years of age. Low birth weight infants experience a lower test score compared with normal birth weight infants. The positive effect of birth weight on a cognitive test score is larger for girls, children from rural households and those with less educated mothers. Our findings suggest that health policies designed to improve birth weight could improve human capital in resource-poor settings.

Spatial remoteness in the sense of great distances between population centres and limited access to public services is an on-going problem in Australian local government, where there exist large, sparsely populated regions dominated by the 'tyranny of distance'. From a public policy perspective, it is important to understand the impact of remoteness on local authorities. Accordingly, in this paper, we estimate the relationship between remoteness and financial sustainability using a 2014–2018 sample of Australian local governments. In general, we find only limited empirical evidence for a relationship between geographical remoteness and financial sustainability as we have proxied it.