This presentation will highlight the specificities of longitudinal (panel) data and review how such data can be used for uncovering causal relationships and performing policy analysis. General ideas will be illustrated with examples from education research, which studies the determinants of student achievement.

Australia is a small open economy, characterized by full capital mobility and a floating exchange rate system, where the interest rate is predominantly influenced in global financial markets. If the RBA or any central bank of a small open economy attempts to resist rate hikes while the US Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank increase their benchmark rates, the Australian dollar will depreciate, making the prices of imported goods and services in the CPI basket more expensive, subsequently requiring the RBA to raise the cash rate even further and faster.

The Economic Society of Australia, Victoria Branch, invites you to our regular Professional Development Seminar series. In this session three researchers with policy experience will discuss how to design, present and discuss rigorous research in order to influence policy.

In cities around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic put the brakes on public transport. Buses, trains and light rail cars — once teaming with commuters — ran empty for much of 2020 and 2021. They have continued to run below capacity post-lockdown, thanks to renewed preferences for car travel and the rise of work-from-home practices. In the longer term, as urban populations grow, public transport will no doubt return to higher patronage — and to familiar capacity constraints.

Much attention has focused on the gender-patterned impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Victorian economy, in particular a steep dive in women’s workforce participation rates alongside traditional gender norms being re-entrenched with women carrying the bulk of caring and home-schooling responsibilities.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many employees and firms to experiment with working from home. This demonstrated that many jobs can done effectively from home and that the number of people working from home will likely remain high relative to pre-pandemic levels.  As part of the Productivity Commission’s Working from Home report, a simple model of working from home was developed to better understand how it might affect the Australian economy. Dr Mabel Andalón and Dr Matthew Jones will present an overview of the model and the implications drawn from it. 

Catch up on this Policy at the Pub event, with Alex Millmow presenting on his latest book "The Gypsy Economist: The Life and Times of Colin Clark". The book offers the first intellectual biography of Clark, an economist whose career was punctuated by a number of firsts, including being one of the first distinguished fellows of the Economics Society of Australia and the first economist Alex ever had the pleasure of meeting, and who wandered through the fields of applied economics in much the same way as he rambled through the English countryside and the Australian bush. This is an excellent opportunity to hear about and discuss the life of one of Australia’s most overlooked economists. 

The effectiveness of monetary policy is dependant on how well it is communicated to various audiences. John and Joan will discuss their recent research that used novel survey data techniques and machine learning modelling to assess how economists and non-economists perceive the readability and degree of reasoning of various economic communications, and its implications for improving central bank communication.

The Victorian Government will deliver its 2021-22 Budget on 20 May 2021. What have been the implications of the pandemic on the Victorian economy and government finances? And what is the focus of the Government’s expenditure plans for economy recovery and policy priorities?

Policy at the Pub with Bruce Preston, Professor of Economics at the University of Melbourne. Over the past decade, central banks around the world have failed to achieve their inflation targets. Bruce argues that this failure of monetary policy requires a fiscal policy solution. He discusses some implications for monetary-fiscal strategy in the wake of the COVID-19 recession.