https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7929 2026-06-04T20:18:00Z 2026-06-04T20:18:00Z Deitch, Nathaniel https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33961 2026-04-22T05:25:43Z 2025-06-02T00:00:00Z

Policy-at-Risk: The Effects of Financial Conditions on the Conduct of Monetary Policy in Australia Deitch, Nathaniel The global financial crisis (GFC) of the late 2000s marked an important event in terms of changing attitudes towards prudential and financial regulation. However, it also demonstrated the close connectivity between financial conditions and macroeconomic performance. It is therefore important to understand the influence of changing financial conditions on the conduct of monetary policy by central banks, particularly how central banks respond to these changes. This thesis constructs a financial conditions index (FCI) for Australia to represent the state of financial conditions between 1976 and 2023. I use a two-stage regression model as part of a novel policy-at-risk (PaR) model to assess the effects of financial conditions on monetary policy first at the mean level, and secondly at different quantiles along the distribution of interest rate changes. I also assess the uncertainty associated with monetary policy over time by plotting the conditional distribution of the overnight cash rate (OCR) together with its fitted quantiles. The findings reveal that when the OCR is low relative to systematic policy, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is less responsive to changes in financial conditions, resulting in smaller interest rate cuts. Conversely, the RBA reacts more strongly to financial conditions when the OCR is relatively high.

2025-06-02T00:00:00Z Doherty, Sophie https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33908 2026-04-22T05:25:42Z 2025-05-14T00:00:00Z

Does the composition of credit matter for Australian monetary policy transmission? Doherty, Sophie The composition of credit is rarely discussed when quantifying the role of credit in Australian monetary policy transmission. As the share of household and business credit has changed, it is important to understand whether the composition will matter for monetary policy transmission. I use a SVAR model to quantify the sensitivity of household and business credit to monetary policy finding relatively symmetric responses for all components. However, the SVAR model fails to account for the changing share of household and business credit. Implementing a DSGE model with credit, I construct three compositions representative of Australia’s credit composition since 1992. Household credit is shown to be more sensitive to a tightening of monetary policy as the share of household credit increases, as has occurred in Australia. Meanwhile, a business-dominant composition will propagate monetary policy shocks to investment and output. Furthermore, a shock to borrowing constraints implies the gradual change in credit composition will impact Australia’s financial stability more broadly as business credit has the strongest relationship with macroeconomic variables. As the share of business credit has gradually declined, the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission through credit to key macroeconomic variables may have decreased.

2025-05-14T00:00:00Z Sharma, Geena https://hdl.handle.net/2123/31865 2026-04-22T05:25:49Z 2023-11-14T00:00:00Z

Retaining Australian Nurses: An Analysis of Nurses’ Wages and Exit Rates Sharma, Geena This study examines the factors influencing Australian nurses’ decisions to leave the nurse profession, describes the pathways that nurses take after leaving the profession, and estimates the average wage change associated with a nurse changing professions. Using longitudinal data from the Australian Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey and panel data estimation methods, we find that a nurse’s pre-exit hourly wage is significantly associated with a nurse’s exit decision, whereby higher wages are associated with greater risk of exit. Other significant risk factors are age, childbirth, residential location change and tertiary qualifications. We also find that most nurses stay within the health care sector when quitting their job. These job transitions are characterised by significant increases in hourly wages and occupational prestige, suggesting that nurses who change jobs do so for better job opportunities. This holds true in particular for nurses with tertiary education. We conclude that nurse exit decisions are not associated with loss in human capital for the healthcare sector overall, but if the policy objective is to address nurse shortages by retention rather than new admissions, then higher wages would have to be paid.

2023-11-14T00:00:00Z Mendes, Sofia https://hdl.handle.net/2123/30192 2026-04-22T05:25:46Z 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z

Monetary Policy and Inequality in Australia Mendes, Sofia Australia has experienced growing income and consumption inequality over the past three decades. As interest rates rise, it is important to understand the impact of monetary policy on household income and consumption. This thesis uses data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey to investigate the distributional effects of monetary policy and the channels through which monetary policy transmits to households. I use the local projections method and find that monetary policy has distributional effects. When interest rates rise, earnings inequality worsens and consumption inequality decreases. I find that the distributional effects of monetary policy are transmitted through the earnings heterogeneity, income composition, and portfolio composition channels.

