Housing Turnover and First-home Buyers

While housing turnover varies over time, on average, around 6 per cent of the housing stock, or around 500 000 dwellings, change ownership each year. In 2009, first-home buyers accounted for an unusually large share of this turnover, although this share has since declined. As first-home buyers make greater use of mortgages to fund purchases than do repeat buyers, this shift in the composition of turnover helps to explain the recent divergence in movements in housing prices and loan approvals.housing market; housing turnover; first-home buyers

Asset Prices, Credit Growth, Monetary and Other Policies: An Australian Case Study

The long-running debate about the role of monetary policy in responding to rising asset prices has received renewed attention in the wake of the global financial crisis.This paper contributes to this debate by describing the Australian experience of a cycle in house prices and credit from 2002 to 2004, and discussing the role played by various policies during this episode. In particular, it focuses on the efforts by the Reserve Bank of Australia to draw attention to the risks associated with large, ongoing increases in housing prices and household borrowing.asset prices; credit growth; lending standards; monetary policy; regulatory policy

Asian and OECD international R&D spillovers

Previous studies have demonstrated an empirical relationship between accumulated R&D expenditures and total factor productivity (TFP), and have shown that the benefits of R&D can spill across countries through trade. This paper extends these analyses to a sample of 15 OECD countries and six Asian countries, Chinese Taipei, India, Indonesia, Korea, Singapore and Thailand. An empirical model is estimated which relates TFP to domestic and foreign R&D activity, TFP catch-up and business cycle variables. Model estimates show that TFP and domestic R&D capital are positively related, and that domestic R&D has a relatively large impact on TFP growth in the NICs and LICs. Country-specific international R&D spillover elasticities are of mixed sign, and no apparent pattern by country group is evident. While this result does not change the earlier qualitative conclusions, it suggests that estimates of sample average R&D spillover elasticities should be cautiously interpreted.R&D activity; Asian and OECD spillovers

Combining simulated and experimental data to simulate ultrasonic array data from defects in materials with high structural noise

Ultrasonic non-destructive testing inspections using phased arrays are performed on a wide range of components and materials. All real inspections suffer, to varying extents, from coherent noise including image artefacts and speckle caused by complex geometries and grain scatter respectively. By its nature, this noise is not reduced by averaging; however, it degrades the signal to noise ratio of defects and ultimately limits their detectability. When evaluating the effectiveness of an inspection, a large pool of data from samples containing a range of different defects is important to estimate the probability of detection of defects and to help characterise them. For a given inspection, coherent noise is easy to measure experimentally but hard to model realistically. Conversely, the ultrasonic response of defects can be simulated relatively easily. A novel method of simulating realistic array data by combining noise-free simulations of defect responses with coherent noise taken from experimental data has been developed. This technique has been shown to produce results which closely match the response, measured experimentally, of a range of defects. Using this method removes the need for costly physical samples with known defects to be made and allows for large data sets to be created easily and cheapl

Advanced communications policy and adoption in rural Western Australia

Recent moves toward contestable universal service markets for rural areas raises issues of measuring the net cost of service provision. Measurement of net cost requires estimates of latent demand for advanced communications. This paper seeks for the first time to provide quantitative estimates of the magnitude of latent income pools available to carriers in rural WA. Estimates of latent expenditure on broadband services in rural WA are obtained using a combination of stated-preference and survey data. These expenditures increase with computer ownership, community isolation and information need. Further, the statistical model supports the commonly held belief that more distant populations have stronger information demands and are willing to pay for services. This finding suggests that carrier aversion to providing services to rural regions may not be justified on commercial grounds.Advanced communications; broadband service; internet rural access; universal service obligations

Asset Prices, Credit Growth, Monetary and Other Policies: An Australian Case Study

The long-running debate about the role of monetary policy in responding to rising asset prices has received renewed attention in the wake of the global financial crisis. This paper contributes to this debate by describing the Australian experience of a cycle in house prices and credit from 2002 to 2004, and discussing the role played by various policies during this episode. In particular, it focuses on the efforts by the Reserve Bank of Australia to draw attention to the risks associated with large, ongoing increases in housing prices and household borrowing.

SkyMapper Filter Set: Design and Fabrication of Large Scale Optical Filters

The SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey will be conducted from Siding Spring Observatory with u, v, g, r, i and z filters that comprise glued glass combination filters of dimension 309x309x15 mm. In this paper we discuss the rationale for our bandpasses and physical characteristics of the filter set. The u, v, g and z filters are entirely glass filters which provide highly uniform band passes across the complete filter aperture. The i filter uses glass with a short-wave pass coating, and the r filter is a complete dielectric filter. We describe the process by which the filters were constructed, including the processes used to obtain uniform dielectric coatings and optimized narrow band anti-reflection coatings, as well as the technique of gluing the large glass pieces together after coating using UV transparent epoxy cement. The measured passbands including extinction and CCD QE are presented.Comment: 9 pages, 2 tables, 7 figure