Job applicants find it easier to get an interview if they have an Anglo-Saxon name, according to new research from The Australian National University. The study, conducted by ANU economists Professor Alison Booth and Professor Andrew Leigh from the Research School of Social Sciences, in conjunction with researcher Elena Varganova, estimated discrimination by sending over...

Using data from 191 Australian state elections, the authors test how voters respond to economic conditions. They find that unemployment has a strong impact on election outcomes, with each additional percentage point of unemployment reducing the incumbent's re-election probability by 3-5 per cent. However, when luck (unemployment in other states) is separated from competence (unemployment...

Family background is known to have a substantial impact on students’ literacy and numeracy results. This raises questions about whether any of the remaining differences in results are due to school performance – or whether they are merely due to random noise. This article reviews research from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)...

The relationship between income inequality and national savings is theoretically ambiguous, and past empirical studies have delivered mixed results. The authors of this paper revisit the question using a newly available source of data on inequality: the income share of the richest 10 percent and the richest 1 percent. Combining this with historical data on...

In the Northern Territory, Australia, ballot papers for territory elections depict candidates’ photographs. The authors exploit this unusual electoral feature by looking at the effect that candidates’ beauty and skin color has on voting patterns. The results for beauty are mixed, but they find strong evidence that skin color matters. In electorates with a small...