2022-01-01T00:00:00Z Reinhard, Joey Arnold https://hdl.handle.net/2123/30116 2026-04-22T05:25:40Z 2023-02-24T00:00:00Z

Financialisation and Income Distribution in Australia: Theory and Evidence Reinhard, Joey Arnold While rising income inequality and financialisation are widely recognised as prominent features of advanced capitalist economies, theoretical explanations of these phenomena, and how they interact, have varied significantly. Many of these explanations involve the construction of all-encompassing cross-country narratives, which result in a lack of analytical specificity. By framing inequality through the lens of the functional distribution of income, and focusing on the case study of Australia, this thesis aims to paint a detailed picture of what the financialisation-income distribution nexus can look like in practice. The key theoretical approach adopted is a Sraffian model of financialisation, which proposes that an increase in the relative size of the financial sector, higher financial sector productivity, and reduced labour bargaining power, lead to a fall in the wage share of income. This model is synthesised with other heterodox perspectives in order to establish a nuanced understanding of the key historical events that have driven the financialisation process in Australia. In doing so, this thesis seeks to disentangle Australia’s experience of financialisation and a falling wage share from the ambiguity of neoliberalism, deregulation, and globalisation.

2023-02-24T00:00:00Z Belobrajdic, Luka https://hdl.handle.net/2123/29938 2026-04-22T05:25:45Z 2023-01-30T00:00:00Z

The Relationship Between Commodity Prices and Australia’s Gross Domestic Income Belobrajdic, Luka Commodities dominate Australia’s export composition. To this effect, there is a plausible relationship between commodity prices and the prosperity of Australians. Gross domestic income is chosen as a proxy for prosperity given it is better able to capture purchasing power than gross domestic product in the Australian context. Using a discrete wavelet transformation, the commodity price series is decomposed into a trend and cycle component. Following, I run a series of structural vector autoregressions for the period 1985:Q4 to 2019:Q4, as well as two sub-samples, pre and post mid-2003, in view of the increase in price and variance of commodity prices at this time. I find that both the trend and cycle components of commodity prices meaningfully impact GDI primarily via gross operating surplus, while GDP is unaffected. Although a shock to the cycle component of the commodity price series has a larger effect on GDI when compared to the trend, the impact of the trend is far more persistent. Further, for the pre mid-2003 sub-sample, commodity price changes have no discernable impact on GDI, as opposed to the post mid-2003 sample where a noticeably strong relationship exists.

2023-01-30T00:00:00Z Symonds, Samantha https://hdl.handle.net/2123/29928 2026-04-22T05:25:47Z 2023-01-25T00:00:00Z

Being ‘Too’ Smart Doesn’t Always Pay Off; Truth-Telling in a Strategy-Proof Mechanism Symonds, Samantha In strategy-proof mechanisms truth-telling is a dominant strategy yielding optimal results for all participants, yet according to experimental evidence truthful revelation rates are worryingly low. This thesis is based on the growing realm of literature finding that participants tend not to play their dominant strategy, i.e. tell the truth, within matching markets even when given strategy-proof mechanisms. I design an experiment using the well-known Gale-Shapley Deferred Acceptance (DA) algorithm that aims to test whether using tutorials helps participants better understand that truth-telling is their optimal strategy within strategy-proof mechanisms. These tutorials allow participants to practice their approach and observe the outcome of their choices before having to commit to a final strategy. I hypothesise that participant engagement in tutorials will increase truth-telling rates in matching mechanisms and predict that given advice alone reduces rates of truthful preference revelation, participant engagement in tutorials can effectively mitigate the misleading power of advice. This thesis finds that the proportion of participants that told the truth was 3% lower if they received the tutorials compared to when no additional information was presented. However, tutorials improve on truth-telling rates compared to advice as 31% more people told the truth when given tutorials and no advice compared to if they were presented with advice alone. Additionally, participants engaging with both advice and tutorials together had truth-telling rates 11% higher than those given solely advice, which further supports the effectiveness of tutorials in overcoming the misleading effect of advice.

