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Bruce Bradbury

@brucebradbury.bsky.social
651 followers 578 following 256 posts

An Australian economist writing on social and economic policy and outcomes. www.unsw.edu.au/staff/bruce-bradbury

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Reposted by Bruce Bradbury
Maximilian Longmuir @smaexie.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
@brucebradbury.bsky.social, they called us "...“very clever” academics". I don't know if I like the quotation marks, but I have been called worse before. 😉 www.heraldsun.com.au/business/its...
heraldsun.com.au
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The Review of Economic Studies (REStud) @reveconstudies.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
250,000+ hand-coded student photos reveal how religious veiling in Indonesia evolved alongside changing economic opportunities for women and social norms. New paper by Shofia www.restud.com/why-veil-rel... #REStud #EconSky
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
"AI writing is good for documents that will never be read carefully. Or read at all. AI writing is good at bureaucratic argumentation. I mean this as a compliment, in a genuine sense. ...Think here of reports that are never truly read in the sense of being thought through carefully."
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"The methodological constraints in economics have provided stronger guardrails against ideologically motivated reasoning... [In sociology] a study [is more likely to be] judged according to whether it reaches the desired conclusion."
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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Thanks both! Looks like useful work @p-hunermund.com. If I understand your point right, we do discuss it briefly as 'selection into identification' and characterize it as a collider problem.
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Interesting how the projected fall is now much larger than modellers were saying when the policy was first announced. I suspect they were just looking at the economic fundamentals and not the psychology of price growth expectations in this market.
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Danielle Navarro @djnavarro.net · 06/08/2026
The title is a little pointed, but I am very serious here. Academics, medical researchers, and other organisations should not collect data on birth sex. It is rarely relevant, and it almost always leads to privacy violations for transgender people. Please share. I would like people to read this one.
blog.djnavarro.net
Separating sex and gender is statistical malpractice – Notes from a data witch
Statisticians and academics in Australia should ignore the terrible advice of most LGBTIQA+ organisations and read this post instead. The 2020 ABS standard is almost never the correct way to collect d...
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
"bureaucrats versus complainants; offensive versus defensive cybersecurity; these are all examples of technology driven arms races. Once an arms race has begun, strategic uncertainty means that it may be difficult to prevent escalation, even if it ends up making everyone worse off."
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Social Policy Blog @socialpolicyblog.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
New on the Social Policy Blog: “Carefully Capacitating? Rethinking Activation for Lone Mothers in Ireland" by Joe Whelan and Fiona Dukelow. socialpolicyblog.co.uk/2026/07/24/carefully-capacitating-rethinking-activation-for-lone-mothers-in-ireland/
socialpolicyblog.co.uk
Rethinking Activation for Lone Mothers in Ireland
New research examines how activation policies affect lone mothers in Ireland, revealing tensions between support and constraint in everyday life.
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Google is turning the screws. The only way I can now see my past searches in maps (on Pixel 8 pro) is if I turn on "Personalised Recommendations in Search Services". That is, saving all my activity across different Google sites and services, and allowing Google to use this to target ads to me.
Google maps 'get directions' screenshot. Shows that History (past searches) is not saving.
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
"The same wage suppression that drives China’s success in trade across all factor intensities is also a steady transfer of income from Chinese households to Chinese companies and the Chinese state."
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EconReporter @econreporter.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
🚨🚨🚨🚨 This is my latest story—a piece I have worked on and off for more than SIX MONTHS!!! Let me take a deep breath and explain to you why I am obsessed with this one (1/N) (1/5)
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Early bird registration for the Australian Social Policy Conference closes soon (30 June). See you there. @aspaofficial.bsky.social
Australian Social Policy Conference, www.aspc2026.com
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Well deserved!
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
"I think [stock] market valuations are crazy, and don’t treat them as reflecting reality... On this view, electricity use for LLMs will remain modest." @johnquiggin.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/johnquig...
open.substack.com
AI electricity use: a lot or a little
TL;DR. The hyperscalers expect massive growth, but the electricity needed to meet current demand could be supplied.by a handful of power stations
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
"In fact, driving lessons would probably do more to improve many people’s job prospects than large parts of the employment services system. At least a driver’s licence is something employers actually ask for."
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Brilliant! (In all senses).
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Philipp Heimberger @heimbergecon.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
This paper finds that economists whose job market papers report (marginally) statistically significant results are more likely to secure academic jobs. Hiring committees prefer statistical significance; this creates incentives for researchers to p-hack.
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Laura Bringmann 🟥 @bringmannlaura.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Have you seen MATILDA (matilda.fss.uu.nl)? Which stands for Measurement, Analysis & Theory for Intensive Longitudinal Data. MATILDA is a website with educational articles that help researchers align theory, measurement, and analysis when studying processes using intensive longitudinal data.
matilda.fss.uu.nl
MATILDA
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Paul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · 15/06/2026
🫠
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Ben Zipperer @benzipperer.org · 11/06/2026
Congress hasn't raised the federal minimum wage since 2009, but 30 states have raised their own. New work from @arindube.bsky.social finds these state increases raised pay in restaurants and other low-wage sectors, with no detectable effect on jobs
Changes in restaurant pay and employment due to state minimum wage increases after 2013, estimated by Arindrajit Dube in https://arindube.substack.com/p/a-minimum-wage-natural-experiment
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
"Some economists and tax experts have urged a broader abolition of stamp duty, describing it as inefficient and a brake on mobility." I would say, just about every economist who has looked at this. Replacing with a land tax ticks all the boxes (except how to change). www.afr.com/property/res...
afr.com
ACT abolishes stamp duty for first home buyers
