How windfall income increases gambling at poker machines

In December 2008 and March-April 2009 the Australian Government used fiscal stimulus as a short-run economic stabilization tool for the first time since the 1990s. In May-June 2012, households received lump sum cheques as compensation for the introduction of the Carbon Tax scheduled for 1 July 2012. This paper examines the relationship between these financial windfalls and spending at electronic gaming machines (EGMs) using data from 62 local government areas in Victoria, Australia. The results show large increases in spending at EGMs during the periods when Australian households received economic stimulus cheques. Increased spending at EGMs in December 2008 amounted to 1% of the total stimulus for that period. We conclude that the 2008-2009 stimulus packages substantially increased gambling at EGMs in Victoria. We find no unexpected increase in spending at EGMs in the months when Carbon Tax compensation cheques were paid

An evaluation of the performance of regression discontinuity design on PROGRESA

While providing the most reliable method of evaluating social programs, randomized experiments in developing and developed countries alike are accompanied by political risks and ethical issues that jeopardize the chances of adopting them. In this paper the authors use a unique data set from rural Mexico collected for the purposes of evaluating the impact of the PROGRESA poverty alleviation program to examine the performance of a quasi-experimental estimator, the Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD). Using as a benchmark the impact estimates based on the experimental nature of the sample, we examine how estimates differ when we use the RDD as the estimator for evaluating program impact on two key indicators: child school attendance and child work. Overall the performance of the RDD was remarkably good. The RDD estimates of program impact agreed with the experimental estimates in 10 out of the 12 possible cases. The two cases in which the RDD method failed to reveal any significant program impact on the school attendance of boys and girls were in the first year of the program (round 3). RDD estimates comparable to the experimental estimates were obtained when we used as a comparison group children from non-eligible households in the control localities.Scientific Research&Science Parks,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Housing&Human Habitats,Anthropology,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Science Education,VN-Acb Mis -- IFC-00535908,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Housing&Human Habitats

Can Social Programs be Reliably Evaluated with NonExperimental Methods? Evidence on the Performance of Regression Discontinuity Design using PROGRESA data

In 1997 a social program called PROGRESA was introduced in Mexico using a design for a randomized experiment. We exploit a build in, but neglected, discontinuity in the eligibility rule and use the quasi-experimental Regression-Discontinuity design in order to estimate marginal average treatment effects. Our findings show substantial regional variation. Moreover, given that the RDD approach allows us to use only data from the treated sample, we are able to investigate the extend to which the introduction of the program had an effect on ineligible children in the localities it was introduced and compare its performance to the experimental outcomes.treatment effects, regression discontinuity design, PROGRESA

Interrelated Dynamics of Health and Poverty in Australia

Using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, this study examines the joint dynamics of health and poverty in Australian families. Taking advantage of panel data, the modelling approach used in this study allows a better estimation of the causal relationship between health and poverty. The results indicate that the causality between health and poverty runs both ways and the relationship is confounded by unobserved heterogeneity. In particular, it is found that families headed by a person in ill-health are more likely to be in poverty compared with families headed by a person with good health. On the other hand, a family head whose family is in poverty in the current year is more likely to be in ill-health in the next year compared with a family head whose family is not in poverty. In addition, there is evidence that health and poverty are affected by correlated unobservables, causing health to be endogenous to poverty even in the absence of a reverse effect from poverty on health. Consequently, treating health as exogenous in a poverty equation would produce biased estimates.socio-economic status, poverty, health, recursive models, panel data

The determinants of part-time work in EU countries: empirical investigations with macro-panel data - Hielke Buddelmeyer, Gilles Mourre and Melanie Ward

This paper aims to identify the contribution of the business cycle and structural factors to the development of part-time employment in the EU-15 countries, through the exploitation of both cross-sectional and time series variations over the past two decades. This analysis is used to comment on whether part-time jobs have been used as a flexible work arrangement by firms in the EU-15 over this period.Key results include that the business cycle, as measured by either the output gap or real GDP growth, is found to exert a negative effect on part-time employment developments. This is consistent with firms utilising part-time employment as a means of adjusting their labour force to economic conditions. Correspondingly, involuntary part-time employment is found to be countercyclical, being higher in troughs of economic activity. Splitting our sample by age and gender groups reveals a very significant effect of the business cycle on the rate of part-time work for young and male prime-age workers. Conversely, the effect is very weak for women and insignificant for older workers.employment, part-time employment, labour supply, labour market policies, business cycle, child benefits, unemployment benefits, trade unions, employment protection legislation, temporary jobs, female participation, schooling, wages and non wages costs, work force, Buddelmeyer, Mourre, Ward

When general skills are not enough: the influence of recent shifts in Australian skilled migration policy on migrant employment outcomes

This report focusses on the effects on migrant labour market outcomes of Australia’s recent shift from a points-based “supply driven” model that favoured independent General Skilled Migrants, to a “hybrid model” that balances supply driven migration against Employer Sponsored “demand driven” migration. Abstract Although many countries are now using skilled migration to offset declining fertility and increased longevity, there is thin empirical evidence concerning the effects of alternative approaches to managing the skilled migrant intake. This study focusses on the effects on migrant labour market outcomes of Australia’s recent shift from a points-based “supply driven” model that favoured independent General Skilled Migrants, to a “hybrid model” that balances supply driven migration against Employer Sponsored “demand driven” migration. We find that the shift to a hybrid model of skilled migration resulted in substantively improved rates of employment amongst skilled migrants without an accompanying deterioration in the average distribution of occupational outcomes. &nbsp

Part-time work in EU countries: labour market mobility, entry and exit

This paper looks at the role of part-time work in labour mobility for 11 European countries. We find some evidence of part-time work being used as a stepping stone into full-time employment, but for a small proportion of individuals (less than 5%). Part-time jobs are also found to be more frequently taken up as a means to enter the labour market than to leave it. Multinomial logit regression of the determinants of part-time work reveals household composition, past labour market history and country of residence as very important for both men and women in their decision to work part time. Random effects regression controlling for individual heterogeneity, and the comparison of results for Europe and the US, reveals that a significantly higher proportion of female workers in Europe prefer inactivity and a significantly lower percentage prefer full-time, over part-time employment, than in the US, with considerable variation across EU countries. JEL Classification: J21, J22, J16, J60full-time and part-time employment, gender, labour market entry and exit, Labour market mobility and flexibility, labour supply, non-employment, stepping stones, Unemployment

Fixed Effects Bias in Panel Data Estimators

Since little is known about the degree of bias in estimated fixed effects in panel data models, we run Monte Carlo simulations on a range of different estimators. We find that Anderson-Hsiao IV, Kivietâs bias-corrected LSDV and GMM estimators all perform well in both short and long panels. However, OLS outperforms the other estimators when the following holds: the cross-section is small (N = 20), the time dimension is short (T = 5) and the coefficient on the lagged dependent variable is large (γ = 0.8).fixed effects, panel data, LSDV, dynamic model

Can having internal locus of control insure against negative shocks? Psychological evidence from panel data

We investigate whether the intensity of emotional pain following a negative shock is different across the distribution of a person's locus of control – the extent to which individuals believe that their actions can influence future outcomes. Using panel data from Australia, we show that individuals with strong internal locus of control are psychologically insured against own and others’ serious illness or injury, close family member detained in jail, becoming a victim of property crime and death of a close friend, but not against the majority of other life events. The buffering effects vary across gender. Our findings thus add to the existing literature on the benefits of internal locus of control