All projects that use BLADE data must go through a rigorous assessment and approval process, managed by the ABS. Only authorised researchers will be granted access to de-identified BLADE data for policy analysis, research, and statistical purposes.
All projects are assessed under the Five Safes Framework. For a project to be approved, the ABS and the data custodians (the agencies that collect the data) must agree to the proposed use of the data. The project must be assessed as being in the public interest and be in accordance with the legislation of the relevant agencies. All users are legally obliged to use data responsibly for approved purposes, comply with the conditions of access, and maintain confidentiality of data.
Historical projects retain references to MADIP (renamed the Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA) in 2023).
As of April 2024, there were 167 active projects using BLADE.
To enquire about any of the projects listed below, including potential research collaboration, or to apply for access to BLADE data, please email: data.services@abs.gov.au
Below is a list of approved research projects that use BLADE data, listed under the following categories:
The project summaries below were provided by the research teams.
This page will be updated on a biannual basis.
There is currently a lack of consistent and comprehensive agricultural workforce demand and supply data. This project will explore BLADE, MADIP and Farm level Agricultural Data (FLAD) integrated datasets to model agricultural demand for on-farm workers.
The project will enable new household economic insights and statistics to be obtained from linked data. It will construct economic information (such as income, wealth and expenditure) based on non-survey sources, and use linked ABS household surveys to enhance the quality and utility of outputs.
The Business Characteristics Survey (BCS) provides time series not yet analysed extensively by the ABS. This exploratory project will consider the broad research question: ‘Do the business characteristics measured in BCS have clear relationships with business performance metrics from administrative data?' The project aims to contribute new insights to policy makers and businesses, and set a foundation for a larger research project.
The ACCC’s childcare inquiry will investigate factors impacting childcare provider viability, quality, and profits. This is in line with Terms of Reference for the Childcare Inquiry. This analysis would be expected to inform a consultation paper and the Final report. The consultation paper and report will be used to assist in evidence based decision and policy making by governments, business, and the community in relation to early childhood education and care.
This project aims to create the Linked Employee Employer Datasets (LEED) in datalab. LEED will be updated on an annual basis to support the publication of Jobs in Australia (JIA) and the Labour Administrative Sources and Indicators section publications, and the Migrants Statistics section who help produce additional tables in the JIA publication. We will also undertake some research and development work with the aim to improve and/or expand the LEED product.
The Aviation Recovery Framework commits BITRE to developing estimates of the value of Civil Aviation component industries in Australia. However, many civil aviation industries are not separately defined within ANZSIC, and are therefore not available from detailed economic measures produced by ABS. The aim of this project is to match lists of authorised civil aviation participants to business income tax data to compile aggregate estimates for each Civil Aviation component industry.
This research project aims to investigate how Safety Net family registrations data may be used to improve the quality of family structure information in MADIP. We will assess the amount of family structure information across all MADIP spine persons, and for a 2021 Australian resident cohort. This research follows on from initial investigations recently undertaken to assess the quality of family structure information within the unlinked Safety Net family registrations data, provided by Department of Health in early 2022.
The project is intended to support analysis and clearance of ABS publications: The Characteristics of Australia's Importers (CoAI) 2020-21, and the Characteristics of Australia’s Importers and Exporters 2021-22. It may also be used to support a review into ABN to TAU linkage methodology for trade business characteristic statistics.
This project supports the development of data and analytical products for potential inclusion in the Digital Atlas of Australia. There are significant gaps in commonly available datasets regarding timeliness, spatial and temporal granularity, and substantive content on many important social, economic, and environmental factors. Integrated data from MADIP and BLADE will be used to address these shortcomings and provide a significant contribution to the nationally significant DA project.
The modular nature of BLADE allows for scalability and flexibility when processing new data products. Combined with a cloud platform, this can significantly improve user experience for both external and internal ABS clients.
The purpose of the BLADE Object Optimsation Program is to pursue technical opportunities for improving user processing. A series of products will be developed for user groups within DataLab. These products will enhance the speed and applicability for research utilising BLADE objects.
This enduring project aims to provide a data solution for government agencies and/or researchers who do not have the time, capability, or resources to undertake their own analytical work in the ABS DataLab. It will allow the ABS to quickly respond to requests for confidentialised aggregate and modelled statistical outputs and/or estimates for these users. The ABS are currently responsible for building both standard and custom files for a wide range of researchers and policy makers across government, academia, and the private sector, for example BLADE for approved projects undertaken in the ABS DataLab. Consultancy services can provide aggregate and modelled data outputs from BLADE to better support users who are constrained from doing the analysis themselves.
Administrative data can provide fine level statistics not possible with survey data. These statistics may contain biases that could be mitigated by aligning the administrative data to representative survey data. A method has been developed for doing this, in collaboration with Queensland University of Technology, based on transformer neural networks and transfer learning. This project seeks to evaluate the efficacy of the method using real-world economic data.
The Labour Market Analysis Project (LMAP) will deliver new insights about changes in employment, jobs and remote working during the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath. As the project intends to leverage heterogenous data from BLADE, MADIP and ‘big data’ sources, the ABS’ GLIDE knowledge graph platform will be used to build a pilot Longitudinally-Linked Employer-Employee Dataset (LLEED). This will enable analysts to understand the complex labour market interactions among persons, businesses and governments, and to ‘connect the dots’ across a broad canvas of interrelated economic and social factors using a dynamic multisource evidence base.
This project uses graph reconstruction methodology to estimate the structure of domestic supply chains in the Australian economy. The method uses no underlying data of observed supply chains. Instead, it estimates all probable supply chain configurations. The result is a weighted, directed, probabilistic network that can be used to support critical government initiatives in supply chain resilience.
There are significant data and analysis gaps in our understanding of vulnerability and resilience to natural disasters. This is due to poor access to relevant and highly granular data and the resulting inability to develop tailored metrics drawing on linked social, economic, and environmental datasets. ACS is addressing these issues in its support for the prospective National Resilience, Relief and Recovery Agency (NRRRA). MADIP, BLADE and related datasets provide rich information which can be used for in-depth and timely analysis about people and businesses in disaster-prone areas.
This project assesses the feasibility of creating simulated microdata that preserves key relationships between variables in MADIP and BLADE while maintaining data confidentiality, then tests the analytical capability of the Amazon Web Server using simulated microdata.
The SA Office of the Productivity Commission is analysing administrative data on R& D Tax credits available in BLADE for the purpose of informing their current government inquiries on Research and Development. These inquiries are investigating R&D across South Australian businesses and government, as well as health and medical R&D.
This project will assess the performance of innovation active-businesses with IP registrations compared to innovation-active businesses without registered IP. Such IP protection methods are used by businesses to reduce risk and maximise competitive advantage from their innovative activities. Whilst it is established that innovation has a positive impact on organisation and economy performance, this project will explore the relationship between IP registrations and business performance as well as whether IP registrations are still effective as a measure of this innovation.
This project investigates how derived experimental business level growth measures from the BLADE data can inform existing aggregate economic growth measures
This project determines the feasibility of measuring firm level productivity using the experimental firm level capital input measures developed in the below project (Scoping/feasibility study to include capital input measures for firm level productivity). Specifically, it will test the applications of parametric and non-parametric statistical tools with the aim of coming up with experimental firm level productivity measures which can be used by BLADE users in micro-modelling and analysis.
The project aims to come up with some experimental firm level capital stock measures that can be used by BLADE users for micro-level productivity measurement and analysis.
Outputs from this project:
This project supports the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s research work relevant to the impact of competition in the Australian economy. BLADE microdata enables the ACCC to monitor business dynamism in the Australian context, including the impact of increasing concentration in the market. This work builds on the evidence based approach to ACCC policy considerations and its position on emerging issues.
This project assists Austrade to establish a set of consistent, objective methodologies designed to provide robust quantitative estimates of the impact of many of Austrade’s services and programs aimed at promoting Australia’s trade and investment. The outcomes can provide evidence for how Austrade assists in strengthening Australia’s export base and investment, while shedding light on the areas requiring further attention.
This research examines a range of performance metrics for accommodation providers, measuring the extent of change over time and where reliable, providing analysis at the tourism region level. Analysis topics include characteristics of businesses entering and leaving the industry, the extent of change amongst existing businesses and the survival rate of new businesses.
The project will analyse the productivity and economic benefits of broadband in Australia by drawing on various established methodologies to assess how improved broadband speeds and coverage have impacted on productivity and economic indicators for Australia. This will include examining firm-level business performance based on broadband use.
The project will research the impact of particular costs on key businesses indicators for firms in the telecommunications sector.
The wider economic benefits from transport infrastructure projects are a new concept in the practice of transport appraisal. There is currently a need to develop a more robust set of parameter value estimates with which to quantify productivity gains from greater agglomeration caused by transport infrastructure projects. This project will address this need by developing a set of parameter value estimates using the best data available, with nationwide applicability.
The project aims to estimate the productivity gap between small and large businesses across different economic sectors over time. The project also aims to estimate some of the key drivers of this gap.
