What's the difference between a census – a full count – and a sample survey? The census will always be superior, right? Not really.
With talk that the Bureau of Statistics and the government are considering changing our census of population and housing from five-yearly to 10-yearly and making up for this with regular sample surveys, the difference between the two has suddenly become a question of interest to more...
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Raising mothers' job participation only half the story
I'm not sure how many barbecues it's stopping these days, but the issue you and I call childcare and the politically cool call ECEC - early childhood education and care - is still one of great concern to experts ranging from hard-headed economists to soft-hearted social workers, not to mention the odd parent.
From a narrowly economic perspective, childcare matters because any problems with it limit women's participation in...
Monday, February 23, 2015
One bad budget doesn’t kill all reform
If Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey fail to keep their jobs, and the more so if their successors fail to pull the government out of its dive, the 2014 budget will go down as the most fateful budget in Australia's history, worse even than Artie Fadden's original horror budget of 1951.
Should Abbott's prime ministership or his first-term government come to an early end, all the denizens of the House with the Flag on Top will conclude...
Saturday, February 21, 2015
How Australia's supply of labour is changing
The trouble with the way the media report developments in the labour market from one month to the next is that we don't get a sense of the major shifts that occur over time.
So today let's take a much longer view, examining the trends over, say, the two decades from 1993 to 2013. We'll do so with help from an article by Professors Roger Wilkins and Mark Wooden, of the Melbourne Institute, published in the latest issue of...
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
It helps to know how to save
The great middle-class virtue is the ability to delay gratification. We could spend all our money now, but wouldn't we be better off if we saved some of it for the future?
We could take the best job we can get as soon as we're old enough to leave school, but wouldn't it be better to stay on in education and eventually get a more highly paid and satisfying job?
Research confirms that the better you are at controlling your natural...
Monday, February 16, 2015
Don't fix the budget while the economy is weak
We are hearing a lot of muddled thinking about how the Liberal Party's leadership ructions affect the budget and the economy, much of it coming from business people. For the sake of their businesses, they need to think more clearly.
There must be some truth to the idea that the political uncertainly is adding to the lack of business confidence, but the contention it's a big factor is dubious. "Confidence" is such an...
Saturday, February 14, 2015
How cutting interest rates affects demand and inflation
Although many people have their doubts, the Reserve Bank cut interest rates last week believing it would help the economy grow faster and reduce unemployment. But how exactly is this meant to work?
Monetary economists believe interest rates affect the strength of demand (spending) in the economy via several "channels" or mechanisms. Eventually the effect on demand affects the degree of pressure for higher prices.
As we...
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
How to get yourself more time
Had a little too much politics of late? Much prefer an earnest discussion about why we're having so much trouble getting the economy moving? No, I thought not. Let's change the subject. Let's talk about time.
Do
you spend much time thinking about time? Most of us spend a lot of time
thinking how little time we have, but that's not the same thing. We
spend little time actually thinking about time, which I'm coming to
think...
Monday, February 9, 2015
Worried officials opt for risky strategy
My guess is the Reserve Bank is a lot more worried about the weak
state of the economy than it's prepared to admit in its soothing words
and the small downgrade to its growth forecast.
That's the only explanation I can think of for its decision
to cut the official cash rate by 0.25 percentage points last week,
despite governor Glenn Stevens' most recent "forward guidance" that "the
most prudent course is likely...
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Privatisation: neither very good nor very bad
The era of privatising government-owned businesses is pretty much
done and dusted, but two governments have dragged their feet, making
opposition to their efforts to complete their privatisation programs a
key issue in the Queensland election last week and the NSW election next
month.
Voters have always disapproved of privatisation, but that
hasn't stopped a lot of it happening. Particularly in recent years,
however, voters'...
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