ECON7030 TASK OUTLINE

1.YOUR RESEACH PROJECT

Your project is an individual assignment where you will independently (guided by the teaching team) research on a topic prescribed by your instructors. The main task is replication.

-Choose a chapter from the report published by Productivity Commission (Rising inequality A stocktake of the evidence) and update the analysis using more recent data/or use the same data to extend the analysis in some other way.

This research report, released on 28 August 2018, takes stock of evidence on inequality, economic mobility and disadvantage across Australian society.The analysis is based on the late 2017 release of new waves of two major nationally representative household surveys: the ABS Household Expenditure Survey (HES)?and the Melbourne Institute Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The study also uses the ABS Survey of Income and Housing (SIH), which has been integrated with HES since 2003 04.

-For students who are interested in replicating a journal paper, a list published papers (representing various fields: development, health, labor and environmental economics) are provided below.

You will replicate (verification/or extension) the results of the report chapters /or papers using Stata. If you are more comfortable with any other software (e.g., R, Python, Matlab), please feel free to use it. However, the teaching team will provide maximum guidance with Stata only.

Main Task: Replicate any ONE of the below chapters from the report Rising inequality A stocktake of the evidence. Please note that Chapters 1 and 2 discuss the context, conceptual framework, literature, research problem, and methodology and hence are compulsory reads for all students, irrespective of which chapter you choose to replicate.

-Chapter 3: Income and consumption inequality

o3.1 Trends in income and income inequality

o3.2 The distribution of income in detail

o3.3 The demographics of the income distribution

o3.4 Comparing the distributions of income and consumption

-Chapter 4: Wealth inequality

o4.1 Trends in wealth and wealth inequality

o4.2 Trends in the distribution of components of wealth

o4.3 The demographics of wealth and income

-Chapter 5 Economic mobility

o5.2 Intergenerational mobility in Australia

o5.3 Life course mobility in Australia

-Chapter 6 Economic disadvantage

o6.2 The prevalence of poverty

o6.3 The demographics of poverty

o6.4 How long does poverty last

o6.5 Material deprivation+ Social Exclusion

Those who are interested in journal papers, choose a paper from below list?[Please download the papers from USYD library]. You may update the results using more recent data (extension) OR do pure replication (verification) using existing data.

1.Akpandjar, G & Kitchens, C, 2017, ‘From Darkness to Light: The Effect of Electrification in Ghana, 2000–2010’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. 66, no. 1, pp. 31–54. (IPUMSI) 

2.Botha, F., Bentley, R., Li, A., & Wiesel, I. (2024). Housing affordability stress and mental health: The role of financial wellbeing. Australian Economic Papers, 1–20. (HILDA)

3.Csereklyei, Z., Qu, S., & Ancev, T. (2021). Are electricity system outages and the generation mix related? Evidence from NSW, Australia. Energy Economics, 99. (AEMO)

4.Finnigan, R, 2014, ‘Racial and ethnic stratification in the relationship between homeownership and self-rated health’, Social Science & Medicine (1982), vol. 115, pp. 72–81. (IPUMS CPS)

5.Hessels, J., C. A. Rietveld, A. R. Thurikand P. van der Zwan (2020), “The higher returns to formal education for entrepreneurs versus employees in Australia”, Journal of Business Venturing Insights13: e00148. (HILDA)

6.Kler, P, Potia, AH, & Shankar, S, 2018, “Underemployment in Australia: a panel investigation,” Applied Economics Letters, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 24–28 (HILDA) 

7.Vera‐Toscano, E & Brown, H, 2022, “Empirical Evidence on the Incidence and Persistence of Energy Poverty in Australia,” Australian Economic Review, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 515–529.?(HILDA)