The project will deliver ecosystem accounts at the sub-national level to: (1) demonstrate value for policy and decision making, engage key stakeholders and increase demand for an ongoing program of ecosystem accounts; and (2) contribute towards the longer-term goal of national ecosystem accounts by testing methods that can be scaled nationally and by increasing capacity for ecosystem accounting in Commonwealth institutions.
This project demonstrates the use of integrated data from the MADIP and BLADE to identify opportunities for regional economic development. The Indigenous extension pilot will seek to provide land and water policy-relevant insights for Indigenous communities and industries of the Darwin region.
Outputs from this research:
This project makes use of integrated data from the MADIP and BLADE to provide new insights into how water conditions impact socio-economic metrics i.e. taking into account the flow, volume, and allocation of water for a given purpose, and how access to water affects communities. It will prototype benefits through a data-driven, robust and repeatable approach to being able to assess how decisions about water sharing will impact or benefit community and change over time.
Outputs from this research:
This study will develop a better understanding of the effects of climate variability on the productivity and profitability of Australian farms, establishing the relationships between climate conditions (i.e., rainfall and temperature) and farm production and financial outcomes.
Outputs from this research:
The Government has agreed to a Review of additional policy options to address carbon leakage, including considering the feasibility of an Australian Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), particularly in relation to steel and cement (including clinker and lime). The Carbon Leakage Review will assess the extent of carbon leakage risks due to differences in emissions reduction policies between Australia and key trading partners, currently and into the future.
This project will mine unit-level data assets held by the ABS (MADIP and BLADE) to create socio-economic profiles that the Department of the Environment and Energy could start to use in decision making as part of its core business.
This project uses integrated data from the MADIP and BLADE to assess, discover and synthesise new evidence in existing government datasets that highlights the return on investment from Australian Government support for Indigenous environmental programs.
This project will seek to leverage BLADE to provide insights on Australia’s defence industrial base. This will feed into a larger initiative to improve defence industry policy through the use of data and economic analysis.
The VET system currently has limited understanding of the effectiveness and outcomes of government funding in VET. This project will enhance the evidence base of the employment and social outcomes of VET students in Australia. Phase 2 will release VET student outcomes by VET providers to the National Skills Commission. The release will be prepared through analysis of the same underlying MADIP and BLADE data as for Phase 1, but with the addition of RTO identifiers. This will provide a more complete, consistent and accurate database on VET performance and will support the National Skills Commissioner to provide evidence-based advice to governments and stakeholders, on student outcomes and return on investment in VET.
This project will use integrated data from MADIP and BLADE to enhance the evidence base on the employment and social outcomes of VET students in Australia. VET completion and attainment data will be linked to MADIP data to create a longitudinal de-identified student-level dataset. This will support the National Skills Commissioner to provide evidence-based advice to governments on student outcomes and return on government investment. VET completion and attainment data will be linked at the person level to employment data in BLADE to obtain information on the businesses which consume VET services. This will supplement information on the employment outcomes of students, specifically through providing more data on the industry of employment for students and on non-wage earnings outcomes. It will also provide insights on the link between specific qualifications and the industry of employer to ascertain the relevance of training to industry and benefits of VET training to employers.
This project builds on the Treasury’s Real-Time Labour Market Tracker project. The Labour Market Tracker project uses integrated data from MADIP and BLADE to create a high-quality, high-frequency data asset to monitor the labour market during the current pandemic and associated economic shock. The Skills Tracker project expands on this important resource to inform on emerging shifts in the labour market, the skills held by people without work, and the skilling and re-training needed to get people back into work.
This project will provide insight into the businesses characteristics of Vocational Education and Training providers who delivered more than 2000 qualifications in 2019.
While government funded employment services help around 30 000 job seekers find jobs each month, little is known about the businesses hiring these job seekers. This project provides Government with a better picture of the characteristics of businesses which hired job seekers under the Job Services Australia model in 2014-15, informing policy development, program delivery and shaping future related research.
This project uses integrated data from the Department of Jobs and Small Business' Employment Services System (ESS) and BLADE to identify the characteristics of businesses that have used wage subsidies provided through the Government’s employment services program to investigate how utilisation of wage subsidies is linked to business dynamics.
This project will provide evidence for policies that are important for Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian government. The analysis will examine: drivers and bottlenecks for trading firms; the resilience of trading firms to external shocks; the impact of trade on Australian firms (growth, productivity, innovation and employment); and provide analysis to support future trade negotiations. This analysis will be used to examine what policy tools can be used to help Australian firms increase trade, improve resilience, and diversify exports.
Demand for medical services is well understood to vary spatially and between different demographic cohorts, with observable factors like socio-economic indices often utilised as a proxy for unobserved latent factors. This research aims to use linked individual-level data to develop a simulation model of health service demand that explicitly captures a range of key associated indicators. While many indicators can be modelled directly from the PLIDA data, such as detailed education, income, and welfare status, of particular interest is the effect that long-term health conditions have on demand for health services. Where possible, the study aims to use the data for enhancing our understanding of the supply of medical services in Australia.
This project aims to understand immunisation uptake and hesitancy, the impact and effectiveness of vaccines, vaccine programs and related communications, close to real-time evidence relating to vaccine policy and program implementation, vaccine-specific research spanning health system performance and vaccine safety.
The Australian economy is facing a challenging environment and increasing levels of uncertainty and change, which is likely to continue over the coming years. This project aims to investigate research questions focused on economic sectors (primarily non-ANZSIC-defined sectors) and regions of Australia. Research insights will support evidence-based policy development to support future economic growth and job creation.
The project aims to produce industry and sectoral insights that inform effective productivity and economic growth policy decisions. It will conduct a series of studies to better understand the characteristics, relationships, trends and drivers of sectoral performance at various levels of ANZSIC granularity.
This project will investigate the relationship between firm’s Research and Development (R&D) investment and Research & Development Tax Incentive (RDTI) program participation and outcomes such as innovation and commercialisation, and subsequently its effect on the business performance. The project aims to produce results at the industry/sector level and identify firms that conduct R&D but do not claim RDTI. It also seeks to identify where policy levers could be targeted to improve the overall economic outcomes for Australia.
The National Reconstruction Fund is the Government’s election commitment to rebuild Australia’s industrial base, based upon our natural and competitive advantages, and areas of strategic importance. The overall aim of this project is to develop a greater understanding of Australian manufacturers and the industries, in particular their financing gaps, thereby supporting the National Reconstruction Fund.
The Modern Manufacturing Strategy is a whole-of-government strategy to help Australian manufacturers scale-up, become more competitive and build more resilient supply chains. The Strategy is centred around six National Manufacturing Priorities – Food and Beverage, Medical Products, Space, Defence, Recycling & Clean Energy and Resources Technology & Critical Minerals, some of which do not fit within the ABS ANZSIC industry classifications. The aim of this project is to develop a greater understanding of the characteristics of Australian manufacturers and the industries that support modern manufacturing.
The newly-formed Office of Supply Chain Resilience in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is researching the indications of vulnerable supply chains, mapping the supply chains that support critical national systems, assessing market resilience to disruption and identifying potential strategies to mitigate risks.
This project aims to improve the targeting and efficacy of government support for businesses by developing a user- friendly Program Analytics Tool (PAT) that enables internal users to explore key attributes and performance measures of cohorts of firms that participate in Department of Industry, Science and Resources programs.
The purpose of this project is to investigate how participation in the Entrepreneurs’ Programme affects firm performance and activities. These findings will be summarised in a short report and will contribute to a broader evaluation of the Entrepreneurs’ Programme. The findings of the report will inform the design of future initiatives aimed at promoting Australian businesses’ capability.
This project aims to investigate the impact of R&D on innovation and firm performance, the determinants of various types of innovation and the intensity of digital technology use by Australian firms.
Firm dynamism and entrepreneurship in Australia has gone through ups and downs. This project will conduct a series of studies to better understand and document firm dynamism using various performance indicators and will analyse factors that might be affecting (improving or hindering) dynamism and entrepreneurship.
This project aims to investigate the impacts and determinants of spillover effects of R&D conducted by Australian firms.
The Program Analytics Tool (PAT) is a new web-based tool which provides valuable insights into businesses that participate in programs run by the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources (DISER). The tool uses data from the Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment (BLADE) – a valuable government data asset with information on all actively trading Australian firms. The tool includes data on the characteristics and performance of DISER program participants. The development of PAT increases the transparency of government programs and helps policymakers and other stakeholder groups to take advantage of existing administrative data to understand the client profile of existing programs and inform decisions on designing future programs to assist Australian businesses. The Department plans to release an improved version of PAT in December 2020 by including more up to date data until 2018-19 financial year.
This project will investigate the impact of trade on the dynamics and productivity of Australian industries and the position of Australia in the global value chain with an eye on policies such as business growth, trade agreement, international and domestic conditions (e.g. pandemic, carbon tariffs, bushfire etc.). It will also investigate the impacts of global trade reforms on Australian imports and exports by product and country specifications.
The project will demonstrate the value of integrated administrative data for program evaluation in the absence of natural experiments. This is an extension of a 2018-19 EDAN project. This new project will assess the impact of the program on the performance of businesses that interacted with IGC relative to a counterfactual. This analysis intends to utilize empirical matching techniques to assess the impact of IGC initiatives on firms’ performance. Findings from this project will help improve the IGC initiative and increase its likelihood of meeting its long term objectives.
