Fiscal decentralisation in PNG has been a contentious topic for much of the country’s history.This month’s ANU-UPNG seminar focuses on the weaknesses in the decentralisation process and how these mechanisms can be strengthened.

This paper presents a novel method for assessing global economic activity by analyzing satellite data on nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution, offering a more accurate alternative to night light measures, especially in regions with unreliable national accounts. It highlights the unreliability of current GDP rankings, even in advanced economies, and introduces a methodological advancement that mitigates error-in-variables biases by leveraging the distinct measurement errors between NO2 and night lights.

Join Tom Barthold (US Congress) David Bradbury (OECD) and Michael Plowgian (Office of Tax Policy, US Treasury) debating the future of the global tax system, moderated by Viva Hammer (ANU, formerly US Congress and US Treasury).

Nu Nu Win presents her PhD research about using administrative microdata to track mergers and acquisitions in Australia

Using data from California, this seminar will explore the effects of temperatures on tomatoes in transit.

We study Indonesian voters and politicians’ policy preferences over a suite of issues. We conducted concurrent surveys in advance of the 2024 Indonesian general election and, in a follow up, randomized the provision of information to candidates about voter preferences. We find that voters care about environmental issues more than politicians, and that politicians underestimate voters’ concern. Randomly providing information on voters’ preferences induced changes in politicians’ own stated policy preferences, especially on issues for which politicians initially underestimated voter support. However, information on voter preferences did not affect politicians’ willingness to support costly policy action on environmental issues, nor did it affect politicians’ vote share in the election.