2023-01-25T00:00:00Z Yu, Zhuojin https://hdl.handle.net/2123/29926 2026-04-22T05:25:50Z 2023-01-25T00:00:00Z

Something New in Medical Residency Matching Markets Yu, Zhuojin Worldwide medical residency markets commonly employ variants of the two-sided central clearinghouse designed by Roth and Peranson in 1999. In the NSW physiotherapy residency matching market, a one-sided and computationally efficient matching mechanism is used – the Kuhn-Munkres algorithm. The mechanism is new for medical matching markets, with no publicly known application and no existing literature. A crucial contribution of the thesis is presenting the algorithm and starting a discussion around the Kuhn-Munkres algorithm in matching. The thesis models the iterative working of the Kuhn-Munkres algorithm. I show that the Kuhn-Munkres algorithm is rank-efficient, outcome unfair, procedurally fair and not strategy-proof. Comparing the Roth-Peranson and Kuhn-Munkres algorithms on efficiency, fairness and incentive properties, the thesis concludes that there is no settled winner between the two algorithms. The competition eventually comes down to the trade-off between cost reductions and market complexities.

2023-01-25T00:00:00Z Rogut, Nathan https://hdl.handle.net/2123/29894 2026-04-22T05:25:41Z 2023-01-18T00:00:00Z

Can we make investors smarter using a nudge? Maybe, but we can’t prove it using the most common experimental disposition effect environment. Rogut, Nathan Investors have been shown to behave in a way that reduces their earnings by being over hesitant to sell stocks that have decreased in price and over eager to sell stocks that have increased in price, exhibiting what is known as a disposition effect. This persists even in environments that make exhibiting a disposition effect always reduce expected returns. Our study uses the most common experimental disposition effect environment to test the use of a novel nudge to reduce participants disposition effects and finds that the nudge does reduce participants’ disposition effects. However, several of our findings challenge the external and internal validity of the environment, and it is possible that the nudge only works for a subset of the population that understands the environment better. Despite the environment making diversification suboptimal, those who understand diversification (and therefore might perform better in real-world markets) perform worse in this environment due to diversifying more, indicating that participants bring their external beliefs about real world markets into the environment. We show that the optimal disposition effect in the environment is substantially negative, which critiques past studies that have used a rational benchmark of zero. We also find significantly negative disposition effects across the board for our sample, which is unique, potentially due to the inclusion of comprehension questions before trading that assisted participants to understand the environment better.

2023-01-18T00:00:00Z DONG, Chengxin https://hdl.handle.net/2123/29782 2026-04-22T05:25:45Z 2022-12-09T00:00:00Z

How does household consumption respond to housing price changes in China? DONG, Chengxin How house price changes impact household consumption is a long-lasting debate in macroeconomics. Previous literature mainly analyses this relationship with macro-level data, while this thesis aims to identify the relationship using a micro-level dataset in the Chinese context. With OLS regression, it demonstrates that there is a positive relationship between household consumption and house price. This conclusion applies to both homeowners and non-owners during the sample period. Meanwhile, for households who are experiencing a transfer in homeownership, meaning selling or buying a house, higher house prices would also lead to higher consumption. If a household bought or sold a house, the consumption level would increase. Additionally, there exists regional heterogeneity in the relationship between family consumption and housing prices. Such heterogeneity problems also exist in households from different social hierarchies who live in different types of houses.