In view of the sudden decline in the number of firm entries in Australia between 2005 and 2011, this project will examine the link between entrepreneurship dynamics in Australia and measures of financing constraints. The project will test whether a deterioration in access to credit was behind the decline in entrepreneurship and the increasing risk of exit faced by them. Established methods from the finance literature will be applied to infer financing constraints from firm-level data and use this as the basis of determining key explanatory variable(s). The project aims to demonstrate the extent to which financial constraints and access to finance was driving the observed decline in entrepreneurship. The results will also provide guidance for future policies to counter another decline in firm entry.
This project will look at the characteristics and determinants of GVCs at the firm level by understanding the determinants of GVCs, this project will contribute to policy work on lifting the number of Australian firms involved in supply chains, increasing exports and improving adoption of innovation.
This project will inform policy by investigating the impact of foreign investment by looking at the relative performance of foreign owned businesses – a key question being considered by the Department’s Northern Australia and Major Projects division. The mining industry has the greatest proportion of businesses that are foreign owned (5.9 per cent). There is policy interest from the Department’s Resources Division into the characteristics of foreign owned mining firms (particularly critical mineral miners), given that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows may also be driven by the desire for access to natural resources. Moreover, policy areas expressed interest in an analysis of battery minerals ownership, the coal sector, the mining sector as a whole and the Mining, Equipment, Technology and Services (METS) Industry Growth Centre sector. An improved understanding of the characteristics and performance of foreign owned companies in Australia will better inform these policy teams and associated programs.
This project aims to understand the key drivers of innovation according to type, e.g.; new goods or services and processes.
This project will build on and improve the PAT prototype, with a view to informing the Productivity Commission’s Trade and Assistance Review publication as well as provide future program data integration guidance to other State and Commonwealth agencies.
DIIS administers many programs, and understanding the extent to which firms participate in more than one program, and in which programs, is important for understanding the impact of each program. The goal of this research is to update and extend work done previously on understanding firms that are participating in multiple DIIS programmes. This includes understanding participation across different time periods and across different programmes. The extension will include assessing the performance of multiple participants compared to other firms.
This project seeks to understand business energy decisions by investigating micro-level energy productivity, and the extent to which there is an energy productivity gap.
The study will investigate the outsourcing practices of firms in Australia and observe how these practices have changed over time and across different groups of firms. It contemplates two growth paths for small firms; hiring internally and growth, and contract out and grow. It will look for evidence of whether small firms are opting for the latter option in higher numbers now than the earlier years. It will also test whether contracting out has any effect on the wages paid to the internal staff (puts a downward pressure?). The results will help better define small and medium size business and tailor policies to better reflect the needs of each type of firm.
This project will estimate the influence of R&D on the propensity of firms to introduce innovation, and whether this has changed over time.
In collaboration with Swinburne University researchers, using state-of-the-art econometric techniques and firm level data, this research project will produce aggregate and detailed estimates of R&D spillovers by field of research in Australia.
This project will primarily create scores to understand digital intensity in Australia. The paper also aims to provide evidence on the relationship between use of digital technologies and firm performance to help inform policies aimed at building digital capability and diffusion of digital technologies.
Using BLADE data, this project will examine financially weak firms in Australia, with a focus on their participation in DIIS programs. Broadly defined, financially weak firms are indebted firms that are consistently unable to cover their interest expenses with profits. To survive, these firms need ongoing external capital injections. Some researchers argue that these weak firms should be allowed to fail, especially if they have bleak growth prospects, so that limited capital resources can be directed to more productive uses. Given these implications for efficiency in resource allocation, this project aims to document the extent to which financially weak firms are serviced by DIIS programs and whether program eligibility criteria could be further optimised. This research will attempt to uncover predictors of financial weakness, as well as situations in which financial weak firms have stronger recovery prospects. These findings will assist both the design and implementation stages of policy.
Changes to trade policy creates winners and losers, however there is little evidence on the distributional consequences of these changes at the firm level. This project will seek to understand how changing patterns of trade affect business dynamism, in the form of a research paper, using data from Australian and New Zealand firms.
Incomplete data repositories affect research and have the capacity to bias estimates. This project will develop a Python application to mitigate such bias by using machine learning to intelligently impute missing values in the Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment. Intelligent imputations can enhance the forecastability of Australian firms and their trajectories through the economy.
Output from this project:
This project will paint a clearer picture of the composition of IGCs’ firm characteristics (employment, turnover and value-added, amongst others), and particularly their productivity dynamics and export performance to assess if publicly funded industry and business assistance measures are delivering outcomes as intended.
The project assesses whether the Tasmanian Innovation and Investment Funds administered between 2008 and 2014 delivered outcomes as intended. This work provides a compact and compelling methodology that can be built upon further to allow for cost-effective analysis of the impacts of government assistance to firms.
This paper examines the impact of collaborative R&D on firms’ value added using fixed effects regression. It estimates how the effects of collaborative R&D accumulate in the years following R&D activity and finds statistically and economically significant benefits emerging after two years.
This project aims to improve understanding of R&D activity in Australia using data from BLADE. The project aims to better gauge drivers of measured R&D and the characteristics of R&D-active firms.
This project focuses on entering firms and compares their productivity to other incumbent firms. The project will also characterise young firms that are more productive than incumbents and highlight the role of industry and innovation clusters in developing this productivity advantage.
Output from this research:
Integrated firm level data products such as BLADE offer increasing opportunities for insights into the economy, allowing analysis of elements of productivity performance such as entrepreneurship, innovation and management capability. In light of a decline in entrepreneurship, this study aims to find reasons why the number of entrepreneurs has declined and increase the evidence base needed to inform policy.
Output from this research:
This project uses the Taxation Data and Business Characteristics Survey components of the BLADE to determine whether government assistance has an impact on a firm’s credit worthiness, and therefore its ability to obtain external financing. The findings will shed light on the indirect benefits of government financial assistance, and provide evidence to facilitate better use of public funds, leading to more targeted policies and programs.
Output from this research:
This research explores the characteristics of 'born global' firms, including the relationship between firm size, age, export status and growth. The results from the research can assist relevant policy areas to better target policies aimed at export promotion and entrepreneurship, potentially providing exposure for Australian firms to larger markets, innovation, technology and competition.
Australia engages with international organisations and contributes to their reports on comparative studies of R&D, productivity, job creation, and innovation across countries. There are two projects that DISER is collaborating on: OECD’s MicroBERD and PRN’s Compnet. Both projects involve running supplied code on microdata and providing a set of aggregate data cubes, simple statistics and regression results. These data will be collated with data from other countries and used for policy and advice and also published as reports.
This project aims to improve our understanding of the drivers of business innovation by novelty (novelty = new to world, new to Australia, new to market, new to industry and new to firm) by examining the determinants of each type of innovation. The analysis will identify and assess recent innovation dynamics in Australia that can inform policy makers in adapting and refining policies designed to encourage innovation in the Australian economy.
The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science's Program Analytics Tool (PAT) allows policy makers and other users to understand the patterns of departmental assistance and the characteristics of assisted firms. This work is designed to enable refinement of current departmental programs, the design and delivery of future programs as well as increasing these programs' accessibility and transparency.
Output from this project:
To improve understanding of management capability in Australia and facilitate self-assessment within firms, this project develops a simple classification for strategic management using a cross section of the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Management and Organisational Capabilities Module. This measure of strategic management correlates strongly with broader management practices and with a separately constructed, data-driven summary measure of management practices created using multiple correspondence analysis. The strategic management classification is positively associated with: rates of innovation; search for collaborative opportunities; responsiveness to skill and supply chain issues, and labour productivity at the firm level.
Output from this project:
This paper uses BLADE data to assess the financial performance, balance sheet health and survivability of employing SMEs over the period 2001-02 to 2015-16. There is evidence that small firms (those with 1 to 19 employees) and persistently loss-making SMEs suffered disproportionately during the last serious period of economic turmoil (the Global Financial Crisis years of 2008-9 to 2010-11). As such they remain the most vulnerable to any future shocks, and are a potential target for future government support.
This research assesses whether the R&D Tax incentive program is leading to an increase in expenditure on R&D, and also whether it affects the composition of R&D conducted by Australian firms. The findings from this work can help to improve targeting and efficacy of government support for businesses.
This project looks at changes in the concentration of Australian industries and makes comparisons with other countries. The research aims to identify and characterise the types of industries where market concentration is increasing.
Output from this research:
erstanding high-growth firms is important as these types of firms have contributed most of the sales and value-add in the Australian economy over the past decade. This project estimates the impact of innovation and other business characteristics on turnover growth, focussing on the roles of innovation and research and development in driving turnover. Using unique unit record data and advanced panel data techniques, the patterns, characteristics and determinants of high-growth firms in Australia are examined.
