The Aging Population, Superannuation and Corporate Dividend Policy. The project intends to examine how population wealth and age affect one important aspect of corporate decision-making, namely dividend policy. Researchers invest considerable effort in understanding how demographics impact upon the need for, and structure of, government systems including social security and taxation, but relatively little is known about its effect on capital markets or corporate decision-making. Although individ ....The Aging Population, Superannuation and Corporate Dividend Policy. The project intends to examine how population wealth and age affect one important aspect of corporate decision-making, namely dividend policy. Researchers invest considerable effort in understanding how demographics impact upon the need for, and structure of, government systems including social security and taxation, but relatively little is known about its effect on capital markets or corporate decision-making. Although individual investors are, by nature, atomistic, the project argues changes in investor preferences will ultimately prompt companies to alter their dividend policies. Pressure on firms to update these policies will come from superannuation and pension fund managers who, as fiduciaries, will invest money consistent with clients' revised preferences. The project aims to more fully characterise how Australia's ageing population will affect the public and private sectors.Read moreRead less
Towards Generalisable and Unbiased Dynamic Recommender Systems. This project aims to develop the foundations, including models, methodology, and algorithms for building generalisable and unbiased dynamic recommender systems to facilitate intelligent decision-making, prompt contextualised and personalised strategic plans, and support context-aware action recourse. To ensure that fundamental principles, such as fairness and transparency, are respected, a set of algorithms and techniques are propos ....Towards Generalisable and Unbiased Dynamic Recommender Systems. This project aims to develop the foundations, including models, methodology, and algorithms for building generalisable and unbiased dynamic recommender systems to facilitate intelligent decision-making, prompt contextualised and personalised strategic plans, and support context-aware action recourse. To ensure that fundamental principles, such as fairness and transparency, are respected, a set of algorithms and techniques are proposed to develop recommender systems in a more responsible manner. The result of this project will not only maintain Australia's leadership in this frontier research area, but also serve as an excellent vehicle for the education and training of Australia's next generation of scholars and engineers.Read moreRead less
Understanding and overcoming confusion in consumer financial decisions. This project aims to develop consumer-centred approaches to reducing the harmful effects of confusion in financial decisions by studying superannuation investment and home loan decisions where confused choices are individually and collectively costly. The project intends to develop comprehensive models to capture the full complexity of financial products and the diverse preferences and capability of consumers, then to use ad ....Understanding and overcoming confusion in consumer financial decisions. This project aims to develop consumer-centred approaches to reducing the harmful effects of confusion in financial decisions by studying superannuation investment and home loan decisions where confused choices are individually and collectively costly. The project intends to develop comprehensive models to capture the full complexity of financial products and the diverse preferences and capability of consumers, then to use advanced statistical methods to estimate the benefits of clearer decision-making. The outcomes of this project includes new models of complex financial decisions, and a better understanding of where confusion arises and the effects it may have. Decreased confusion will raise financial well-being and help communities become more resilient to financial shocks.Read moreRead less
Honesty and efficiency in the provision of expert services: doctors and other experts as participants in economic experiments. Experts serve us when we see the doctor, the financial planner or the car mechanic. In all these case the expert can take advantage of his superior knowledge and sell us something we do not need. This research will inform policy makers about the underlying motives of real world experts and allow them to design better institutions.
Problem Gambling: effects on families, children and spouses. This project aims to produce evidence that can be used to address problem gambling in Australia. Problem gambling is a major issue, costing Australians over $4.7 billion per year. Better understanding of problem gambling and better policy coming from our project have the potential to significantly improve the lives of Australians--their labour market performance, their mental health and the quality of their relationships. This proj ....Problem Gambling: effects on families, children and spouses. This project aims to produce evidence that can be used to address problem gambling in Australia. Problem gambling is a major issue, costing Australians over $4.7 billion per year. Better understanding of problem gambling and better policy coming from our project have the potential to significantly improve the lives of Australians--their labour market performance, their mental health and the quality of their relationships. This project will generate new knowledge by using a novel approach where problem gamblers are considered in the context of their families. Using quantitative data over more than 10 years, this project seeks to produce new evidence about how problem gamblers affect their families and how families help or harm gamblers.Read moreRead less
Privacy-preserving data processing on the cloud. This project aims to address the current lack of privacy of user data processed by common cloud computing web servers, including email, business data, and confidential files. This project aims to develop new techniques in cryptography. The anticipated outcome is a suite of practical tools enabling common cloud computing processing operations such as search, statistical analysis, and multi-user access control, to be performed efficiently while pres ....Privacy-preserving data processing on the cloud. This project aims to address the current lack of privacy of user data processed by common cloud computing web servers, including email, business data, and confidential files. This project aims to develop new techniques in cryptography. The anticipated outcome is a suite of practical tools enabling common cloud computing processing operations such as search, statistical analysis, and multi-user access control, to be performed efficiently while preserving the data privacy. These tools should provide significant benefits to the privacy of cloud users, as well as financial and reputation benefits to the IT industry, by significantly reducing the likelihood of massive user data privacy breaches in the event of a cyber-hacking attack on the cloud server.Read moreRead less
Use of Interval Arithmetic and GRID Computing in Computational Molecular Science: Bounding Errors and Locating Global Minima. Catastrophic failure of the Ariane 5 rocket in 1996 and the inability of Patriot missile systems to reach their targets during the 1991 Gulf war were both attributed to numerical computing errors. Less dramatic, but in a similar vein, this project aims to study the numerical stability of contemporary computational molecular science applications. The focus will be on linea ....Use of Interval Arithmetic and GRID Computing in Computational Molecular Science: Bounding Errors and Locating Global Minima. Catastrophic failure of the Ariane 5 rocket in 1996 and the inability of Patriot missile systems to reach their targets during the 1991 Gulf war were both attributed to numerical computing errors. Less dramatic, but in a similar vein, this project aims to study the numerical stability of contemporary computational molecular science applications. The focus will be on linear scaling electronic structure codes, methods that are critical to the study of nano- and bio-materials, and are therefore of great importance to our economic future and medical well being. The project will build expertise within Australia in the area of interval arithmetic, an area that is currently poorly represented.Read moreRead less
Rigorous Privacy Compliance in Modern Application Ecosystems. Modern network applications such as mobile applications and browser extensions have become the primary gateways for consumers to access the Internet in today’s digital landscape. This project aims to address privacy issues in these ecosystems by developing a new privacy-compliance assessment framework. The framework will evaluate the current privacy practices of application ecosystems, enabling users and developers in Australia and wo ....Rigorous Privacy Compliance in Modern Application Ecosystems. Modern network applications such as mobile applications and browser extensions have become the primary gateways for consumers to access the Internet in today’s digital landscape. This project aims to address privacy issues in these ecosystems by developing a new privacy-compliance assessment framework. The framework will evaluate the current privacy practices of application ecosystems, enabling users and developers in Australia and worldwide to reliably identify potential privacy risks and issues on their applications. The intended outcomes should endow data controllers with the capability of evidencing their compliance of data protection legislations such as Australia Privacy Act 1988 and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).Read moreRead less
Optimising throughput and Delay in network coded systems. This project addresses one main disadvantage of network coding: decoding delay. By solving this issue, we will unlock the true potential of network coding: delivery of high data rates in wireless and wireline networks. This will make network coding an attractive choice for live video streaming and mission-critical delay-sensitive applications.
Using data mining methods to remove uncertainties in sensor data streams. This project will develop key techniques for removing uncertainties in sensor data streams and thus improve the monitoring quality of sensor networks. The expected outcomes will benefit Australia by enabling improved, lower-cost monitoring of natural resources and management of stock raising.