The Recipient Value and Distributional Impact of the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card in 2007

This paper considers the recipient value and distributional impact of the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC) by analysing a range of possible behavioural responses to economic incentives. First, I estimate the recipient value by considering the trade-off between moral hazard and risk pooling. The utility gain through risk-pooling is found to be negligible. The deadweight loss through moral hazard may be considerable. I also use illustrative models to demonstrate the possible effects of the CSHC on savings and labour supply. Whilst the CSHC may induce some people to save and work more, it may have the opposite effect on others.distributional impact, health insurance, recipient value, Australia, retirement 

Employment Effects of Army Service and Veterans’ Compensation: Evidence from the Australian Vietnam-Era Conscription Lotteries

Exploiting the Australian National Service lotteries of 1965-72, I estimate the effect of Army service on employment outcomes. Population data from military personnel records, tax returns, veterans’ compensation records and the Census facilitate a rich and precise analysis, identified by 53,000 compliers. The employment effect is confined to men who served in Vietnam and is very large, at -37 percentage points (95%CI: -32, -43) in 2006. The effect has emerged gradually since the 1990s, and is mirrored by veterans’ Disability Pension effects. These results contrast with those for the USA, possibly reflecting differences in employment incentives associated with veterans’ compensation.Vietnam veterans; employment; natural experiment; Australia; conscription

Are Low Skill Public Sector Workers Really Overpaid? A Quasi-Differenced Panel Data Analysis

Public-private sectoral wage differentials have been studied extensively using quantile regression techniques. These typically find large public sector premiums at the bottom of the wage distribution. This may imply that low skill workers are ‘overpaid’, prompting concerns over efficiency. We note several other potential explanations for this result and explicitly test whether the premium varies with skill, using Australian data. We use a quasi-differenced GMM panel data model which has not been previously applied to this topic, internationally. Unlike other available methods, this technique identifies sectoral differences in returns to unobserved skill. It also facilitates a decomposition of the wage gap into components explained by differences in returns to all (observed and unobserved) skills and by differences in their stock. We find no evidence to suggest that the premium varies with skill. One interpretation is that the compressed wage profile of the public sector induces the best workers (on unobserved skills) to join the public sector in low wage occupations, vice versa in high wage occupations. We also estimate the average public sector premium to be 6% for women and statistically insignificant (4%) for men.public sector, wages, quasi-differenced panel data, GMM, Australia

What Would the Average Public Sector Employee be Paid in the Private Sector?

This paper estimates the average Australian public sector wage premium. It includes a detailed critical review of the methods available to address this issue. The chosen approach is a quasi-differenced panel data model, estimated by the Generalised Method of Moments, which has many advantages over other methods and has not been used before for this topic. I find a positive average public sector wage premium for both sexes. The best estimates are 6.7% for men and 10.5% for women. The estimate is statistically significant for men (p = 0.024) and for women (p public sector, wages, premium, panel data, GMM, Australia 

Track association performance of the best hypotheses search method

Uncontrolled space objects in the geostationary orbit domain are hazardous threats for active satellites. Catalogs need to be build up, in order to protect this precious domain. The Swiss ZimSMART telescope, located in Zimmerwald, regularly scans the geostationary ring in order to provide a homogenous coverage. This surveying technique typically yields short measurement arcs, called tracklets. Each tracklet provides information about the line-of-sight and the rates of change but typically not about the full state of the observed object. Computationally intensive multi-hypothesis filter methods have been developed to associate tracklets with each other. An effective implementation to this approach is presented that uses an optimization algorithm to reduce the number of initial hypotheses. The method is tested with a set of real measurements of the aforementioned telescope

Is the Age Gradient in Self-Reported Material Hardship Explained by Resources, Needs, Behaviours or Reporting Bias?

Older people report much less hardship than younger people in a range of contexts, despite lower incomes. Hardship indicators are increasingly influential, so the source of the gradient has considerable policy implications. We propose a theoretical and empirical strategy to decompose the sources of this relationship. We exploit a unique feature of the Household, Income & Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) survey, which collects reports of hardship from all adult household members, facilitating within-couple estimates. The majority of the relationship is explained by observed resources, particularly wealth and home ownership. One third of the relationship is explained by unobserved differences between households, which we interpret as age-related behavioural choices. Reporting error does not appear to contribute to the age gradient.Hardship, age

The Effect of Motherhood on Wages and Wage Growth: Evidence for Australia

Labour market theory provides several reasons why mothers are likely to earn lower hourly wages than non-mothers. However, the size of any motherhood penalty is an empirical matter and the evidence for Australia is limited. This paper examines the effect of motherhood on Australian women’s wages and wage growth using a series of panel-data models which control for other relevant factors, both observed and unobserved. Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, an unexplained motherhood wage penalty of around four per cent for one child, and eight per cent for two or more children, is found. Further analysis suggests that the wage penalty emerges over time through reduced wage growth, rather than through an immediate wage decline after the birth of a child. This reduction in wage growth is consistent with discrimination but also with a reduction in mothers’ work effort.Motherhood Wage Penalty, Wage Growth, Fixed Effects

Long-Run Mortality Effects of Vietnam-Era Army Service: Evidence from Australia’s Conscription Lotteries

We estimate the effect of Vietnam era Army service on mortality, exploiting Australia’s conscription lotteries for identification. We utilise population data on deaths during 1994-2007 and militarypersonnel records. The estimates are identified by over 51,000 compliers induced to enlist in the Army, including almost 16,000 who served in Vietnam. The implicit comparison group is the set of men who did not serve in the Army, but who would have served had their date of birth been selected in the ballot. We find no statistically significant effects on mortality overall, nor for any cause of death (by ICD-10 Chapter). Under reasonable assumptions on the death rate of compliers, the results can be expressed as relative risks (RR) of death during 1994-2007. The estimated overall RR associated with Army service is 1.03 (95% CI: 0.92, 1.19). On the assumption that Army service affected mortality only for those who served in Vietnam, the estimated RR for Vietnam Veterans is 1.06 (95% CI: 0.81, 1.51). We also find no evidence to support a hypothesis of offsetting effects due to domestic Army service (beneficial to longevity) and service in Vietnam (detrimental).mortality; Vietnam veterans; Australia; conscription lottery

New Estimates of Intergenerational Mobility in Australia

We present new estimates of intergenerational earnings elasticity for Australia. We closely follow the methodology used by Leigh (2007), but use considerably more data (twelve waves of HILDA and four waves of PSID). Our adjusted estimates are intended to be comparable to those for other countries in Corak (2013). Our preferred estimate (0.35) is considerably higher than implied by Leigh’s study, and is less subject to sampling variation. In an international context, intergenerational mobility in Australia is not particularly high, and is consistent with its relatively high level of cross-sectional inequality

The Causal Effects of World War II Military Service

The effects of military service have been studied for decades, but surprisingly few studies have estimated the effects of World War II (WW2) service, where the focus has been on the impact of this 'total war' on the broader civilian population. Over 90% of Australian males born in the early 1920s served in the military during WW2. Almost none of those born in the late 1920s served. Treating such cohort differences as exogenous, we conduct one of the first econometric studies of WW2 service. We consider major life outcomes including employment, marital status and home ownership, all measured in 1966, while the economy was strong and male employment was very high. We find a significant negative effect on employment, half of which is accompanied by pensioner status. We find positive effects on home ownership and on separation/divorce. A feature of our analysis is a novel visual depiction of the variation which identifies the estimates, drawing on the Frisch-Waugh theorem