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Ben Phillips

Ben Phillips

Associate Professor, Centre for Social Research and Methods, Director, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Research School of Economics, Australian National University
Ben is an Associate Professor at the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods and the Director of the Research School of Economics' Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Ben leads the microsimulation modelling team at the Centre for Social Research and Methods (CSRM) which produces the PolicyMod model of the Australian Tax and Transfer system. The team recently modelled the 2018-19 Federal Budget and has undertaken a number of modelling projects modelling the Australian childcare system.

Prior to this Ben was Principal Research Fellow at NATSEM where he led STINMOD, NATSEM's static microsimulation model of Australia's income tax and transfer system. Ben's main interest is the application of social and economic models to important social and economic policy matters such as income inequality, social exclusion, housing affordability and demographic change, taxation and social security and policy development.

Ben has published several reports with AMP in the areas of the cost of living, housing affordability, childcare and household debt.

Ben has a wide range of experience in both the public and private sector over the past 20 years in the field of economics and statistics. Prior to working with NATSEM and the ANU, Ben was a senior economist with the Housing Industry Association where he was responsible for housing and economic forecasting within the Economics Group. Ben also played an integral role in developing housing policy and analysis for housing affordability. He presented widely to conferences, industry groups and had a large media presence.

Ben has also worked as a methodologist with the Australia Bureau of Statistics for five years and an economic forecaster with the Bureau of Tourism Research.

Yes, childcare is costly, but nowhere near as costly as recent reports suggest – here's why

Oct 31, 2023 09:15 am UTC| Life

Childcare in Australia is generally regarded as expensive. And its true that prices charged by some centres, particularly long daycare centres, can be pretty steep, climbing to as much as A$200 per day or more in...

Higher prices have hit most people but homeowners have felt it harder than renters

Aug 24, 2023 07:16 am UTC| Economy

Cost of living pressures are acute for some, but in different ways for different types of household. The Australian Bureau of Statistics consumer price index has climbed by 6% per year for each of the past two...

Rent crisis? Average rents are increasing less than you might think

Sep 05, 2022 04:23 am UTC| Economy Real Estate

You wouldnt know it from the pages of our daily newspapers, but the rate of growth in rents has been pretty modest. Not everywhere, not for everyone, but for most Australians who rent. According to the most recent...

Inflation isn't the 6.1% they say it is – for many of us, it is much lower

Aug 04, 2022 04:46 am UTC| Economy

We learnt last week inflation is officially 6.1% way above the average over the past 20 years of 2.5%. This is right in the middle of the Reserve Banks 2-3% target band. But although the rate is now 6.1%, not everybody...

Those future tax cut promises... they're nowhere near as big as you'd think

Apr 08, 2019 05:31 am UTC| Insights & Views Economy

The 2018 budget contained big tax measures worth A$143 billion over the next decade initially targeted at lower and middle income Australians, but after five or so years to be heavily weighted towards higher income...

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Economy

African countries lost control to foreign mining companies – the 3 steps that allowed this to happen

Within a few years of independence, African governments asserted sovereignty over their metal and mineral resources. Prior to this, the resources were exploited by European mining corporations. Since the 1990s,...

Canada’s Fall Economic Statement signals the ‘right to repair’ your tech devices

On Nov. 23, the Government of Canada released the 2023 Fall Economic Statement. In a bold move toward empowering consumers, reducing costs and promoting sustainability, the Canadian government has reiterated its commitment...

Happy birthday AUD: how our Australian dollar was floated, 40 years ago this week

These days, we take for granted that the value of the Australian dollar fluctuates against other currencies, changing thousands of times a day and at times jumping or falling quite a lot in the space of a week. But for...

Nicola Willis warns of fiscal ‘snakes and snails’ – her first mini-budget will be a test of NZ’s no-surprises finance rules

New finance minister Nicola Willis has claimed she was blindsided by the state of the governments books. Days after stepping into the role, she said: The outgoing government has left us with some nasty surprises....

Governments have been able to overrule the Reserve Bank for 80 years. Why stop now?