Output from this project:
This project aims to investigate business characteristics that are associated with a higher likelihood of failure or survival following natural disasters. This research will support the future design of financial assistance to disaster-affected small businesses
This project is designed to support the Government as it prepares for Workplace Relations reform. Initial work is designed to establish key facts and figures about the make-up of the Australian Labour Market and the conditions under which Australians are working. The project will start by performing industry/sector comparisons around how employees and contractors are paid, including their working conditions, methods of setting pay and the characteristics of these businesses and employees.
This project provides PM&C analysts with access to integrated microdata from MADIP and BLADE, enabling up-to-date analysis and provision of timely advice to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on emerging policy issues, including informing COVID-19 response and recovery.
This project explores the range of the association between business characteristics (e.g. industry, state, urban/regional location, business size) and participation in a range of government assistance programs. This work will assist with understanding the service landscape and how it can be better coordinated.
This project uses integrated data from the MADIP and BLADE to explore various impacts of international migration on Australia. It will aim to contribute to the evidence base for a broad range of policies, including migration program planning, migration labour market rules, and Commonwealth revenue management.
This project will address the possible impact early NBN roll-out had in creating or influencing businesses and employment in regions.
This project examines the different pathways workers take when they are the subject of an industry downturn, with the aim of supporting economic structural adjustment policy measures based on the factors that limit or enable successful transitions for affected workers.
Using data from MADIP and BLADE, the project examines regional recovery from the millennium drought. The project explores a number of socio-economic factors in three drought affected Eastern Australia locations.
This project uses BLADE to examine business performance and the impact of company tax changes, initially focusing on changes since July 2015 when the tax rate for Australian businesses with a turnover of less than $2 million was lowered from 30 per cent to 28.5 per cent. Outcomes from this project will contribute to understanding the impacts of favourable tax treatment on small businesses.
Disability Employment Services (DES) help people with disability to find and keep a job. This project will use integrated data on DES participants to gain whole-of-life insights on the nature and impact of disability employment, and the main factors that drive employment outcomes for people with disability.
Recognising the high annual turnover rate of export market firm entry and exit, this project characterises small and medium sized Australian exporters and designs a personalised intervention to improve their business performance using causal analysis and unsupervised machine learning. It also outlines a randomised controlled trial protocol to evaluate that intervention. Ultimately, this project represents a new research approach to designing and evaluating personalised behavioural interventions for discrete populations.
This project will produce a stronger evidence base for decisions about disaster mitigation and recovery investments, with the aim to reduce future disaster impacts through better informed policies. It will combine data available across Commonwealth and State Government portfolios and enable a better understanding of costs to, and services provided by the Australian Government to communities and businesses beyond direct relief and recovery payments in disaster affected regions.
This project made use of integrated data from the MADIP and BLADE data assets.
Outputs from this research:
This project will examine (a) how innovation and the use of IP rights impacts within-firm inequality and wage growth for different types of workers, and (b) whether inequality on various margins is causing Australian society to lose potential innovators, including by disadvantaging individuals and firms in accessing the IP system. The project will inform the design of programs aimed at increasing equitable access to government support for innovation and inform policy development for influencing productivity and wage growth.
This research proposes to investigate whether intellectual property rights (IPRs) have a positive impact on Australian small and medium enterprise (SMEs) in terms of their performance in employment, turnover and productivity growth. In addition, the research aims to determine whether SMEs IP activities can be used as an indicator to assess their growth potential. IP rights such as patents, trademarks and industrial designs allow SMEs to appropriate the results of their creativity, inventiveness and R&D investment and create an incentive for further investment in innovation. However, IPRs can also be a costly venture, especially for SMEs that have relatively less resources to obtain and maintain IPRs compared with large enterprise. Therefore, research is needed to determine whether SMEs can leverage their IP rights to grow and perform better.
The purpose of this project is to investigate how trademark use impacts the export behaviour and performance of Australian businesses. It also aims to profile: (i) how the characteristics of trademark-using businesses/exporters differ from non-trademark-using businesses/exporters (in terms of the level of employment, turnover, productivity, investment, etc.); (ii) whether trademark use impacts business survival probability; and (iii) which industries and geographic locations have a higher/lower than average concentration of trademarks and what factors could explain such differences. Its findings will inform export promotion policies and programs.
By studying the impact of IP rights on business performance, this research aims to understand the incentive structure faced by economic agents as they seek to secure IP rights. The research will investigate: (i) the performance characteristics (in terms of turnover, employment, investment, etc.) of businesses with IP rights; (ii) how the performance of businesses with IP rights change over time; and (iii) whether businesses with IP rights perform better than otherwise similar businesses without IP rights.
This project, by examining the relationship between business mark-ups and IP activity, aims to shed light on how IP rights affect competition across industries. The project is aligned with the Government’s response to the 2016 Productivity Commission inquiry into Australia’s Intellectual Property Arrangements. It will also inform future policy responses to the Competition Policy Review (2015).
This project aims to develop indicators and models to identify the impacts of the Basin Plan water reforms on Murray-Darling basin communities and industries in the context of multiple social economic trends and drivers.
The Water and Society project uses integrated data from the MADIP and BLADE to explore the relationship between water conditions (flow, volume, connectivity and allocations) and regional socio-economic and human health outcomes.
This project supports the Productivity Commission’s research and reporting functions, including inquiries. BLADE is assisting the Productivity Commission to dig deeper into specific industries for bespoke productivity and performance analysis across a range of publications.
Outputs from this research:
The Productivity Commission is using BLADE and MADIP to help guide research in COVID-19 economic recovery. As the Commission explores structural changes and economic reform, BLADE and MADIP will help inform the potential effects across business and the Australian population.
The Productivity Commission is using integrated data from MADIP and BLADE to research the indications of vulnerable supply chains, the impacts if one of these chains were to be broken, and the potential preventative strategies to mitigate these risks.
This study will consider patterns of business entry and exit rates, and the contribution of small and large businesses to industry productivity growth.
The project aims to integrate firm-level CPI microdata to firm-level data to facilitate a better understanding of firm price-setting dynamics, its determinants, and its effects. This can allow for both structural, and more contemporary economic analysis. This will begin with web-scrapped data, but could later be expanded.
In this project, the Reserve Bank of Australia will use the jobs related data (as first used by the Treasury on the Real Time Labour Market Tracker project) to monitor and research developments in the labour market. The project will provide insights on labour market transitions at a high frequency and in (almost) real time, and examine how these transitions are influenced by economic policies. In turn, this will improve the Bank’s ability to assess and forecast the degree of spare capacity in the labour market as the economy recovers from the COVID-19 shock, informing monetary policy and economic policy more broadly.
To analyse the economic impact of recent COVID-19 outbreak on Australian trade – to support policy response.
This project seeks to investigate how Australian businesses and labour markets respond to macroeconomic shocks and longer-term structural change.
This project explores how Australian businesses manage their balance sheets and how their financial structure affects various outcomes like investment, growth and survival. The financial structure of Australian businesses is important for understanding their resilience to financial shocks and their investment behaviour. Most existing research is based on the financial structure of publicly listed companies. But less than 1 in 1000 firms is a publicly listed company, so it is unclear how applicable these results are to the broader business population. There is also limited information on the extent to which Australian firms are financially constrained. This project provides the first direct estimates of self reported constraints based on business surveys.
Outputs from this project:
This project is designed to assess the causes and effects of changes in business productivity in Australia. The project is divided into separate parts that explore the nature of firm-level production functions, the underlying trends in business entry and exit, profit mark-ups and rent sharing. Each of these projects is important to analysing and forecasting the business cycle, inflation and long-run potential growth.
Outputs from this project:
The aim and purpose of the project is to assist in fulfilling one of Safe Work Australia’s (SWA) key legislated functions: to collect, analyse and publish relevant data; and to undertake and publish research to inform the development and evaluation of work, health and safety (WHS) and workers’ compensation policies and strategies. This includes supporting measurement of indicators in Safe Work Australia’s ten year national WHS Strategy 2023-2033 and exploring available data for insights into emerging or acute WHS issues and trends from an employee and employer perspective.
This project is intended to create a data asset that will permit analysis of competition, business dynamism and related issues such as the role of mergers and acquisitions in the Australian economy.
Treasury will use this project to investigate the drivers of and impact policy has on topics including wages, workforce shortages, productivity, competition and human capital. This research may feed into Treasury advice, briefing, Budget materials, new policy proposals, and working papers.
This project is a collaboration between the Centre for Population, Australian Treasury and the OECD investigating the use of administrative data to better understand the economic impact of overseas migration in Australia, particularly on productivity levels and local labour markets. This project will inform the Treasury Centre for Population’s program of research.
The research proposes to investigate whether participation in the Digital Solutions program has had a positive impact on Australian small businesses in terms of their revenue, ability to employ additional staff, and overall productivity growth.
This project will use Wage Price Index data linked to the BLADE to help understand the evolution of wages and general labour market trends (in particular post-COVID). The project will focus on both structural and cyclical drivers.
This project will investigate structural drivers of employment outcomes and firm performance, to inform advice about the medium-term outlook and new policy proposals. In particular, Treasury analysts will analyse the relationships between employment outcomes and characteristics, such as hours worked, wages paid and methods of setting pay and, with these data linked to BLADE, business characteristics, such as industry of origin, productivity, rent-sharing and the like.
