Economic Rigor

Been looking into Education funding, particularly in the Primary and Secondary Space. Interesting to note that while education funding has increased over 14 years between 1999 and 2013, the number of schools operating has dropped. I note that over the 14 years there has been a decrease of 194 schools...schools that have closed. But it's worse in the Government sector. Over the 14 years, 306 Government schools have closed...it's just that Catholic schools (16) and Independent Schools (96) have opened to counter the decrease. I guess that is why the rate of students in private schooling has increased over the years. The biggest drops in schools have been in VIC (105 Government schools closed), SA (101 Government schools closed) and QLD (64 Government schools closed). The only difference is that in QLD, an equivalent amount of Catholic and Independent schools have opened, leaving only a net loss of 1 school. The other two states are still in the deficit of schools...

Still no luck with the Soccer gods for Australia. Looking at our underwealming performance in the World Cup, I have started to think about our next big event...hosting the Asian Cup. Bit of Silverwear for the Socceroos? Not likely based on the draw. Once again, we have ended up in the pool of death, along with South Korea, Oman and Kuwait. Based on my formaula for pool of death, created during the World Cup, we are no certainties to go through...it's the strongest group. Home field advantage will hopefully help propel us across the line...but no guarantees. The danger is when you look at our record against the teams over the last 5 years. South Korea Record over the last 5 years. Played 4 times, Wins equal 1-1 (2 draw) Oman Record over the last 5 years. Played 6 times, Australia 3-1 (2 draws) Kuwait Record over the last 5 years. Played 2 times, Kuwait 1-0 (1 draw) We have played Oman the most, with the most victories, but who knows about the other two. Might be...

Yeah, World cup starts today, so running the ruler over the groups to see which is the most likely to cause some upsets. Generally, the way you calculate the "Group of Death" is to calculate the variance of the 4 teams in the pool based on their rankings and the group with the lowest variance would be the "Death" group. By this rational, it would be, in order of deadliest to easiest. Group D (Uruguay, Costa Rica, England, Italy) Group E (Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras) Group G (Germany, Portugal, Ghana, USA) Group C (Columbia, Greece, Ivory Coast, Japan) Group F (Argentina, Bosnia and H, Iran, Nigeria) Group H (Belgium, Nigeria, Russia, South Korea) Group A (Brazil, Mexico, Cameroon, Croatia) Group B (Spain, Netherlands, Chile, Australia) You can see the problem here. The traditional method says that Group B, the team containing 3 teams ranked in the top 15 is the easiest. This is due to the presence of my team (sigh), Australia which is ranked ...

Further to the previous post I calculated the minimum wage growing at around 3.5% a year from 1997-2012. Not bad. But when you look at the Salaries and wages out of the ATO tax statistics, you have the average wages per tax payer growing at 4.5% a year over the same period. So clearly, it's not minimum wags responsible for job growth. Which sort of makes sense. Generally, business do not want to hire minimum wage workers, especially in an advanced economy. Minimum wage workers are people with low bargaining power; i.e the elderly, young, uneducated, disabled or immigrants performing "grunt" jobs, jobs that don't require a lot of thinking or automomy...clearly jobs that a lot of people don't want. Also, this type of job is on the decline as automation and IT self service systems replace the jobs so there are not enough of them (last count I have seen is less than 10% of the workforce) to really influence job growth statistics. Generally, you wan...

A lot of press at the moment about the decision to increase the minimum wage by 3% or so. Business claiming it will cause some grief in regards to employment. So I grabbed some info from the ABS around growth in "Employed Australians" and GDP (seasonally adjusted), grabbed the updates to the minimum wage from Fair Work and did a basic regression. Couple of assumptions 1. Assumed that the June 30 was the end of the year. 2. Growth in GDP was for the year (July - June) 3. Growth in Employed Australian's was for the Year (July- June) 4. Tried a couple of regressions, with a few lags. 5. MinWage increase takes affect on July 1st Best model was Jobs Growth = 0.34*GDP + 0.32*GDP (year before) - 0.1*MinWage Growth(year before) Adjusted R2 = 0.28, ANOVA F Stat p value = 0.08. GDP and GDP (year before) statitsically significant at the 89% level (not 95% level) and Minwage growth (year before) only significant at the 78% level So really, you would have to say that ...

Top 5 nouns from this month vs last month This month growth remain low rates interest prices Last Month growth rate year conditions rates remain But the big Verb is the kicker This Month = Decline (mentioned 4 times, up from 2 times in May) Last Month = Demand (mentioned 4 times)   So doesn't look good for a rise any time soon, at least not until inflation rises (they seem to be watching prices a bit)  

Been looking through the taxation statistics provided by the ATO for 2011/2012. With all the talk around the budget being too unfair, and that Superannuation and negative gearing tax concessions should be getting reduced instead, I decided to check who was actually using them. For negative gearing, I looked at the amount of tax payers recording a Net rent loss, and the total amount of losses. It turns out there 1.2 million tax payers recording around  $13.8 billion in losses (around $10,000 loss each). The biggest concession Biggest users of this in order...Men Earning between $100,000 - $150,000 in taxable income from 30 - 59 years of age (the manager class really). Also men between 50-54 who are earning between $60,000 - $80,000. Also a couple of Female groups in the non-taxable class (I'm assuming spouses) who are aged between 35-44 and earning less than $6000 For Superannuation - the Salary Sacrifice tax dodge, we have it as the silver medal concession wi...