Professor Robert Breunig
Ph. D. Economics, University of California Riverside
Professor
ANU College of Business and Economics and ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
Areas of expertise
- Labour Economics 140211
- Applied Statistics 010401
- Welfare Economics 140219
- Public Economics Publically Provided Goods 140214
- Industry Economics And Industrial Organisation 140209
- Econometric And Statistical Methods 140302
- Panel Data Analysis 140304
- Agricultural Economics 140201
- Transport Economics 140217
- Applied Economics 1402
- Econometrics 1403
- Statistics 0104
- Law 1801
Research interests
Current research interests include: child-care and labour supply; regulatory consistency and merger decision consistency; bank location and bank strategy; (petrol) demand; structural labour supply modeling; relative importance measures; young adults and their transition to independence; team performance and wage inequality in baseball.
Biography
Bio 1
Robert Breunig conducts research in three main areas: economcis of the household; empirical industrial organization; and statistical and econometric theory. In recent work, he has studied the inter-generational transmission of dependence on government assistance; he has examined the relationship between women's labour supply and child care policy and studied optimal child care subsidy policies; he has examined the complex relationship between outsourcing and innovation; and he has evaluated new econometric techniques for analyzing panel data models of binary outcomes.
He publishes regularly in respected, international journals. His research is motivated by important social policy issues and debates. His work is characterized by careful empirical study and appropriate use of statistical technique.
Robert Breunig's research agenda have led to many partnerships with government organizations in Australia and overseas. He works regularly with the Australian Treasury, the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and the Department of Innovation as well as many other agencies. He has been a consultant to private sector on marketing, mergers, bank competition and customer loyalty programs.
Robert Breunig particularly enjoys interaction outside of typical academic circles and takes pleasure in helping those who don't usually use economics or statistical analysis to better understand and make use of these tools in their work. He has an extensive track record of helping the public service to build research capacity which he views as a particularly important activity.
He has received grant support from the United States Department of Agriculture and the Australian Research Council.
Publications
- Breunig, R & Rospabe, S 2013, 'The male-female wage gap in France: differences across the wage distribution', Australian Journal of Labour Economics, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 43 (155-199).
- Bakhtiari, S. and R. Breunig (2013), "Innovation and outsourcing", BE Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, forthcoming.
- Breunig, R, X. Gong and D. Trott (2013), "The new National Quality Framework: quantifying some of the effects on labour supply, child care demand and household finances for two-parent households", Economic Record, forthcoming.
- Breunig, R. and S. Rospabe (2013), "The male-female wage gap in France: differences across the wage distribution", Australian Journal of Labour Economics, Volume 16, Number 1, pp. 155-199.
- Breunig, R & McKibbin, R 2012, 'Income Pooling between Australian Young Adults andTheir Parents', LABOUR Review of Labour Economics and Industrial Relations, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 235-265.
- Breunig, R, Menezes, F & Tan, K 2012, 'An Empirical Investigation of the Mergers Decision Process in Australia', The Economic Record, vol. 88, no. 283, pp. 459-475.
- Breunig, R, Gong, X & King, A 2012, 'Partnered women's labour supply and child care costs in Australia: measurement error and the child care price', The Economic Record, vol. 88, no. Special Issue June 2012, pp. 51-69.
- Breunig, R & Menzies, F 2012, 'Testing Regulatory Consistency', Contemporary Economic Policy, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 60-74.
- Breunig, R 2011, 'Non-parametric Econometrics, by Ibrahim Ahamada and Emmanuel Flachaire (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2010), pp. xiv + 161.�?? and �??Nonparametric Econometrics: Theory and Practice, by Qi Li and Jeffrey Scott Racine (Princeton University press, Pri', The Economic Record, vol. 87, no. 278, pp. 494-496.
- Breunig, R & McKibbin, R 2011, 'The effect of survey design on household reporting of financial difficulty', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society, vol. 174, no. Part 4, pp. 991-1005.