As the economy recovers from the COVID-19 shock, it will be crucial to understand developments in the labour market. While numerous datasets are currently being used to monitor the labour market, high-quality high-frequency administrative datasets are not being fully exploited. The purpose of this project is to extract greater value from MADIP and BLADE by integrating them into a data asset that can be used to monitor numerous aspects of the labour market, in as close to real time as possible. This will help to inform forecasts, and policy development and assessment, by allowing an examination of how the labour market is tracking relative to what is expected.
COVID, and associated health restrictions, had a substantial effect on firms. This project aims to understand the potential effect of the virus, and associated policies, on firms in terms of their profitability and liquidity, based on firm’s past financial positions and trends. This can help to support policy-making related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This project will use firm-level data from BLADE to better understand the micro-drivers of aggregate MFP growth in Australia. Productivity growth is one of the key drivers of future living standards, and this analysis can help to enhance government services by identifying structural reform opportunities.
This project will use microdata to explore trends in labour and product market concentration in Australia. The analysis will help policy makers to better understand trends in labour and product market concentration, which has implications for wage and productivity growth, and will help inform policy making.
Outputs from this research:
This project is intended to help to us to understand the impacts external shocks on the Australian economy in a broad sense, but also more directly on firms, industries and regions. To do so, the project will try to examine a number of aspects of trade, including: the geographic concentration of firm exports; the ability for firms to change export markets; the geographic concentration of certain export industries within Australia; and the effect of foreign shocks, such as demand shocks, exchange rate shocks, and tariff changes, on firms performance and productivity.
This project explores the extent to which changes in micro-mechanisms – such as the wages-productivity link and job switching patterns – can explain low aggregate wage growth. It will help policy makers better understand one of the major macro-economic challenges of our time – low wage growth, which is critical due its bearing on individual wellbeing, tax revenues and potential implications for policy making.
Outputs from this research:
This project involves policy-relevant research into the micro-drivers of labour productivity growth to provide a stronger foundation to the Australian growth narrative.A body of evidence will be produced for use by Australian economic policy makers, particularly issues relating to micro-economic policy, with the aim of boosting living standards via productivity-enhancing reforms.
This project investigates the productivity performance of Australian firms against OECD research showing a global productivity slowdown, and is part of a broader government initiative on productivity. The research will allow policy makers to better understand and support dynamic and resilient industries and firms.
The project aims to provide empirical evidence for shaping policy and other government interventions, using ABS BLADE and PLIDA datasets. It seeks to improve understanding on how employment and income have changed over time, as well as how labour market characteristics affect productivity and innovation in NSW businesses and priority sectors.
This project aims to understand the ability of local construction firms to deliver the anticipated program of works in their area of operations.
The purpose of this work is to better understand the consequences of major infrastructure spend, eg: whether it builds long term capacity in the construction industry, how the effects of capacity building are distributed geographically and regional impacts of major construction works. This work analyses the costs and benefits of major construction work in the context of construction costs as a whole.
This project is intended to be an empirical analysis to understand the productivity and competitiveness of firms, industries and regions in NSW, as well as their drivers. In particular it focusses on the role location plays in firm level productivity. This work can help the NSW Government formulate targeted interventions to create economic conditions favourable to increasing firm productivity and competitiveness.
The JobSaver program supported over 200,000 NSW businesses during the Delta lockdowns of 2022. This project measures the ongoing effect of JobSaver on firm survival rates, employment levels, and profitability. Outputs from this analysis will inform the design of future business support policies.
The Annual State of the Aboriginal Business Sector Report (the Report) will provide insight into Aboriginal business sector by major industries and demonstrate the achievements, resilience, and adaptability of Aboriginal businesses; and, outline some key enablers of success for NSW Aboriginal businesses and address challenges NSW Aboriginal businesses have faced.
This project is the exploratory phase of an ongoing data analytics project to better understand firm level job creation and destruction in NSW (and Australia). The findings of this project will contribute to the development of a robust evidence base regarding firm employment dynamics, informing further analyses and policy development. The first phase of the project is intended to be an exploratory analysis of longitudinal job creation and destruction across NSW and Australia. The overarching research question relates to identifying the subsets of firms (eg. young, small, specific industries) that are the greatest net creators of jobs.
This ongoing project for the NSW Innovation and Productivity Council uses BLADE to analyse firm-level performance and characteristics to better understand productivity, growth and economic outcomes of Australian firms by cohort (eg: nationally, by state and territory, sub-state region and industry). This research will address: firm-level productivity, growth and economic contribution amongst various firm cohorts and drivers of change in productivity growth. It will look at correlation between measures, shared characteristics, the impacts of structural changes and include analysis at sub-state regional and firm levels.
Measuring the innovation system is critical to understanding the impact of state and territory government policies and programs. The State of Innovation Project will provide monitoring and assessment of Queensland innovation inputs, outputs and outcomes. The BLADE and MADIP datasets will be used to conduct analysis about business innovation activities and capabilities; and analysis about workforce, occupations and skills required to drive innovation.
To analyse the economic impact of COVID-19 on Queensland trade.
More informed social and economic development policy and program evaluation will enhance well-being for South Australians through effective government programs. This project will investigate the drivers of well-being in the state, including early child development, socio-economic status, mental, physical and social health, as well as environmental conditions. The aim is to deliver holistic, evidence-based policy advice to the governance bodies of the state to support the ability of South Australians to thrive using the analysis and insights derived from a range of investigations conducted into these drivers. More specifically, it aims to identify areas of vulnerability in the community and improve the reach and effectiveness of services aimed at improving wellbeing and reducing inequality and poverty.
More informed economic development policy and program evaluation will enhance well-being for South Australians through effective government programs.
This project will update the integration of data from the Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment (BLADE) and South Australian Business Research Environment (SABRE) (formally Return to Work SA datasets) with person-level data from the Multi Agency Data Integration Project (MADIP). The project follows successful completion of a pilot study and aims to create an evidence base to better understand overall employment and industry performance in South Australia and inform economic policy development and program evaluation.
The project is being coordinated by the SA Department of Premier and Cabinet but involves agencies across SA Government with a range of policy questions.
This is a pilot project, integrating data from BLADE with South Australian Government datasets for the financial year 2015/16. It assesses the feasibility of creating an evidence base to better understand overall employment and industry performance in South Australia, and inform economic policy development. This analysis is expected to enhance well-being for South Australians through effective government programs, and evaluate the cost benefit of and potential future utility of the integrated datasets for informing public policy.
This project tracks the contributions of pharmaceutical and medical technology industries to Victoria’s economy. The project combines the Victorian Government's database of pharmaceutical and medical technology firms with BLADE to provide better targeted and timely information on the state of the sector.
This project will use BLADE to create detailed industry profiles for future use, perform empirical analysis on changes in the economy affect businesses, and simulate the effect of possible changes.
The purpose of this project is to identify workforce constraints in specific workforce occupations, set government budget priorities, plan for future workforce needs and support the design of reform initiatives. A workforce model has been developed that estimates the future supply and demand of workers in the Victorian social services sector. The MADIP and BLADE data will be utilised to improve the accuracy of the model. In addition, the data will be used to provide additional insights, relating to workforce retention and recruitment, migration, education and career pathways within the sector.
The project uses integrated data from the MADIP and BLADE to investigate employment and unemployment impacts of COVID-19 at a more granular (microdata) level to help support Australia’s economic recovery and improve targeting of employment and training programs at the State and Territory level.
The research aims to better understand how demographic and financial drivers affect decisions in the property market in Victoria, and the resulting impact on home ownership for Victorians.
This project explored the factors that influence the survival of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). This project worked to identify determinants of business failures (such as age, size and financial ratios) and quantify the marginal effect of each factor. More importantly, how these marginal effects change as macroeconomic conditions improve/deteriorate.
Productivity is the key driver of long-run economic growth and higher living standards. This project examines the trends, patterns and underlying drivers of productivity and business dynamism across firms and industries in Western Australia. The aim of this project is to generate the evidence base to help inform and guide the development of productivity enhancing policies and programs in Western Australia..
The project aims to measure the contribution of international exports to the Gold Coast economy and further understand the characteristics of exporting businesses. This will update of the Economic impact of exports for the Gold Coast (2020) project.
The project aims to measure the contribution of international exports to the Gold Coast economy and further understand the characteristics of exporting businesses. The outcomes will inform improved decision making for the delivery of economic development initiatives that will support and develop exporting businesses across sectors.
This project will examine the effects of management and innovation activities on the performance of Australian firms over time. It will help to document key characteristics of management and innovation capabilities that have contributed to boosting firm productivity and profitability, and the pathways in which these organisational features translate into competitive advantages for Australian firms.
This project aims to investigate how the development of supply chain affects Australian firms’ financial decisions and their market performance.
The Australian economy is facing a challenging environment and increasing levels of uncertainty and change, which is likely to continue over the coming years. This project aims to investigate research questions focused on economic sectors (primarily non-ANZSIC-defined sectors) and regions of Australia. Research insights will support evidence-based policy development to support future economic growth and job creation.
The project will investigate the impact of diversity on companies, particularly at the senior leadership level. This includes (1) The level of ethnic diversity in major Australian companies (2) How diversity varies by characteristics of companies (3) How diversity is associated with financial performance (4) Potential impacts for the Australian economy.
