Purpose / Context - New detached houses have been getting larger in New Zealand for several decades. Large houses require more materials to build, and have greater ongoing energy costs than smaller houses built to the same standard. The purpose of this work was to examine whether larger houses are...

Purpose / Context – The purpose of our work is to investigate: a) the sensor responses of the two different low-cost PM sensors to concrete dust and indoor environment and activities; b) the evalua-tion of the measuring performance of two low-cost PM sensors and their potential application in in-...

Purpose / Context – To quantify the relationship between indoor temperature and blood pressure in Japanese nursing home residents. Methodology / Approach – A field study of 27 nursing homes in Japan was conducted. We meas-ured the indoor temperature of nursing homes and collected data on resident’s...

Purpose / Context - The purposes of this study are to clarify the trend of unit energy consumption (UEC) and its related CO2 emissions in urban residential buildings, and to develop models to predict the UEC in the future. Methodology / Approach - Statistical method is adopted to clarify the UEC...

Purpose / Context - The characterisation of the residential building stock existing in Australia in terms of attributes relevant to energy performance is increasingly an important task for planning and policy purposes. There is a lack of information and documentation on the energy performance...

Purpose / Context - Rural heating design temperature is closely related to building thermal perfor-mance design, indoor plain layout and energy consumption. Methodology / Approach - Focus on residential behavior pattern, this paper studied the rural heat-ing design temperature based on the site...

Purpose - It is rather easy to control thermal air conditions in narrow-air tight living spaces. However, it is not so easy to keep good air quality in the spaces. Indoor air condition is especially important to keep the health condition of the people. We researched the environmental condition of...

We develop a theoretical and empirical framework to model the international connections between fi nancial institutions and sovereign debt markets. By allowing for both good and poor returns on the investments of fi nancial institutions in real economy fi rms and the potential for haircuts in sovereign debt markets we show how shock transmission and the default probabilities of these entities are affected through a network of these institutions.

Australia’s ‘two strikes’ rule empowers shareholders to vote on a board spill if the compensation report of a public company receives 25% or more dissenting votes for two consecutive years.

Since 2012 CIFR has funded more than 50 research projects, involving over 100 researchers, with combined cash and in-kind funding from CIFR and its consortium members of around $19 million. Numerous projects relate to topics of interest to the FSI. This submission contains research produced by CIFR’s Research Director and a Research Fellow on two of the Inquiry’s priority topics – superannuation, technology and financial data architecture. The submission also draws on other CIFR-funded initiatives...

The Centre for International Finance and Regulation (CIFR) was delighted to host the Financial System Inquiry (FSI) Workshop at Sydney’s Westin Hotel on 7 May 2014. The Workshop was developed in collaboration with the FSI Secretariat and brought together senior representatives of the FSI Panel and Secretariat, government, regulators, academia and industry to hear presentations from 45 industry and academic experts, and discuss key issues impacting the Australian financial industry. This report brings together a...

This paper examines the anatomy of the Australian twin peaks model from a legal and regulatory perspective. It also reflects on the work of the Financial System Inquiry (FSI) of 2014, which reviewed Australia’s financial system and examined issues that are relevant to the operation of the twin peaks model.

The net effects of algorithmic and high-frequency traders mask considerable heterogeneity in how they impact institutional transaction costs. Using regulatory data, we analyze the heterogeneity across individual trading accounts. We develop a method to identify subsets of traders causally related to higher institutional transaction costs and estimate that they add ten basis points to the cost of executing large institutional orders.

The inherent fragility of banks is as old as the fractional reserve system, and the debt of banks is held by uninformed and dispersed agents who have limited ability to monitor the banks’ activities. All this occurs within the context of a rapidly evolving and highly complex system that at times defies comprehensive understanding.

International financial centres (IFCs) are icons of modern capitalism. Accordingly, competition among cities to achieve IFC status occurs across the world, in both advanced and emerging economies. However, the process by which cities achieve IFC status remains unclear. This raises interesting questions, such as why is London, and not Paris, the financial capital of Europe? Or what is the likelihood of Shanghai becoming a global financial centre?

Examines the management of capacity from the perspective of institutional asset owners, and argues that optimal scale need not exist for asset owners with the flexibility to adjust where and how they invest as they grow, even though it may exist for specific assets or strategies.

This report examines the evaluation of capacity in an investment management context, outlining the key issues and various methods of analysis.

The contribution of active fund managers to after-tax performance is an issue that is highly relevant to the bottom line of potential investors, and one that cannot be directly measured from the sources of data used in much of the prior literature.

We provide empirical evidence on the degree of systemic risk in Australia before, during and after the Global Financial Crisis. We calculate a daily index of systemic risk from 2004 to 2013 in order to understand how real economy firms influence the outcomes for the rest of the economy.

Superannuation fees have come under increased public scrutiny in recent years amid a belief that they are set too high. In particular, the fees charged to investors for fund products were a focal point of the 2014 Financial System Inquiry. Superannuation fund fees are potentially a major contributing factor in any erosion of superannuation savings over the working lives of individuals. Accordingly, the question as to whether superannuation investors are adequately rewarded for incurring higher...

Funds typically report returns before-tax. However, for the majority of domestic investors, which includes every Australian with a superannuation account, it should be the after-tax returns that they are concerned about. This study models the returns and tax effects of actively managed Australian equity funds based on their reported monthly holdings, and compares these to similarly modelled passive benchmarks. The study demonstrates the potential for tax to have a substantial detrimental impact on net investment...

This paper presents an examination of economic and financial linkages for a selection of economies in the Asia-Pacific region for the period 2001 to 2012. The countries examined are the ASEAN5 group of nations - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand; the three large northeast Asian economies of China, Japan and South Korea; and Australia and New Zealand.

Under Australia’s foreign investment review framework all foreign governments and their related entities should notify the federal government and gain approval before making a direct investment in Australia regardless of the value of that investment. Yet can Australia’s current policy settings be maintained in their current form given developments in global capital markets, in particular the rise of state capitalism. This paper sets out the Australian foreign investment legal and policy framework. It focuses closely...

A fundamental consideration in the design of incentive schemes is the possibility of gaming. This entails the exploitation of a scheme by an agent for their own self-interest, to the detriment of the incentive designer.

This paper develops a dynamic CGE model with financial sector detail. We develop the financial CGE model by building on a multi-sectoral dynamic model of the real side of the Australian economy, VU-Nat (Victoria University National) and developing further a theory of the financial side of the economy described in Dixon et al. (2014).