Simulating Cohort Earnings for Australia.

This paper describes a dynamic microsimulation model of cohort earnings developed to consider redistribution during the working-lifetime in Australia. Microsimulation models were first used for economic analysis by Orcutt (1957), and are now commonly employed to undertake policy analyses in many countries around the world.INCOME ; SIMULATION ; ECONOMIC MODELS

Schwarzschild Models for the Galaxy

Schwarzschild's orbit-superposition technique is the most developed and well-tested method available for constraining the detailed mass distributions of equilibrium stellar systems. Here I provide a very short overview of the method and its existing implementations, and briefly discuss their viability as a tool for modeling the Galaxy using Gaia data.Comment: 2 pages; invited review at "Modelling the Galaxy in the era of Gaia", proceedings of Joint Discussion 5 at the XXVIIth IAU General Assembly (Rio de Janeiro, August 2009); James Binney, Ian F. Corbett, eds

The Economics of the Gift

gift-giving;reciprocity;adequacy;social approval.

Distributional Limits and GINI Coefficient.

This paper examines the Gini (1912) coefficient of concentration using the framework set out by Dalton (1920) for evaluating a measure of inequality. Particular attention is paid to limited distributions and the associated concept of 'perfect inequality'. It is argued that a rescaled version of the Gini coefficient may be desirable for distributions that are subject to limits which depart from the standard assumption of non-negativity. A scaling parameter is derived and the rescaled Ginin coefficient is used to analyse the inequality of wealth in Australia.WEALTH DISTRIBUTION ; ECONOMIC MODELS

How private is private information?:The ability to spot deception in an economic game

We provide experimental evidence on the ability to detect deceit in a buyer-seller game with asymmetric information. Sellers have private information about the buyer's valuation of a good and sometimes have incentives to mislead buyers. We examine if buyers can spot deception in face-to-face encounters. We vary (1) whether or not the buyer can interrogate the seller, and (2) the contextual richness of the situation. We find that the buyers' prediction accuracy is above chance levels, and that interrogation and contextual richness are important factors determining the accuracy. These results show that there are circumstances in which part of the information asymmetry is eliminated by people's ability to spot deception

On the Viability of Gift Exchange in a Market Environment

Is gift-exchange inevitably to be crowded out by impersonal market exchange? The presence of a thick-market externality indicates that this is indeed likely to be the case. But reciprocity or gift-exchange induces social relations. The utility function is extended in order to take account of social relations in the form of symbolic utility or moral sentiments. As long as moral sentiments are valued high enough it is shown that both market and gift-exchange can coexist. The spontaneous order need not necessarily select the most efficient market size however.exchange;reciprocity;gifts;moral and extended preferences