- Breunig, R 2011, 'Should single-equation dynamic gasoline demand models include moving average terms?', Transportation Research: Part D Transport and Environment, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 474-477.
- Breunig, R, Gong, X, Mercante, J, Weiss, A, and Yamauchi, C 2011, 'Child Care Availability, Quality and Affordability: Are Local Problems Related to Labour Supply?', The Economic Record, vol. 87, no. 276, pp. 109-124.
- Breunig, R & Mercante, J 2010, 'The accuracy of predicted wages of the non-employed and implications for policy simulations from structural labour supply models', The Economic Record, vol. 86, no. 272, pp. 49-70.
- Gong, X, Breunig, R and King, A 2010, 'New Estimates of the Relationship between Female Labour Supply and the Cost, Availability, and Quality of Child Care,' Economic Roundup. Issue 1, 2010. Canberra, Australia: Australian Government Printing Service. Available at http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1783/PDF/04_New_Estimates_of_Child_Care.pdf
- Breunig, R & Gisz, C 2009, 'An Exploration of Australian Petrol Demand: Unobservable Habits, Irreversibility and Some Updated Estimates', The Economic Record, vol. 85, no. 268, pp. 73-91.
- Baron, J, Breunig, R, Cobb-Clark, D, Gorgens, T and Sartbayeva, A, 2009, 'Does the Effect of Incentive Payments on Survey Response Rates Differ by Income Support History?', Journal of Official Statistics, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 483-507.
- Breunig, R & Hutchinson, D 2008, 'Small Sample Bias Corrections for Inequality Indices', in William N. Toggins (ed.), New Econometric Modelling Research, Nova Science Publishers Inc., USA, pp. 61-83.
- Breunig, R 2008, 'Nonparametric Density Estimation for Stratified Samples', Statistics and Probability Letters, vol. 78, pp. 2194-2200.
- Breunig, R & Wong, M 2008, 'A Richer Understanding of Australia's Productivity Performance in the 1990s: Improved Estimates Based Upon Firm-level Panel Data', The Economic Record, vol. 84, no. 265, pp. 157-176.
- Breunig, R & Menezes, F 2008, 'Empirical Approaches for Identifying Maverick Firms: An Application to Mortgage Providers in Australia', Journal of Competition Law & Economics, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 811-836.
- Breunig, R, Cobb-Clark, D & Gong, X 2008, 'Improving the Modelling of Couples' Labour Supply', The Economic Record, vol. 84, no. 267, pp. 466-485.
- Breunig, R & Rocaboy, Y 2008, 'Per-capita Public Expenditures and Population Size: A Non-parametric Analysis Using French Data', Public Choice, vol. 136, pp. 429-445.
- Breunig, R & Wong, M 2007, 'The role of firm dynamics in Australia's productivity growth', The Australian Economic Review, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 90-6.
- Breunig, R, Cobb-Clark, D, Gong, X et al 2007, 'Disagreement in Australian Partners' Reports of Financial Difficulty', Review of Economics of the Household, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 59-82.
- Breunig, R, Cobb-Clark, D, Gorgens, T, and Sartbayeva, A 2007, 'User's Guide to the Youth in Focus Data, Version 1.0', Youth in Focus Project Discussion Paper Series, Number 1, September, 2007. ISBN 1835-4025. Available at http://youthinfocus.anu.edu.au/publications.htm
- Breunig, R & Cobb-Clark, D 2006, 'Understanding the factors associated with financial stress in Australian households', Australian Social Policy, vol. Online, pp. 13-64.
- Breunig, R, Stacey, S, Hornby, J et al 2006, 'Price Regulation in Australia: How Consistent Has It Been?', The Economic Record, vol. 82, no. 256, pp. 67-76.
- Cobb-Clark, D, Ryan, C & Breunig, R 2006, 'A Couples-Based Approach to the Problem of Workless Families', The Economic Record, vol. 82, no. 259, pp. 428-444.