This project will consist of a series of microeconometric essays on Australia’s labour force, focusing on the roles of cultural norms and structural change on outcomes including educational attainment, employment outcomes, and intergenerational mobility.
The project aims to understand how exchange rate changes affect a country’s supply-side dynamics at the firm level. In particular, it aims to answer how Australian firms react to exchange rate changes (domestically and in the export market) and the role of financial constraints in exacerbating or attenuating these effects.
Australia has a unique set of labour market institutions for addressing economic inequality, most notably its system of occupational minimum wages and its job protection system. Since the 1990s these institutions have experienced changes which, combined with high quality microdata, make an ideal setting for analysing their effects. This project evaluates the impact of minimum wages and unfair dismissal laws on wages, inequality and other firm labour market performance metrics (hiring, firing).
Using restrictive employer-employee matching micro-level data covering the universe of Australian firms and workers spanning the period 2000–2018, this project estimates causal effects of supply-driven increase in the share of foreign-born workers on Australian firms. This project uses applied econometric methods. The research hypothesis is that increase in the share of foreign-born workers increased the total factor productivity of local firms. Furthermore, these effects are significantly stronger for firms with low initial productivity and small size. The positive productivity effect of immigrants was also associated with faster growth of capital, larger exports, and higher wages for natives.
An income tax system with dividend imputation allows companies to pass on profit taxes to shareholders in the form of franking tax credits, which potentially eliminates double taxation of capital income. Would dividend imputation lead to more savings, investment and capital accumulation? This project aims to examine this question in a small open economy model calibrated to the Australian economy with heterogeneous firms and foreign investors.
This project will produce an analysis of Australia’s supply chain risk by identifying empirical links between shocks and business performance. Through analysing Australian supply chain risk, the project will shed light on appropriate policy interventions that build resilience at lowest cost.
Administrative and big data are increasingly available, promising higher quality information to assist policy and decision-making. However, these datasets may have flaws. This project will investigate methods to more optimally utilise sample surveys to correct these flaws, so that statistics based on the combined merits of administrative and survey datasets provide reliable conclusions.
The objective of this project is to examine the effects of different forms of HELP repayment structures on the behaviour of students, both during and after entering university.
This project seeks to better understand gender differences in tax deductions and fringe benefits received by Australian workers. As well as better understanding the circumstances in which these differences arise, this project will seek to identify the underlying causes of such differences.
This project will seek to understand the key factors that predict the long-term economic success of migrants in Australia, including visa type, employer characteristics, English language skills, education, country of origin, partner status, temporary visa history, age at migration, visa fees paid, geographic settlement pattern and other demographic factors.
The project aims to investigate the effect of fixed cost structure on firm performance, and investment, especially small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in response to crises, such as financial and public health crises. The study identifies which type of firm, in terms of size, age, and financial access, that are the most vulnerable or resilient to recent crisis.
Natural disasters such as bushfires, floods and cyclones can have a powerful impact on the economic wellbeing of individuals and firms. In recent years, the literature on disaster preparedness and the effects of natural disasters has expanded rapidly. The proposed project will expand this literature by estimating the effects of natural disasters on firm performance, and individual economic wellbeing. This will estimate both the short-term effects of natural disasters on labour market dynamics, as well as the medium-term scarring on key economic outcomes such as productivity, and firm innovation and digitisation. Where possible, research will also test whether certain population subgroups are more vulnerable following disaster.
The project uses integrated data from MADIP and BLADE to assess how many jobs were saved under the JobKeeper policy, controlling for other business support measures that were available contemporaneously. Over time, and in addition to this objective, the data will enable a comprehensive analysis of the business support measures initiated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This project will investigate the potential change in the responding pattern of Australian businesses to taxation policies and more flexible employment schemes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project aims to investigate the channels through which financial shocks affect firm-level decisions about employment both on the intensive and extensive market. The intention is that the outcomes will demonstrate the value of academic research using BLADE for producing policy-relevant research.
This project explores the effects of non-financial performance measurement on organisational outcomes by using state of the art causal inference methods. The purpose is to understand if and how non-financial performance measurement is able to assist SMEs to improve their financial and non-financial performance.
The project has three broad aims: (1) To measure the central tendency of small business performance and the properties of small business risk conditional on size, region, industry profitability and other common characteristics (2) To quantify the relative economic importance of the primary determinants of the risk of engaging in small-medium enterprise (3) To examine the relationship between performance and risk in small business.
This study aims to answer two main questions. The first is how Australian agricultural businesses are affected by climate change in the short run and in the longer run. The second question is what adaptation pathways that they are using to cope with these climatic risks. It is anticipated that the negative impact of weather extremes is heterogeneous across businesses and regions due to difference in businesses’ adaptability and regional policies.
This research aims to adopt machine learning modelling to predict the housing risk on the suburb level in Australia. This research will help the government and financial sector to control for the housing bubble, and further improve the stability of financial and economic system of Australia.
This project seeks to provide insights into several facets of Australia’s Commonwealth government grant program. These include: the effectiveness of providing government grants to small businesses; the intensity (size) of support of government grants to small businesses, and factors that influence the award of government grants to small businesses.
The project aims to analyse how the 2010/11 Queensland floods and the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires impacted business firms’ performance in disaster-hit areas, and whether and how the disaster support programs helped firms recover from these disasters.
This research aims to explore the competitive structure of Australia’s food value chain, with a specific focus on comparing fresh food and processed food pathways. Observed differences in the two pathways within Australia’s food value chain will be discussed in relation to how they could enable or impede the promotion of healthier food value chains and food environments in Australia.
This project examines whether R&D tax incentives schemes are effective at promoting greater corporate innovation activities, as measured by their patenting and trademarking output. The project will inform policy makers on the effectiveness of existing schemes aimed at incentivizing private sector innovation.
The IPA-Deakin SME Research Centre, Deakin University, is proposing to release a “Small Business White Paper 2021: Post-COVID Policy Options for Australia” in April 2021. The proposed Small Business White Paper 2021 (SBWP-2021) project will build on and update some of the content and recommendations provided in the White Papers released in 2015 and 2018.
This project aims to evaluate the temporal relationship between labourforce participation, hidden unemployment and mental health. Of particular interest, is the strength of these relationships in Australian communities with historical employment dependence on ‘dirty’ energy production. The presence of any such relationships and their relative strength (compared to other regional Australian communities) is assessed over a a 20-year period, from 2001 to 2021.
The projects will study the extent to which Australian businesses use data analytics and how the prevalence of that use has changed over time. Areas of application of data analysis will be explored alongside associations with goods, services and operational innovation. The project aims to better understand the contribution of data analytics to innovation relative to traditional facilitators of innovation, such as R&D investment, raising external finance or collaborative innovation arrangements.
The objective of monitoring the impact of the 60-day dispensing policy project is to meticulously assess changes in revenue, profit, taxes paid, changes in full-time equivalent (FTE) positions and total employment. Specifically, this analysis will carefully examine the policy’s influence on various regions across Australia.
This project will explore community and industry vulnerability to COVID-19 with a focus on which and to what extent different communities and industry sectors are affected by the ensuing economic downturn.
Labour market frictions, such as unreliable access to workers, are a concern to businesses in regional Australia, causing higher business profit variability. In deciding an optimal level of debt, a business will trade off the cost of a higher probability of bankruptcy, due to higher debts, and the benefit of interest tax shield. Through affecting the probability of bankruptcy, conceptually, labour market frictions can influence a business’s optimal capital structure.
This project aims to collect data on Australian firms’ expectations and perceived economic uncertainty, and through linking with BLADE, investigate how these expectations and perceptions drive firms’ decisions.
Using firm-level data from the BLADE, this project aims to examine and forecast financial vulnerability of Australian unlisted companies. The project team will design and develop a sectoral and regional financial vulnerability metric of unlisted firms.
Outside offers are key for obtaining promotions and salary raises. The aim of the project is to understand whether differences in job transitions between women and men contribute to the gender wage gap. In particular, we are interested in whether women’s propensity to change jobs decreases around the time of the birth of a child.
This project utilises a comprehensive dataset on natural hazards and firm information to investigate the effects of floods on Australian firms’ performance (profit margins, productivity, competitiveness, firm creation, and destruction). The project directly aims to help the government produce well-designed recovery policies for businesses under the current global environmental emergencies, particularly for sectors that are vulnerable including agriculture and insurance.
This project will examine how heat affects productivity using the firm-level sales revenue and profits from the BLADE data.
This project seeks to use BLADE panel data to conduct econometric analysis to investigate the economics of innovation and R&D at a macroeconomic level. More specifically, the project aims to investigate how participating in innovation and R&D can increase firm performance, and whether there are specific enablers and obstacles which firms face in that process. As such, this analysis seeks to extend the evidence base informing decisions around innovation policy and expenditure for Australian firms.
The study intends to investigate the local economies’ resilience to climate transition risks. The project team will consider local business development in Local Government Areas (LGAs) that are prone to the impact of climate transition risks. Researchers aim to compare the risk resilience of individual industries in LGAs with various industrial structures.