2022-12-09T00:00:00Z Dwyer, Jack https://hdl.handle.net/2123/8007 2026-04-22T05:25:48Z 2012-01-04T00:00:00Z

Keynes’s economics and the question of public debt Dwyer, Jack The Global Financial Crisis generated renewed interest in the relevance of John Maynard Keynes’s economic policy proposals, particularly those related to budget deficits, public debt and government expenditure. ‘Keynesian’ economic policies are commonly understood as entailing short-run fiscal activism, by which is meant discretionary, counter-cyclical fiscal policy together with deliberate budget deficits. However, this was not Keynes’s actual position. In the General Theory Keynes contended that demand-deficiency was a permanent problem in a modern capitalist economy. Seen in this light, Keynes’s central policy concern was with maintaining full employment through a permanent enlargement of the public sector and associated public expenditures. Keynes also held a rather conservative view towards public debt and was opposed to debt-financed current expenditure. This thesis reappraises Keynes’s policy views by reference to the relevant primary and secondary materials. Particular attention is given to Keynes’s much neglected policy writings contained in the 1942-45 Treasury Memoranda. The core logic of Keynes’s policy position is then captured in an illustrative model of a demand-led economy. Keynes’s central policy objectives are represented by requiring that the growth in public expenditure is sufficient to maintain full employment, but subject to a debt sustainability constraint.

2012-01-04T00:00:00Z Lilley, Andrew https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7943 2026-04-22T05:25:42Z 2011-12-07T00:00:00Z

Impure Altruism and the Volunteering Puzzle Lilley, Andrew There have been few attempts to model the behavioural microfoundations of charitable giving, particularly with regard to the choice between giving money and volunteering. An hour of a volunteer’s time is usually of a lower worth to the charity than a donation of their hourly market wage. However the aggregate levels of donations of money and time are approximately equal in value– a fact long regarded by economists as the “volunteering puzzle”. To provide a solution to this puzzle, this thesis proposes a theoretical model of pure and impure altruism and confirms its predictions with an experiment. Donors are shown to derive a “warm glow” from volunteering which is greater than the warm glow from monetary donations. The thesis also develops a novel measure to estimate the cost and scale of impure altruism. Approximately two thirds of the utility derived from charitable donations is from impure motivations, and the remaining third is pure. Consistent with this finding, the experiment shows that priming the pure motivations in donors reduces the overall provisioning of charity.

2011-12-07T00:00:00Z Swain, Richard https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7947 2026-04-22T05:25:44Z 2011-12-07T00:00:00Z

The Macroeconomic Effects of Quantitative Easing Swain, Richard The recent crisis has raised two key macroeconomic issues. First, has the quantitative easing policy pursued by the Federal Reserve had an effect on output, employment and prices? Second, whether ‘quantitative easing,’ is a mechanism through which monetary policy may continue to be able to stimulate economic activity despite the presence of the zero lower bound and various financial market frictions. This paper surveys the recent empirical evidence of the policy having a substantial impact on various interest rates in the United States because of certain financial frictions. It then uses this evidence to analyse the macroeconomic effects of the quantitative easing policy by simulating a New Keynesian macroeconomic model shown to closely fit the U.S. economy. It is concluded that the quantitative easing policy has had an impact on output, prices and employment, irrespective of any plausible financial frictions arising from the GFC. The result also demonstrates that the policy could be used as a monetary policy instrument. The paper ends with an examination of the numerous avenues of research that must be pursued before a firm conclusion can be made regarding the use of quantitative easing as a viable instrument of monetary policy.

2011-12-07T00:00:00Z Bakhtiar, Fayzan https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7941 2026-04-22T05:25:44Z 2011-12-07T00:00:00Z

More lottery tickets than milk and no money in the bank Bakhtiar, Fayzan A significant proportion of US households have insufficient savings to cope with even moderate consumption shocks that can result in substantial externalities. At the same time, the most financially fragile households have the highest level of lottery expenditure as a proportion of income. A product which exploits the demand for lottery tickets, a prize-linked savings account, could ‘nudge’ at-risk households to save more. Prize-linked savings accounts offer individuals a savings product with principal-security and the chance to win a lottery-type jackpot. Using an online experiment, this thesis finds that the introduction of prize-linked savings accounts significantly increases the total level of savings, and reduces lottery expenditures and current consumption. The results imply that the introduction of prize-linked savings is a plausible policy option to nudge savings in the right direction, and improve welfare.

