Andrew Leigh

I gave a keynote address this afternoon to the ANU Crawford School's PhD student conference. I'll post the video when it becomes available, but I promised the audience that I'd post on my website now the ten economics papers that I'd like to read. (Since my production of research has tailed off lately, the least I can do is to suggest papers I want others to write!)

Politics:

1. Why are people in urban areas more left-wing? Is this selection or causation?

2. Do children of politicians make better politicians?

3. Is the frequency of an opposition leader’s media conferences negatively correlated with consumer confidence?

Microeconomics:

4. What is the elasticity of taxable income with respect to the marginal rate? How does it change across the distribution?

5. What is the deadweight cost of taxation? (Our current estimates are over a decade old, and this critical number needs updating.)

6. How do childcare, school, university and hospital reporting affect outcomes?

Macroeconomics:

7. How well does a Taylor Rule fit RBA decisions?

8. How accurate are business sector economic forecasters?

9. How much do GDP announcements affect the sharemarket? (using GDP measurement errors as an IV)

10. How do international events affect the exchange rate channel of monetary policy?