By contrast with findings from the United States, Andrew Leigh finds no evidence that the gender of the first child has a significant impact on the decision to marry or divorce in Australia. However, among two-child families, parents with two children of the same sex are 1.7 percentage points less likely to be married than...

Under HECS former students with a debt face a sharp discontinuity. At the first repayment threshold they are required to repay a percentage of their entire income, resulting in an effective marginal tax rate that could be regarded as being as high as 76,000 percent. The authors formally model the taxpayer decision, and then use...

Andrew Leigh finds that, on average, 63 per cent of trade union members vote for the Australian Labor Party. Despite the fact that union membership declined from around one-half of the workforce in the early-1980s to one-quarter of the workforce in the early-2000s, unionists have not become more pro-Labor. He finds that male unionists were...

Several cross-country studies have observed a negative correlation between inequality and interpersonal trust. Using data from 59 countries, Andrew Leigh finds that a rise in inequality does reduce trust.

Using a large Australian social survey, combined with precise data on neighbourhood characteristics, Andrew Leigh explores the factors that affect trust at local and national levels. Trust is positively associated with the respondent’s education, and negatively associated with the amount of time spent commuting. Trust is higher in affluent areas, and lower in ethnically and...