2011-12-07T00:00:00Z Baharlou, Kusha https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7942 2026-04-22T05:25:44Z 2011-12-07T00:00:00Z

The Right Carrot for an Unruly Jungle Baharlou, Kusha This thesis examines the U.S. Department of Justice leniency program setup involving both corporate and individual leniency. Specifically, the interaction between corporate and individual leniency programs in concurrent operation, the design of optimal leniency program structure to elicit corporate leniency applications and the behaviour of economic agents subject to such programs comprise the primary directions of this thesis. In addressing corporate malfeasance under the option to apply for leniency, the intra-firm interplay of agents is modeled as a dynamic game of incomplete information. The principle findings are that if agents are symmetric in their access to leniency the concurrent operation of corporate and individual leniency programs is suboptimal as the presence of the individual leniency program detracts from corporate leniency applications due to a reallocation of incentives to report. On the other hand, under asymmetric access it is in fact optimal to utilise both leniency programs concurrently as there is no distortion in incentives to report but rather a threat effect in motion. Agent access to these leniency programs is imperative in determining the success of the combinatory policy structure.

2011-12-07T00:00:00Z Wu, Kevin https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7946 2026-04-22T05:25:46Z 2011-12-07T00:00:00Z

Mass Media and Aspiration Manipulation: An Experiment Altering Preferences Over Goals Wu, Kevin Mass media consumption has increasingly been found to adversely impact upon psychological states but research has largely neglected the potential influence of media on aspirations. An experiment demonstrates aspirational incomes to be dramatically altered by a textual narrative despite it not presenting any new information. The narrative is constructed to elicit peer comparison effects, a common element of a variety of media formats. The effect of the narrative rapidly dissipates when concentration is redirected to unrelated tasks however, suggesting any influence media presentations have on aspirations may only be fleeting. Nevertheless the results suggest that mass media might currently be augmenting aspirations with potential implications for satisfaction levels, educational attainment and risk preferences. Also the results imply preferences can be altered without new information being presented, a violation of individual decision making theory. An amendment to the theory is proposed.

2011-12-07T00:00:00Z Walsh, Conor https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7945 2026-04-22T05:25:46Z 2011-12-07T00:00:00Z

A Search Theory of Dowry Walsh, Conor Dowries have traditionally been viewed in economics as arising from a supply imbalance of the marriage market which disadvantages women. In this thesis, a different cause is proposed. Dowries are modelled as arising from an intertemporal bargaining process in a frictional search market, with differential aging in favour of men. This extends the insights of the standard model and is able to explain several puzzling stylised facts. Most notably, dowries may occur when there are more men than women in the market, and dowry and brideprice can coexist in the same market. The model is extended to include heterogeneous males of different quality.

2011-12-07T00:00:00Z Yadav, Anirudh https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7944 2026-04-22T05:25:43Z 2011-12-07T00:00:00Z

Trend Inflation and Inflation Persistence in Australia: A New Keynesian Perspective Yadav, Anirudh The true nature of inflation dynamics is an ongoing matter of debate and investigation in modern macroeconomics. That such attention is devoted to the dynamics of inflation is due to its importance, not only for understanding the nature of business cycles, but also for determining the appropriate path for monetary policy. Modern models of inflation are typically derived from the seminal contributions of Calvo (1983) and Taylor (1980) which imply a purely forward-looking New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) where inflation depends on its future expectation and the level of real marginal costs. Despite its theoretical elegance, the purely forward-looking incarnation of the NKPC has been shown to perform poorly against the data. The empirical shortcomings of the NKPC are generally attributed to its inability to replicate the innate persistence which is present in inflation (see, for example: Fuhrer and Moore, 1995). In order to enhance the degree of persistence within the model several authors have proposed somewhat ad-hoc rationales for the inclusion of lagged inflation terms in the NKPC (see, for example: Gali and Gertler, 1999 and Christiano, Eichenbaum and Evans, 2005). While these `hybrid Phillips curves' do indeed improve the fit of the model, their questionable microfoundations are an obvious source of criticism. This thesis attempts to ascertain the extent to which inflation dynamics in Australia can be explained by the NKPC without having to rely on arbitrary backward-looking terms that have limited structural meaning. In particular, this analysis considers whether an adapted version of Cogley and Sbordone's (2008) extended model of timevarying trend inflation is suffcient to explain inflation persistence in Australia without the need for a backward-looking term in the NKPC.

