Quantitative tools for microeconomic policy analysis

Conference proceedings

The proceedings were published on 6 October 2005. The conference, organised by the Productivity Commission, was held in Canberra on 17-18 November 2004.

The objective of the conference was to provide an opportunity for the dissemination of new, data related, modelling approaches, relevant to contemporary policy discussion. The invited audience was not confined to modellers, but also included policy analysts and advisors from government, universities and the private sector. Presentations at the conference were therefore not overly technical. However, the authors were invited to include necessary technical material in the versions of their papers contained in this volume.

The paper, Quantitative Modelling at the Productivity Commission by Dr. Philipa Dee, was commissioned as a background paper for the conference.

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Contents

Section 1 Estimating policy effects — computable general equilibrium models

1 Asset markets and financial flows in general equilibrium models
Warwick J McKibbin and Alison Stegman

2 Combining engineering-based water models with a CGE model
Peter B Dixon, Sergei Schreider and Glyn Wittwer

Section 2 Labour markets and human capital — discrete choice models

3 Selectivity and two-part models
Tim R L Fry

4 The determinants of students’ tertiary academic success
Elisa Rose Birch and Paul W Miller

Section 3 Evaluating microeconomic policies — experimental techniques

5 Experimental and quasi-experimental methods of microeconomic program and policy evaluation
Jeff Borland, Yi-Ping Tseng and Roger Wilkins

6 Discrete choice experiments in the analysis of health policy
Denzil G Fiebig and Jane Hall

Section 4 Measuring productivity

7 A ‘model-consistent’ approach to productivity measurement
Russel Cooper and Gary Madden

8 Environmental productivity accounting
C A Knox Lovell

9 Estimation of total factor productivity
Robert Breunig and Marn-Heong Wong

Section 5 Assessing health and ageing policies using microsimulations

10 The new frontier of health and aged care
Laurie Brown and Ann Harding

11 Behavioural microsimulation modelling with the Melbourne Institute Tax and Transfer Simulator (MITTS): uses and extensions
John Creedy and Guyonne Kalb

Section 6 Trade and welfare

12 Extending CGE modelling to the liberalisation of services trade
Philippa Dee

13 Welfare analysis in an empirical trade model with oligopoly: the case of Australian non-durable goods imports
Harry Bloch and Han Hwee Chong