Aaron Nicholas

Duration and Persistence in Multidimensional Deprivation: Methodology and Australian Application

This paper extends the recent literature on static multidimensional deprivation to propose dynamic deprivation measures that incorporate both the persistence and duration of deprivation across multiple dimensions. The paper then illustrates the usefulness of the extension by applying it to Australian panel data for the recent period, 2001-2008. The empirical application exploits the subgroup decomposability of the deprivation measures to identify the subgroups that are more deprived than others. The proposed measure is also decomposable by dimensions and is used to identify the dimensions where deprivation is more persistent. The comparison between the subgroups shows that the divide between homeowners and non-homeowners is one of the sharpest, with the latter suffering much more deprivation than the former. The results are robust to alternative schemes for weighting and aggregating the dimensions as well as to the choice of model parameters.

Evaluating the Distributional Implications of Price Movements: Methodology, Application and Australian Evidence

This article investigates the distributional implication of relative price movements in Australia. It proposes and applies a method of evaluating the nature and size of the inequality bias of price movements. In the process, the study introduces a new demographic demand model that yields sensible and statistically significant estimates of the general equivalence scale and the size economies of scale. The study finds that relative price movements in Australia during the 1990s had an inequality increasing bias and that this bias increased in the late 1990s and the first part of the new millennium. The disaggregated analysis of the inequality movements shows that the regressive nature of relative price changes affected the renters much more than non-renters. The study also provides evidence on the decomposition of overall inequality between demographic groups and compares the decomposition between the nominal and real expenditure inequalities.

Demographic demand systems with application to equivalence scales estimation and inequality analysis : the Australian evidence

This paper proposes and applies an alternative demographic procedure for extending a demand system to allow for the effect of household size and composition changes, along with price changes, on expenditure allocation. The demographic procedure is applied to two recent demand functional forms to obtain their estimable demographic extensions. The estimation on pooled time series of Australian Household Expenditure Surveys yields sensible and robust estimates of the equivalence scale, and of its variation with relative prices. Further evidence on the usefulness of this procedure is provided by using it to evaluate the nature and magnitude of the inequality bias of relative price changes in Australia over a period from the late 1980s to the early part of the new millennium.

A primer on mathematical modelling in economics

The Commission on Graduate Education in Economics had raised several concerns regarding the role of mathematics in graduate training in economics (Krueger, 1991; Colander, 1998, 2005). This paper undertakes a detailed scrutiny of the notion of a utility function to motivate and describe the common patterns across mathematical concepts and results that are used by economists. In the process one arrives at a classification of mathematical terms which is used to state mathematical results in economics. The usefulness of the classification scheme is illustrated with the help of a discussion of Arrows impossibility theorem. Common knowledge of the patterns in mathematical concepts and results could be effective in enhancing communication between students, teachers and researchers specializing in different sub‐fields of economics.

Differentiating Between Dimensionality and Duration in Multidimensional Measures of Poverty: Methodology with an Application to China

We develop a multidimensional poverty measure that is sensitive to the within-individual distribution of deprivations across dimensions and time. Our measure combines features from a static multidimensional measure (Alkire and Foster, 2011a) and a time-dependent unidimensional measure (Foster, 2009). The proposed measure separately identifies—and can therefore be decomposed according to—the proportion of the poverty score attributable to: (i) the concentration of deprivations within periods; (ii) the concentration of deprivations within dimensions. In doing so it allows for a poverty ranking that is robust to assumptions about the trade-off between the two components. Previous measures have not allowed for the features proposed here due to the inability to calculate the exact contribution of each dimension to overall poverty. We overcome this by adapting to our measure the Shapley decomposition proposed in Shorrocks (2013) (based on Shapley, 1953). The measure is applied to data from China, 2000-2011.

China's war against the many faces of poverty: Towards a New Long March, by J. Yang and P. Mukhopadhaya: Routledge, Oxon. ISBN: 9781138819603. 345 pages. 2016

(1) The China Family Panel Studies, of which the authors use one wave (2010) to make provincial, regional, and rural-urban comparisons, with the key advantage being access to 25 of China’s 34 provinces. (2) The China Health and Nutrition Survey, 2000–2011 (five waves), where the authors analyse changes in poverty over time, albeit restricted to only nine provinces. (3) The China Household Income Project Survey (2002–2010, four waves), which has the advantage of identifying rural-to-urban migrants.

Book review : China's war against the many faces of poverty: towards a new Long March

(1) The China Family Panel Studies, of which the authors use one wave (2010) to make provincial, regional, and rural-urban comparisons, with the key advantage being access to 25 of China’s 34 provinces. (2) The China Health and Nutrition Survey, 2000–2011 (five waves), where the authors analyse changes in poverty over time, albeit restricted to only nine provinces. (3) The China Household Income Project Survey (2002–2010, four waves), which has the advantage of identifying rural-to-urban migrants.

China's war against the many faces of poverty: Towards a New Long March, by J. Yang and P. Mukhopadhaya

(1) The China Family Panel Studies, of which the authors use one wave (2010) to make provincial, regional, and rural-urban comparisons, with the key advantage being access to 25 of China’s 34 provinces. (2) The China Health and Nutrition Survey, 2000–2011 (five waves), where the authors analyse changes in poverty over time, albeit restricted to only nine provinces. (3) The China Household Income Project Survey (2002–2010, four waves), which has the advantage of identifying rural-to-urban migrants.

Therapeutic equivalence and the generic competition paradox

Abstract Following the passage of the Waxman-Hatch Act (1984), FDA approval for a generic drug requires the establishment of bio-equivalence between the generic drug and an FDA approved branded drug. However, a large body of evidence in the medical community suggests that bio-equivalence does not guarantee therapeutic equivalence; in some instances the lack of therapeutic equivalence can lead to fatal consequences for patients switching to generic products. In this paper, we construct a simple model to analyze the implications of therapeutic non-equivalence between branded and generic drugs. We show, theoretically and empirically, that this distinction can provide a plausible explanation of the generic competition paradox.