Home / Research Projects
The Centre of Full Employment and Equity aims to promote research aimed at restoring full employment and achieving an economy that delivers equitable outcomes for all. The research plan ranges from theoretical development to the construction of a large-scale macroeconometric model. The following list describes some of the major projects being currently undertaken.
This project is being co-ordinated by Bill Mitchell
This project is being sponsored by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and aims to provide a framework for further extending the EPWP employment programme in South Africa to reduce poverty and to design a framework for determining minimum wages in the EPWP.
This project is being co-ordinated by Bill Mitchell
The Project focuses on the processes of job creation and destruction in Australia using sophisticated econometric modelling and an innovative mix of data sources. The research outcomes will deliver benefits in the improvement of labour market policy. Special focus will be on the impacts of structural change, trade liberalisation and the role of small business. The research will fill major gaps in the literature by providing new insights into job creation and destruction processes and the consequences for unemployment, at levels of disaggregation and in sectors not previously studied, notably, full-time/part-time; public/private; the service sector; as well as demographic variability.
This Project was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant over 2004-07 and is on-going into 2008
Publications:
Please see the Working Papers archive for papers as they appear.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
This project is being co-ordinated by Bill Mitchell and Beth Cook
The Project will develop a new framework for designing regional employment policy aimed at providing effective solutions to persistently high unemployment across Australia. It will integrate the renewed international focus on public employment strategies and local partnerships with existing and other emerging policy directions. The international experience in adapting national employment policy to local conditions and the feasibility of local public job creation will be evaluated. The findings will refine a proposal for a Community Development Job Guarantee. The Project will develop innovative assessment mechanisms for matching the local unemployed with local job opportunities to enhance regional labour market outcomes.
This Project is being supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant over 2004-08. A Final Report will be launched in October 2008.
Publications:
Please see the Working Papers archive for papers as they appear.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
This project is being co-ordinated by Bill Mitchell
The project examines regional labour markets, their interactions and their characteristics. Regional employment and unemployment and the relationship to national macro conditions and persistence of regional disparities is also examined. The team has assembled a comprehensive regional data base which is used in the studies.
Two major projects are being undertaken and are being funded by separate ARC Discovery Projects over 2008-2010:
The latter project is also part of a major project within ARCRNSISS which aims to develop a Shared Data Archive. CofFEE's work involves the development of a new geography based on functional regions which the rest of the databases will be based.
Publications:
Please see the Working Papers archive for papers as they appear.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
This project is being co-ordinated by Bill Mitchell
Under the Job Guarantee policy, the government continuously absorbs workers displaced from private sector employment. The Job Guarantee employees would be paid the minimum wage, which defines a wage floor for the economy. Government employment and spending automatically increases (decreases) as jobs are lost (gained) in the private sector. The approach generates full employment and price stability. The Job Guarantee wage provides a floor that prevents serious deflation from occurring and defines the private sector wage structure.
The project aims to further develop the Job Guarantee model in a variety of ways:
For more information on the Job Guarantee see the Job Guarantee page
Publications:
W.F. Mitchell (1998). 'The Buffer Stock Employment Model - Full Employment without a NAIRU', Journal of Economic Issues, 32(2), 547-55.
Please consult the Working Papers series for publications as they become available.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
This project is being co-ordinated by Bill Mitchell and Joan Muysken
This Project explores the validity of the NAIRU concept as a policy tool. It is also concerned with estimating the costs of inflation targetting monetary policy in Australia and across selected OECD countries
This Project aims to inform this important debate by estimating the costs of inflation targetting in two specific ways: (a) by generating more accurate estimates of the so-called Sacrifice Ratio (SR) and Okun coefficient, which are measures of foregone output and unemployment losses; and (b) to examine the NAIRU hypothesis in an asymmetric context. The work will improve the assessment of the costs and benefits of inflation targetting and thus enlighten the policy debate, which currently lacks a firm understanding of these costs.
To achieve the aims, we will:
For more information contact CofFEE.
Publications:
Please see the Working Papers archive for papers as they appear.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
This project is being co-ordinated by Bill Mitchell
This project is related to the Job Guarantee work and seeks to trace the respective contributions of the public and private sector to total employment since 1960. The private sector has always only been able to employ around 77 per cent of the labour force. Unless the public sector provides jobs for the remaining workers seeking employment unemployment will remain high. There is evidence that before the cutbacks in public sector employment the government provided an employer of last resort capacity to the economy. Certain areas in the public sector absorbed workers when there was insufficient private demand and thus maintained full employment. Data is being collected from government bulletins to construct a time series for government employment by department and level (Federal, State, Local) since 1960. Regression analysis will then test which areas of the public sector exhibited counter-cyclical employment behaviour.
Publications:
Please see the Working Papers archive for papers as they appear.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
This project is being co-ordinated by Bill Mitchell
This project seeks to develop an integrated approach to maintaining systems that deliver economic, social and environmental sustainability. Economic sustainability begins with the achievement and maintenance of full employment.
Publications:
Please see the Working Papers archive for papers as they appear.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
This project is being co-ordinated by Martin Watts
This work assesses the costs of unemployment to provide some balance to the current policy stance, which is prepared to trade-off higher unemployment in search of low inflation rates.
This project is also linked to the work CofFEE is doing to develop a more comprehensive measurement framework for a Genuine Progress Indicator.
Publications:
Please see the Working Papers archive for papers as they appear.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
This project is being co-ordinated by Bill Mitchell
Work has begun on the construction of CofFEE-1, which is the Centre's large-scale macroeconometric policy analysis and forecasting model. The structure of the model will reflect the Post-Keynesian nature of research in the Centre and will represent a competitor to the Treasury model in Australia.
Publications:
Please see the Working Papers archive for papers as they appear.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
This project is being co-ordinated by Bill Mitchell and Martin Watts
This project aims to contrast and compare the unemployment performance of Australia, Japan and the USA. It is often claimed that the USA provides a superior economic policy model due to its relatively lower unemployment rates. The project seeks to examine that proposition.
Publications:
Please see the Working Papers archive for papers as they appear.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
This project is being co-ordinated by William Mitchell and Warren Mosler
This is a broad research project with many dimensions ranging from institutional analysis to financial econometric analysis. The aim is to understand the way financial markets behave and to examine in detail the way this behaviour impacts on the relationship between the central bank and the commercial banks and macroeconomic performance of the economy.
The Project recognises the importance that money has in explaining the dynamics of the capitalist economies. Post Keynesians place the financial and monetary sectors at the centre of macroeconomic analysis. The labour market is a considered a derivative of that analysis rather than being a stand-alone issue.
The Project also is helping to build a quantiative financial modelling group within CofFEE which will aid in the development of financial modules in the CofFEE-1 macroeconomic modelling team.
Researchers in the Centre are pursuing many themes under the broad ambit provided by this Project area:
Bill Mitchell is leading the quantitative financial econometrics aspects while Warren Mosler, a leading financial market practitioner is playing a central role in developing the models outlining how the financial markets actually work. Significant international assistance is also being received from Randy Wray (UMKC-CFEPS) who is an leading endogenous money theorist.
Publications:
Please see the Working Papers archive for papers as they appear.
For further information on any of these projects please contact the CofFEE Office.
Conference 2013
The 14th Path to Full Employment Conference/19th National Unemployment Conference will be held in Newcastle, December 4-5, 2013. See Home Page for details.
The Centre of Full Employment and Equity,
The University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia
Telephone: +61-2-4921 7283 Fax: +61-2-4921 8731,
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E-mail: coffee@newcastle.edu.au