It’s the latest move by the territory government in its 20-year tax reform transition program to phase out stamp duty in favour of higher rates and land taxes.
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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Super informative and valuable post from Arin Dube on what we can learn about the employment effects of minimum wages from state minimum hikes over the past dozen years. arindube.substack.com/p/a-minimum-...
arindube.substack.com
A Minimum Wage Natural Experiment Has Been Running for Over a Decade
When 30 States Raised Minimum Wages, What Happened to Pay and Jobs?
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Preston Mui @prestonmui.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
www.nber.org/papers/w35277 "First, just-obese patients receive less diagnostic effort than almost-obese patients. Second, a physician-validated LLM identifies at the cutoff a rise in stigmatizing language in clinical notes"
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Amanda Shendruk @not-ship.com · 04/06/2026
Everything feels the same. And AI won't help. Over and over, researchers put AI image generators in a feedback loop. All starting with a different prompt. What did they do? They converged on the same 12 generic image themes. They called it "visual elevator music." www.not-ship.com/nothing-new/
not-ship.com
Nothing new here: Another sequel, another lighthouse
Movies, music, everything feels the same. It's not your imagination.
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David Sligar @davidsligar.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
the Australian policy establishment who have been smoking tax evangelists for decades - no tax rate was ever high enough - have to hang their heads in shame
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
"Frontier technologies often generate... a systematic tilt toward technologies with large private gains in the mean and underpriced social costs in the tail." www.andrewleigh.com/speech_the_e...
andrewleigh.com
Speech: The Economics of Human Extinction - 21 May 2026
Andrew Leigh is the Federal Labor Member for Fenner.
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Arin Dube @arindube.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Swedish wage inequality is very low. And has stayed low.
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
"of the 1.4 million recipients of CRA in December 2025, more than 240,000 recipients (17.3%) were paying more than half their income in rent" @peterwhiteford.bsky.social www.austaxpolicy.com/budget-forum...
austaxpolicy.com
Budget Forum 2026: To reduce housing stress, rent assistance needs to be increased - Austaxpolicy: The Tax and Transfer Policy Blog
Rental stress is rising for low-income Australians. Increasing Commonwealth Rent Assistance could help ease housing pressures and improve affordability.
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Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Me reading the abstract: Well, 'coding error' is a bit strong, isn't it, they just disagreed on some variable coding. Me getting to p. 3: Oh, OOOHHH, OH NO!!!!
B&B grouped the 71 teams into 13 disciplinary categories without providing a theoretical justification for such fine-grained coding. This choice has significant consequences: four of these categories contain only a single team. Consequently, the dummies for these categories identify individual teams, functioning equivalently to team fixed effects. Since ideology is measured at the team level and does not vary within teams, these four teams—and their 80 reported AMEs—are effectively excluded and do not contribute to the estimation of the ideology effect.
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CUNY Graduate Center @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Qin Gao argues that the U.S. and China may have more in common than many assume, especially when it comes to poverty and social welfare policy. @stone-lis.bsky.social 🎥 Watch this clip from The Great Global Transformation and the full discussion on YouTube. youtu.be/xr1zscNHeYI?...
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
"In the 1985 model the gains could be averaged over five years to stop investors and start-ups being lifted into the top rate for that year... If the Albanese Government wants to negotiate, then perhaps they should consider returning to this element of the 1985 model.
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Last one down. RIP Sonny Rollins.
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David Sligar @davidsligar.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Difficult to overstate how misleading this is. Any % tax on capital gains (sale price less purchase price) will by mathematical construction result in differing rates relative to sale price. Including the existing regime! That’s not a “profound oversight”, that’s what CGT *is*.
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Ashleeee 🌊🪭 @reactiveashley.cat · 24/05/2026
Oh wow Microsoft tries to bury a BitLocker bypass and root shell vulnerability, and it looks very much like an intentional backdoor.
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Morgan Harrington @mhharrington.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
The housing affordability crisis isn't caused by a lack of houses, but a surplus of investors. thepoint.com.au/factchecks/2...
thepoint.com.au
Factcheck: Are population growth and a lack of supply driving the housing crisis? (no)
The Senate Select Committee on the Operation of the Capital Gains Tax Discount tabled its report on Tuesday. In short, it found that Australia’s current tax system favours investors and fuels intergen...
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
"Australia’s income support system has become less suitable for a dynamic economy. Policy has drifted toward restricting retrenchment, rather than supporting workers through unemployment benefits, which have fallen relative to wages for three decades." e61.in/what-ai-job-...
e61.in
What AI job loss predictions get wrong about technological change – e61 INSTITUTE
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Countries like Australia have also been able to take advantage of US IT productivity growth. Do we face the same political challenges? "The risk of being cut off from strategically important technologies, once minimal, is now very real" paulkrugman.substack.com/p/challengin...
paulkrugman.substack.com
Challenging the Narrative of European Decline: Revised, Free Repost
I do not think that word “productivity” means what people think it means
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
As a coauthor on a forthcoming working paper with some cross-country regressions, I hope I can live up to the admonition that "the conclusions in the manuscript [must be] appropriately calibrated to the [likely weak] strength of the evidence"!
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Ben Baumberg Geiger @benbgeiger.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
***How to get disability statistics you can trust*** New post on Inequalities: My last post described the 'disability statistics disaster' - now I explain how to fix it inequalities.substack.com/p/disability...
inequalities.substack.com
How to get disability statistics you can trust
My last post described the 'disability statistics disaster' - now I explain how to fix it
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Summary: Don't do it.
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Greg Jericho @grogsgamut.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Bit worrying that a state premier does not understand how income tax works.
Mr Minns said the current top marginal tax rate of 47 per cent – including the two per cent Medicare Levy – meant Australians were working half the week for the government.