The aim of this project is to undertake a systematic assessment of the Mining Equipment and Technology Services (METS) Ignited program participants and assess the role of the METS initiatives in supporting innovation driven growth and the creation of jobs and revenue.
This project, in collaboration with the Australian Tax Office (ATO), aims to conduct research in the engagement of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) with the ATO and how to improve on these practices in order to increase the survival rate of SME’s.
There is an increasing appreciation for the role that innovation-driven entrepreneurship plays in delivering Australia’s economic growth and the centrality of start-up dynamism as a catalyst for the next stage of Australian economic performance. Importantly, though local and state governments are progressively engaging in policies and initiatives supporting the growth of regional entrepreneurial ecosystems, Australia has yet to undertake a systematic and granular assessment of these ecosystems, and the role that policy and initiatives play in shaping Australian economic performance. This project will develop Entrepreneurial Quality Index Modelling for Australia and undertake an evaluation of the Advance Queensland program to guide future investment in innovation-driven entrepreneurship in Australia.
Welfare-to-Work reforms aim to improve employment outcomes and reduce welfare dependency among income support recipients. However, they may also have had unintended consequences. The Multi-Agency Data Integration Project enables measurement of 1) the long-term impacts and 2) the unintended impacts and 3) the spatial heterogeneity in the impact of reforms.
Empirical assessments of AI and automation in government services has been limited. Robodebt, in conjunction with the Multi-Agency Data Integration Project, will allow us to measure the human impact of automated welfare policy for the first time, and provide recommendations for other government agencies interested in these technologies.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) technology diffusion will significantly impact future patterns of economic organisation. However, there is currently no comprehensive, systematised database on the use of AI and ADM in Australia or worldwide. Tracking the growth and development of these technologies, and concurrent changes in economic structure, will provide valuable information to strategy and policy analysis, and create an important new input into further research. This project will build a dataset measuring and mapping spatial and time series trends in technology diffusion, skill automation, labour market supply and demand, and economic structural change.
The primary aim of this research project is to calculate aggregate indicators of innovation activity across Victoria, grouped by geographic region and industries. This will enhance our understanding of innovation across regional Victoria and enable policy action to strengthen innovation and economic growth.
This project seeks to characterise the socioeconomic landscape relevant to Australia's work toward our updated National Science and Research Priorities. It will inform research and policymaking in these priority areas, and assess ongoing progress and developments.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to Australia provides an opportunity to boost the productivity of local firms through knowledge diffusion. This project aims to estimate the impact of FDI spillovers on the exports performance of Australia’s firms. Capturing these productivity benefits allows us to better understand the benefit of incoming FDI and shed light on whether these spillovers enable local firms to become export ready.
Innovative Manufacturing CRC (IMCRC) is collaborating with Swinburne University to understand the economic impact of futuremap, a suite of consulting and mentoring programs aimed at expanding the potential and capacity of Australian micro businesses and SMEs. The evaluation will provide a deeper evidence base that demonstrates how these activities enable SMEs to grow their sales and export capacity and create new jobs.
Economic benefits of attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to Australia stem from the fact that foreign owned firms exhibit productivity advantages compared to domestic firms as a consequence of their proprietary technology and know-how and access to markets. These spillovers are typically contingent on geographic and industrial proximity. Capturing the productivity benefits is crucial to estimating the overall benefit of FDI. In the absence of these, FDI and domestic investment would be mere substitutes.
Recognising that technological change is the cornerstone of long-run economic growth, governments spend considerable resources on tax-based subsidies for research and development (R&D). However, the amount of additional R&D induced by each dollar of tax revenue forgone remains contested. Existing evidence suggests business investment in R&D is responsive to tax subsidies, but estimated impacts vary. This project models the additionality induced by the R&D Tax Incentive Program and assesses the spillover to the larger economy.
The plant breeder’s rights (PBR) system is intended to encourage development of new cultivars (and encourages the release of foreign bred cultivars). The economic impact of the PBR system comprises the value captured by PBR holders and the value that their new cultivars generate in downstream sectors. This research will provide a description of the sector and estimate the economic impact of new cultivars.
This project analyses whether businesses’ investments in intangible assets leads to improved business performance and growth. We expect that intangible investments vis-à-vis tangible investment will perform differently as they: can be non-rivalrous (i.e. scalable such as brands, software); can deliver market power (e.g. intellectual property); are heterogeneous (e.g. know-how); but are more uncertain and non-mortgageable.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), is collaborating with Swinburne University to better understand the importance of product innovation to achieving an efficient, internationally competitive food industry and how this further supports Australian and New Zealand exports.
This project will analyse the economic effect of Design Rights on design-intensive firms. Specifically:
The project aims to evaluate the effect of the ARC Linkage program on the performance of partnering businesses and to estimate the effect the program has on related businesses (competitors, suppliers and customers).
Building on previous project outputs:
In economic terms, ‘spillovers’ (also known as externalities) occur where the effects of an economic activity accrue to both those undertaking the activity, as well as to others. This project aims to estimate the value of R&D spillovers for Australian firms, focussing on sectoral differences, differences in firm size and the overall level of R&D spillovers occurring in the Australian economy.
Building on previous project outputs:
This project aims to understand the dynamics and causes of adversity for Australia-based diasporas' labour market, internal migration, and life outcomes. Diasporas consist of migrants and their descendants. It examines the mechanisms underlying adversity: adverse micro-level events and employment disadvantages connected with settlement locations, social security and Medicare access variation, and parental adversity on children's entrepreneurship.
The project aims to conduct farm business benchmarking and estimate the impacts of climate variability on farm financial performance in the southern Australian region and marginal farmland in South Australia. We will benchmark by small, medium and large-scale farms, with output allowing for the financial implications of the crop rotation field trials to be evaluated.
The project aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of the current data framework in relation to the Australian seafood workforce, make recommendations for improving it, and develop a baseline workforce dataset. The focus will be on the potential to use existing sources of data (particularly administrative data collected by government institutions) and how and when those need to be effectively complemented with additional data.
Austrade and Institute for International Trade (IIT) are partnering to produce quantitative statistics demonstrating the economic activity of foreign owned businesses in Australia. The data will be used to provide credible evidence-based policy advocacy to demonstrate the economic value foreign direct investment adds to Australia.
The aim of the project is to understand and quantify the economic and social impacts of drought in rural Australia. Rigorous assessments of the impacts is lacking in Australia, yet they hold the key to preparing farmers and their rural communities effectively and efficiently for an increasingly hotter, drier climate.
Trade policy reforms affect trade costs. This project will study how firms’ performance, as well as their participation in international markets and in value chains, change because of changes in trade policy and associated changes in trade costs. By studying how firms respond to policy changes and by exploring mechanisms that affect the relationship between the change in trade costs and firm performance, the project will inform policy-makers and the Australian community of the consequences of trade policy for businesses.
Over the last few decades, enterprises are increasingly transitioning and adapting to technological advancements and the digitally disruptive environment, which has been accelerated by COVID-19. The purpose of this project is to examine how and under what circumstances digital change facilitates innovation and firm performance in organisations.
This project is part of a wider project towards the development of a Digital Vineyard Guidance System that will help growers optimise production processes, manage risks and drive continual improvements in vineyard profitability and sustainability. The guidance system represents a technology ‘platform’ that can provide real-time information on current and projected future status across a vineyard—at high spatial and temporal resolutions and across a broader variety of variables of interest—as well and will provide the basis for optimising farm management decisions.
This project investigates how the journalism occupation has changed in the past decade. The news industry is becoming more precarious with an increase in the number of journalists taking freelance jobs because it is harder to land permanent jobs, reflecting a rapidly changing nature of the profession.
This project aims to advance knowledge of Australia's creative economy through consolidating existing and developing new methods to address increasingly urgent questions about the value of this significant but poorly understood sector. It is significant because it aims to demonstrate methods for capturing a range of creative activity currently at the margins of traditional measurement. Expected outcomes, which will benefit both academic debate and industry partners, include enhanced understanding of pandemic impacts, secondary and other employment, the efficacy of volunteering and pre-market creative labour signalling, and the contribution to innovation of creatives working outside the creative industries.
This project aims to understand the complex interactions between macroeconomic conditions, higher education, student loans, individual labour market outcomes and firm performance, using a combination of causal analysis and structural dynamic models. Topics include: (i) Effects of student loans on individual outcomes and firm-level productivity, (ii) Effect of commodity prices on educational outcomes and long run productivity (“human capital dutch disease”), (iii) Measuring macroeconomic returns to higher and vocational education.
The goal of this project is to understand how international trade shocks (and potentially other shocks, like climate changes) affect regional markets in Australia over different time horizons through the investment decisions of firms and workers. It combines new theoretical and empirical frameworks to uncover the mechanisms that determine the physical and human capital adjustment of firms and workers in different regions following changes in the cost of imported goods and demand for exported goods.
Firm adoption of industrial robots may have several effects on workers: (a) displacement, (b) reinstatement, (c) augmentation and (d) real income growth. This project will analyse the effects of robot adoption on: (i) firms and their employment outcomes, (ii) labour market dynamics of displaced workers, and (iii) labour market outcomes in local labour markets hosting robot-adopter firms.