2011-12-07T00:00:00Z Craig, Ashley https://hdl.handle.net/2123/6655 2026-04-22T05:25:42Z 2009-10-01T00:00:00Z

Commitment Mechanisms and Blood Donation Craig, Ashley The Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) recently introduced a policy of compulsory appointments for blood donations. This thesis examines the effect of these appointments on donor satisfaction and donation behaviour. Overall, aggregate tests indicate that the policy transition initially had a negative effect. However, conditional on having donated once after the transition, donors are more likely to return. In order to isolate individual mechanisms that contribute to these results, a survey of blood donors is used to test two specific theories from behavioural economics. On the positive side, appointments are found to increase the likelihood that a donor will return, possibly by circumventing a problem of time-inconsistent preferences. However, the results also support a theory from the marketing literature that appointments change donors' expectations, causing wait time to be more negatively perceived. Furthermore, this is found to cause a significant change in donors' intended actions.

2009-10-01T00:00:00Z Stone, Sophie https://hdl.handle.net/2123/6614 2026-04-22T05:25:42Z 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z

Asset Prices, Monetary Policy and Macroeconomic Stability Stone, Sophie A focal point of macroeconomic policy analysis over the past decade has been whether central banks should respond to changes in asset prices. This thesis addresses the question from the distinct perspective of equilibrium determinacy. By obtaining the conditions for equilibrium determinacy, it is possible to ascertain whether a central bank could induce additional volatility in an economy by adopting a monetary policy rule which incorporates asset prices. This thesis employs a New Keynesian model with a nancial accelerator developed by Bernanke, Gertler and Gilchrist (1999) to analyse the e¤ects on equilibrium determinacy. In contrast to most of the related literature, the principal finding of this thesis is that a central bank can respond to asset prices without inducing additional volatility in the economy. Moreover, responding to asset prices actually decreases the likelihood of indeterminacy. This can be attributed to the substitutability between responding to inflation and asset prices present in a New Keynesian model with a financial accelerator. The key implication is that central banks should take asset prices into account when designing monetary policy.

2009-01-01T00:00:00Z Wei, Wenjie https://hdl.handle.net/2123/6613 2026-04-22T05:25:43Z 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z

The Hold-up Problem in the Presence of Free Trade Agreement Negotiations Wei, Wenjie This paper examines how the underinvestment that results from the hold-up problem is affected when there is some probability of reaching a free trade agreement (FTA). This paper examines the canonical domestic hold-up problem in an international context. It considers an input supplier undertaking one-sided cost-reducing relationship-specific investment to produce an input for a final-good producer. Once the FTA is reached, both the final-good producer and input supplier face foreign competition. This study finds that it is possible for the presence of FTA negotiations to either aggravate or alleviate the domestic hold-up problem. The total effect of the presence of FTA negotiations on ex-ante investment incentives can be decomposed into an “output competitive effect” and an “input substitution effect”. Both effects can be further decomposed into a “strategic effect” and a “cost effect”. The fundamental driving forces behind the “strategic effect” and “cost effect” are the characteristics of the cost function for the non-standardised input, the characteristics of the final-good’s demand function, and the relative efficiency of the two final-good producers in the two countries. In addition, the probability of reaching the FTA serves as an “intensifier” of the aggravation or alleviation. The modification cost of the foreign input serves as a “protector” for the domestic non-standardised input against competition from the cheaper foreign substitutes.

2010-01-01T00:00:00Z Gilboud, Elina https://hdl.handle.net/2123/6439 2026-04-22T05:25:40Z 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z

Pricing Decisions by Australian General Practitioners Gilboud, Elina In the Australian market for primary healthcare, some General Practitioners (GPs) bulk bill patients while others charge them a direct fee. The prevalence of these two fee structures means that patients are paying different prices for the same service. From a policy perspective, universal bulk billing is preferred since this leads to more equitable access to free primary healthcare. The empirical observation that bulk billing and fee charging GPs can exist in a single location has not been explained in the literature. This thesis seeks to explain the observation by differentiating GPs into those who provide long consultations and those who provide short consultations. Given the nature of policy in the market, these two types of GPs have different incentives when deciding whether to bulk bill or charge a fee. The hypothesis put forward in this thesis is that GPs who have long consultations will prefer to charge a fee while GPs who have short consultations will prefer to bulk bill.