“You’re working Monday, Tuesday and half of Wednesday for yourself, then Wednesday Thursday and Friday for the government,” Mr Minns said.

The top marginal tax rate applies to those earning incomes over $190,001 across Australia’s states and territories.
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Rainbow Lorikeet eating Bangalow Palm seeds
Rainbow Lorikeet, Sydney, May 2026
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
The 30% minimum tax on (after-inflation) capital gains will close a significant tax loop-hole in Australia
Figure: Marginal tax rates tend to be lower in years with capital gains. Source: Budget Paper No. 1.
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Martin Jones @martincjones.com · 12/05/2026
Good write-up of a very interesting IMF paper: "Confounding bankers' assumptions, the RBA's post-COVID rate hikes caused Australians to work more, not less" www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05...
abc.net.au
The RBA's post-COVID rate hikes caused Australians to work more
The International Monetary Fund found that thousands of Australians took on a second or third job when the RBA hiked rates rapidly in 2022 and 2023. It expected the opposite.
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Electricity and rent increases driving high living cost increases for pensioners and beneficiaries in Australia (5.0%pa vs CPI of 4.6%). www.abs.gov.au/statistics/e...
Living cost indexes by household type. Annual increase 5.0% for pension and beneficiary households.
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Scary...
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
"The [Australian] NDIS currently sits between two models: not a functioning market, and not an actively managed insurance scheme. As a consequence, it has the disciplines of neither" e61.in/more-quasi-t...
e61.in
More quasi than market: Why the NDIS’s cost problem runs deeper than eligibility – e61 INSTITUTE
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
“Younger Australians are unlikely to be worse off than their parents over a lifetime – they are simply earning later, with HELP debts, super contributions, and housing costs front-loading pressure... [the] story is... about inequality _within_ the next generation.” e61.in/rethinking-i...
e61.in
Rethinking intergenerational equity in Australia – e61 INSTITUTE
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Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
"While both parents matter, the correlation between mothers’ childhood socio-emotional skills and their children’s skills is significantly stronger and more consistent than the father-child connection."
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