Essays in Public Economics and Political Economy: Utilising Empirical Methods for Public Policy

Abstract

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to this thesis. It is primarily an examination of how empirical methods in economics can be used for political and public economic analysis. The ultimate goal of this thesis is to propose methods from empirical economics that could be useful for the analysis and practice of public policy. Chapter 2 uses a novel Australian dataset to show the effect of cross-sectional weather shocks on voting behaviour in the 2016 Australian federal Senate election. I spatially link every ballot cast at the polling place level to climate data and Census demographic data. I find evidence that cold temperature shocks affect voting at the intensive margin, causing people ..