This project builds and estimates a structural economic model of the Australian economy to quantify the short- and long-run productivity, investment, and employment implications of changes in product and labour market concentration (monopoly and monopsony power). An important feature of this model is that it is estimated on high-quality ABS microdata and that these estimates can be explicitly aggregated so that the model can be used to study important macroeconomic policy scenarios.
About 30% of Australia’s population is overseas-born (ABS, 2021). Migrants contribute significantly to the Australian economy, nonetheless, information about them, especially those in business, is sparse. This project aims to address this knowledge gap by studying the interrelationships among personality characteristics, business strategies and outcomes for immigrant entrepreneurs (IE) in Australia, and their contribution to regional economic resilience.
This research dissertation investigates the dynamic relationships among the key drivers of innovation, innovation persistence and business performance within food industry businesses in Australia. Specifically, this dissertation provides evidence on: (1) the factors driving the food businesses to innovate in any of the four innovation dimensions—goods and services, organisational and managerial processes, operational processes and marketing methods; (2) the degree and dynamics of innovation persistence; and (3) their impacts on four business performance measures—gross output, gross value-added, labour productivity and productivity dispersion.
This project aims to understand whether there exists a causal relationship between technology adaption and development of firm resilience in the context of the most recent recessionary economic events – the COVID-19 pandemic, for Australian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
Teachers are the most important input for the educational outcomes of children. Better pay is necessary but focusing only on it overlooks the fact that teachers are also intrinsically motivated. Merely raising wages risks triggering unintended negative consequences due to poor understanding. This project closes this knowledge, contributing fundamental insights for policy design.
The project will explore the relationship between firm performance and employment decisions.
This project aims at obtaining a deep understanding of the investment decisions of businesses and individuals in the presence of tax incentives and at exploring the indirect implications tax policies can have on innovation and growth in Australia.
The purpose of this research is to understand the changes in profitability of private medical practices, professional versus service entities, in Australia over time. Existing research does not separate the profitability of professional entities that provide the medical services to the public, from the profitability of the entities who provide the facilities and administrative services to these professionals, the aim in this project is to provide this more nuanced analysis.
The project aims to investigate the economic costs bearded by immigrants due to language barriers in various contexts, such as healthcare, education, and the labour market. The analysis will include the cost to their performance in the labour market, entrepreneurship, health and education. The project outcomes will provide a framework for a welfare analysis of immigrants facing language barriers and their economic outcomes to provide insights that can inform policy and practice.
The project aims to identify services available to address needs of children in rural and remote areas. These (health and other) services are central for children’s development and the capability of their parents to live productively. Comparisons between different regional and urban areas will identify determinants of unmet needs.
Business resources and capability to create new processes, services, and products are important for business resilience in an uncertain environment. To better understand business resilience performance, this project aims to investigate (1) relationship between business’s resource-driven capacity and capability-driven resilience, and the dynamic and iterative process between them, (2) moderation effect of business environments (e.g., location, source of supplier, competition), and (3) moderation effect of external supports (e.g., collaborative arrangement, government fundings). It also aims to compare business performance of tourism versus other industries.
In this project, BLADE data is used to estimate parameters in a multi-sectoral and multi-regional economic model of Australia. In particular, research will exploit recently added location data (first made available in 2020). This will allow the University of Queensland to refine its model to the level of four-digit ANZSIC codes and SA1 regions: an unprecedented level of granularity. The model will be used to inform Queensland government policy on issues such as 2050 net-zero emissions targets.
This research project aims to investigate the distribution of employment in small firms across industries and whether or not having a large fraction of small businesses in an industry can predict the degree of job creation or destruction within that industry.
In Australia and in the rest of the world, a large number of start-up businesses fail early and those that survive grow at very different speeds. These differences in business exit and growth can be attributed to either ex-ante heterogeneity (e.g., differences in the qualities of business ideas) or ex-post factors (e.g., shocks to demand or productivity). Using microdata in BLADE, this project aims to measure the importance of ex-ante and ex-post factors in explaining firm dynamics in Australia by extending the methodology in Pugsley et al. (2020). These findings will allow us to: (1) shed light on the sources of decline in Australia's business dynamism over the last two decades, and (2) inform ongoing debates on business tax reform.
References:
Pugsley, B. W., P. Sedláček, and V. Sterk (2020). The Nature of Firm Growth. Working paper.
This project seeks to reduce state government revenue risks and improve resource management through accurate predictions of land values. The first phase of the project involves the analysis of the MADIP and BLADE data.
The project aims to analyse housing price movements at SA2 spatial scale across Australia, using a time series econometric approach that controls for employment patterns and the distribution of employment across industry groups (economic sectors). The time scale is 2000 through 2022.
This project examines how firm-level environmental practices impact energy performance and renwable energy consumption. Existing studies solely focus on publicly-listed companies' data to postulate the effect of environmental policies on energy usage and renewable energy consumption, this project investigates unlisted companies' environmental performance and their energy practices.
The objective of this project is to create whole-farm budgets for the main types of farming systems in NSW and to statistically evaluate changes in productivity, management strategies and cost structures over time and climate variation for representative farms, described in terms of the enterprises they run (rotations, resources land, labour, machinery, etc).
This project examines firms in deindustrialising troubled regions and why we observe differences in their growth and survival between regions. Every regional economy in Australia is comprised of a mixture of firms serving different markets and with different relationships to one another. The interactions between different types of firms are complex and interdependent, so this research will gain a new understanding of the nature of these interactions and the implications for regional growth trajectories.
The aim of this research is to explore the trend of business growth in terms of revenue, exports, jobs, profits, etc. by sector (ANZSIC codes), firm size (number of employees) and location (state, metro, regional, etc) in Australia.
Older adults often have multiple co-existing medical conditions and take multiple high-risk medications. This places them at an increased risk for inappropriate prescribing and adverse drug events. Prescribing disparities may also exist for certain patient subgroups. This study will investigate the patterns, risk factors and outcomes of high-risk medication use in older adults so that interventions can be targeted to those patient groups most at risk in the community.
Our project aims to analyse lending, loan performance and barriers to lending (in short lending standards) for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We aim to identify key factors that may lead to incidents of insolvencies and resolution periods of varying lengths (which in turn may be related to lender losses) and discuss methods and strategies to boost SME funding levels within a controlled framework.
This project aims to investigate and map the urban organic waste volumes within a specified area within Sydney to examine the potential for use as a feed stock for anaerobic digestion energy generation. It will concentrate on an area where Sydney Water currently have anaerobic digestion wastewater treatment plant capacity to showcase the potential for water utility anaerobic digestor energy generation and the waste and wastewater industries working together to achieve multiple sustainability benefits.
This proposal builds on the Management Capability Survey that UTS developed partnering with DIIS and two separate DIPA analysis projects funded by DIIS namely,
As an extension of these DIPA analysis projects, UTS now wishes to extend this research agenda in new directions not covered by these earlier projects but still related and also leveraging this knowledge using the management capability scores in conjunction with ABS datasets in various forms to improve the public’s understanding of the drivers of business performance on the Australian economy.
Outputs from this research:
This project aims to improve understanding of the drivers of business performance in the Australian economy by investigating links between management capability and firm performance variables and characteristics, such as labour productivity, turnover growth, firm size evolution and survival. It will provide insight into the relationship between management capability and firm performance, inform the role of government in improving Australia’s management capability and demonstrates the utility of BLADE management capability data.
Innovation is a key driver of productivity and economic growth. Innovation in firms can be categorised as technological innovation including product and process and non-technological innovation such as organisational and marketing. Via quantitative analysis of secondary data (i.e. ABS Business Characteristics Surveys and European Community Innovation Surveys data), this research aims to address the following innovation research gaps: limited research on non-technological innovation, lack of innovation studies on Australian firms especially from a longitudinal perspective, and lack of comparisons between different economies.
This project uses integrated data from the MADIP and BLADE to investigate how microeconomic shocks affect the macroeconomy. The analysis measures the extent to which shocks to important sectors propagate and amplify via other sectors of the Australian economy that are dependent on one another. Quantifying the aggregate impact of sectoral interdependence is important for both microeconomic and macroeconomic policy.
The study examines the main drivers and impacts of innovation among micro, small and medium enterprises across Australian economic sectors over a ten year period, using econometric models. Its findings will enhance our understanding of the characteristics of innovators, the role of R&D and non-R&D activities, and offer economic explanations on why and how firms in different sectors innovate over time and what contribute to their success. The study will provide important policy implications to improve Australia’s innovation performance.
The research will have both a long-term and short-term focus: 1. Micro dimensions to the productivity and wage slowdown: how did within-firm productivity (e.g. technology), labour and capital reallocation and net entry shape pre-pandemic trends and what are the opportunities for future growth? And 2. Which firms and workers are most sensitive to economic shocks? What is the distributional impact of large-scale events (e.g. COVID-19 downturn) on workers and businesses? How does this vary over different time horizons and across different qualities of matching between workers and businesses?
The project is intended to help understand the types of businesses who use fuel as an input and the extent to which fuel tax credits impact their profitability.