Pay close enough attention to parliament these next few days, and youre likely to witness something truly remarkable: politicians from both sides of politics uniting to remove the power of politicians to overrule the...

Politics

Argentina's Brexit: why new president Milei is threatening to pull out of South America's common market

Javier Milei, who was elected as Argentinas new president on November 19, has promised to withdraw from the South American common market, Mercosur. This decision could have significant economic and social repercussions...

Government's preventative detention for ex-detainees who pose serious risks set to pass this week

The government on Wednesday will introduce its legislation to enable preventative detention of former immigration detainees judged to pose a high risk of committing serious violent or sexual crimes. The legislation will...

Silencing Sarah Jama diminishes Canadian democracy

Sarah Jama, the MPP for Hamilton Centre, is suing the Ontario government and Legislative Assembly after being censured in the legislature by members of the Progressive Conservative government. On Oct. 23, the Ontario...

Alleged assassination plots in the U.S. and Canada signal a more assertive Indian foreign policy

A recent indictment from the United States Department of Justice has alleged an Indian security official was involved in attempting to assassinate a U.S. and Canadian citizen in New York. The alleged target, Gurpatwant...

Henry Kissinger was a global – and deeply flawed – foreign policy heavyweight

Declarations of the end of an era are made only in exceptional circumstances. Henry Kissingers death is one of them. Kissinger was born into a Jewish family in Germany, and fled to the US in 1938 after the Nazis seized...

Science

Hyped and expensive, hydrogen has a place in Australia’s energy transition, but only with urgent government support

If you listen to the dreamers, hydrogen is the magical fuel of the future that can replace everything from the petrol in your car to the coal in a steelworks. Hype around hydrogen has been building in Australia since at...

Massive planet too big for its own sun pushes astronomers to rethink exoplanet formation

Imagine youre a farmer searching for eggs in the chicken coop but instead of a chicken egg, you find an ostrich egg, much larger than anything a chicken could lay. Thats a little how our team of astronomers felt when...

Do we live in a giant void? It could solve the puzzle of the universe's expansion

One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology is the rate at which the universe is expanding. This can be predicted using the standard model of cosmology, also known as Lambda-cold dark matter (ΛCDM). This model is...

MicroRNA is the master regulator of the genome − researchers are learning how to treat disease by harnessing the way it controls genes

The Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, and life less than a billion years after that. Although life as we know it is dependent on four major macromolecules DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids only one is thought to have been...

How do crystals form?

How do crystals form? Alyssa Marie, age 5, New Mexico Scientifically speaking, the term crystal refers to any solid that has an ordered chemical structure. This means that its parts are arranged in a precisely...

Technology

Naver's CHZZK Targets Gaming Streaming Dominance, Twitch Exit Boosts Competition with YouTube, AfreecaTV

Naver Corp. launched its closed beta service for video streaming, CHZZK. With this, the company officially joined the game streaming scene in South Korea. Navers entrance into game streaming is perfect timing as the...

AMD Eyes $45 Billion AI Market, Targets $2B Sales in 2024

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has projected a significant expansion in the market for data center artificial intelligence (AI) processors, estimating the total addressable market at $45 billion for the current year. This...

WeMade to Set Up WEMIX Play Center in Dubai via Partnership with DIFC

Wemade Co., Ltd., a South Korean video game developer, secured a strategic partnership with the Dubai International Financial Centre Innovation Hub (DIFC). The company plans to build its WEMIX Play Center in Dubai with the...

Coinbase Enables Money Transfers via Telegram, WhatsApp, TikTok Links

Coinbase introduces a new service that will allow money transfers through links sent to popular messaging apps, including Telegram, WhatsApp, and TikTok. The crypto exchange platforms wallet offers new ways for users to...

AT&T Joins Forces with Ericsson for Open RAN, Ousting Nokia in US Telecom Boost

ATT Inc. is working on further advancing Open and Interoperable Radio Access Networks (RAN) in the United States. The company is planning to do this through its new partnership with Ericsson. The deal between ATT and...
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