- Breunig, R & Wong, M 2005, 'Estimation of total factor productivity', Quantitative Tools for Microeconomic Policy Analysis, Media Publishing, Melbourne, Victoria, pp. 195-214.
- Breunig, R & Stegman, A 2005, 'Testing for Regime Switching in Singaporean Business Cycles', Singapore Economic Review, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 25-34.
- Breunig, R & Dasgupta, I 2005, 'Do Intra-Household Effects Generate the Food Stamp Cash-Out Puzzle?', American Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 87, no. 3, pp. 552-568.
- Breunig, R & Pagan, A 2004, 'Do Markov-switching Models Capture Nonlinearities in the Data? Test Using Nonparametric Methods', Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, vol. 64, pp. 401-407.
- Breunig, R, Cobb-Clark, D, Dunlop, Y et al 2003, 'Assisting the Long-Term Unemployed: Results from a Randomised Trial', The Economic Record, vol. 79, no. 244, pp. 84-102.
- Breunig, R, Najarian, S & Pagan, A 2003, 'Specification Testing of Markov Switching Models', Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, vol. 65, no. S1, pp. 703-726.
- Breunig, R & Dasgupta, I 2003, 'Are People Ashamed of Paying with Food Stamps', Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 203-225.
- Breunig, R 2002, 'Bias correction for inequality measures: an application to China and Kenya', Applied Economics Letters, vol. 9, no. 12, pp. 783-786.
- Breunig, R & Dasgupta, I 2002, 'A theoretical and empirical evaluation of the functional form used to estimate the food expenditure equation of food stamp recipients: comment', American Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 84, no. 4, pp. 1156-1160.
- Breunig, R 2001, 'An almost unbiased estimator of the coefficient of variation', Economics Letters, vol. 70, no. 1, pp. 15-19.
- Breunig, R 2001, 'Density Estimation for Clustered Data', Econometric Reviews, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 353-367.
- Breunig, R, Dasgupta, I, Gundersen, C and Pattanaik, P 2001, Explaining the Food Stamp Cash-Out Puzzle, United States Department of Agriculture.
- Ullah, A and Breunig, R 1998, 'Econometric Analysis in Complex Surveys' in Giles, D and Ullah, A, editors, Handbook of Applied Economic Statistics, New York: Marcel Dekker, pp. 325-364.
- Russell, R, Breunig, R, and Chiu, C 1998, 'Aggregation and Econometric Analysis of Demand and Supply' in Giles, D and Ullah, A, editors, Handbook of Applied Economic Statistics, New York: Marcel Dekker, pp. 177-236.
- Lieberman, O, Ullah, A, and Breunig R 1997, 'On the Bias of the Standard Errors of the LS Residual and the Regression Coefficients Under Normal and Non-Normal Errors', Econometric Theory, Problems and Solutions, vol 13, December, pp. 896-7.
- Ullah, A and Breunig, R, 1996 'On the Bias of the Standard Errors of the LS Residual and the Regression Coefficients Under Normal and Non-Normal Errors', Econometric Theory, Problems and Solutions, vol 12, December, pp. 868.
Projects and Grants
- Taxation, family policy and pension reform in an uncertain economy (Secondary Investigator)
- The Consistency of Price Regulation of Infrastructure Businesses across Australian Jurisdictions (Secondary Investigator)
- Intergenerational Transmission of Dependence on Income Support: Patterns, Causation and Implications for Australian Social Policy (Secondary Investigator)
- Literacy and Numeracy, Schooling, Neighbourhoods and Labour Market Success (Secondary Investigator)
- Taxation and the Welfare State: Implications of Current Policy Directions for Saving, Fertility, Economic Growth and Inequality (Primary Investigator)
- Measurement Error and Panel Data: A Non-Parametric Approach (Primary Investigator)