2008-01-01T00:00:00Z Samuel, Thampapillai https://hdl.handle.net/2123/6441 2026-04-22T05:25:40Z 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z

Ethnic Conflict: A Model of Concessions Samuel, Thampapillai The Coase Theorem suggests that the ability of completely informed agents to make transfers should generally avert conflict. This thesis considers a complete information model of ethnic conflict where the dominated group consists of heterogeneous agents, but the dominant group can only bargain with the dominated group as a whole. This broadly captures a political system with race-based parties and coalitions. Moreover in this thesis the dominant group can make credible ex-ante transfers to the dominated group outside a standard bargaining framework. Then conditions arise where conflict occurs.

2008-01-01T00:00:00Z Cusbert, Thomas https://hdl.handle.net/2123/6440 2026-04-22T05:25:43Z 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z

Equilibrium Price Dispersion: A Model of Intermediated Search with Repeated Interaction Cusbert, Thomas This thesis develops a model in which homogeneous producers and merchants interact repeatedly in a search market. Merchants are able to reduce the cost of search by o ering trading certainty to pro- ducers with whom they have a preexisting relationship. Equilibria are characterised in Markov strategies, and it is found that price- dispersed equilibria exist in asymmetric strategies. Conditions in which a price-dispersed equilibrium can be welfare improving com- pared to a single-price equilibrium are found, and two extensions to the basic model are provided.

2008-01-01T00:00:00Z Bailey, Nicholas https://hdl.handle.net/2123/2256 2026-04-22T05:25:43Z 2008-03-17T00:00:00Z

Street Vendors tackle the Newsvendor Problem: An Experimental Inquiry into the Big Issue Bailey, Nicholas The Big Issue is a not-for-profit organisation that gives homeless people the opportunity to reclaim ownership over their lives by selling a street magazine. The vendors must purchase the magazine from the Big Issue office before making sales, and may do so multiple times each day. The vendors hence face the economic problem of how to construct an order plan given multiple, costly opportunities to replenish. This paper solves the problem theoretically and conducts an experiment with actual Big Issue vendors which tests how their ordering behaviour departs from the optimal solution. The experiment reveals various types of orderers exist, and that some of these systematically perform worse than others. The results also suggest that ordering decisions are heavily influenced by an anchoring heuristic. The experiment ultimately aims to test the effectiveness of a policy recommendation in improving ordering behaviour by setting minimum order quantities and offering vendors a refund for unsold magazines. The effect of the policy is different for each behavioural grouping of vendors. Some vendors demonstrate improved behaviour, while others do not. Based on the results of the experiment, a policy is formulated that will improve the profits of some vendors, without impinging upon the profits of any other behavioural types. This policy is designed so that it is sympathetic to the non-economic goals of the Big Issue.

2008-03-17T00:00:00Z Pendle, Lara https://hdl.handle.net/2123/2251 2026-04-22T05:25:47Z 2008-03-12T00:00:00Z

What Determines Australia's Foreign Equity Investment? Pendle, Lara In light of the recent changes to superannuation policy in Australia, the corresponding heightened exposure to equity markets has highlighted the importance of portfolio diversification as a means to reduce income risk. The International Capital Asset Pricing Model of Sharpe (1964) and Lintner (1965) suggests that in order to obtain maximum gains from diversification, investors hold too little wealth in foreign assets. This large discrepancy between theory and data is known as the home income bias puzzle and still remains robust despite the recent liberalisation of financial markets and removals of direct barriers to investment. This thesis empirically investigates the distribution of Australian holdings of foreign equities and considers the determinants of equity home bias for a sample of 25 countries. The IMF's high quality Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS) dataset is appropriate for this purpose and is utilised over the period 2001 to 2005. The key findings are that indirect barriers to international investment and information costs are important factors behind international investment patterns and the home bias puzzle.

2008-03-12T00:00:00Z