CDES funded projects

Researcher

• Associate Professor Gang Chen, Centre for Health Economics, Monash Business School

Background and objectives

Globally there is an increased risk of serious illness from Coronavirus (COVID-19) among older adults. Australia is not an exception. To protect the elderly population from contracting the COVID-19, the Federal Government has strongly recommended for people over 70 years old to self-isolate at home for as long as practicable. Meanwhile, there is also evidence suggesting that social isolation among the elderly is a “serious public health concern”, including a greater risk of depression and anxiety.

The objective of this study is to find out more about older adults’ subjective wellbeing and which life circumstances are most important, especially under the current COVID-19 outbreak. Subjective well being (often equated with “happiness”) refers to how people think about and experience their lives. Life satisfaction is a key part of subjective wellbeing. A better understanding of these matters will hopefully facilitate better policy interventions in the future.

This new study also complements Dr. Gang Chen’s DECRA project (DE180100647) which focused on understanding what matters the most for the general public in Australia (among them a small proportion of respondents are older adults). In collaboration with Professor Jan Abel Olsen (University of Tromsø, Norway, and Monash University) they further expand the DECRA project and are currently co-leading a multi-country ‘How Is Your Life’ study to understand the influence of COVID-19 on personal wellbeing of the general public.

Research design

An online anonymous survey will be administered to a sample of 1,000 general public aged 65 years and older in Australia. The targeting respondents will be recruited and reimbursed via a leading online fieldwork company. Respondents will provide informed consent before accessing the survey and they are free to withdraw at any time during the survey. Ethics approval has been granted by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (Project ID: 24402).

The online survey contains three main sections. Section A adopts Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) instrument to measure respondents’ own subjective well being, to what extent their lives have been influenced by the coronavirus (COVID-19), and followed by a series of pairwise choice experiments to understand older adults’ preferences among different hypothetical life circumstances, such as standard of living, health, relationships, safety, community connectedness, and future security. Section B uses a comprehensive Assessment of Quality of Life (AQoL)-8D instrument developed at the Centre for Health Economics to measure respondents’ health-related quality of life in eight dimensions, including mental health, happiness, self-worth, coping, relationships, independent living, senses, and pain. Section C asks socio-demographic characteristics. It is expected that the survey will take no more than 10-20 minutes to complete.

Potential policy implications

The outputs from this study will provide first-hand evidence for policy-makers regarding what extent the wellbeing of older adults have been influenced by the current COVID-10 outbreak, and in particular, what life circumstances have been influenced the most. The results from this study will be compared with the parallel study in the general public to explore the potential heterogeneity of older adults. The choice experiments from the hypothetical life circumstances will potentially further facilitate the prioritisation of limited public resources to more efficiently maintain or improve the wellbeing of the older adults in Australia.

Researchers

• Associate Professor Choon Wang and Dr Birendra Rai, Department of Economics, Monash Business School

Background and objectives

Over the last two decades, numerous public health departments have proposed protocols for the allocation of ventilators during a pandemic. The need for evaluating whether the general public finds the recommended protocols ethically reasonable has been repeatedly stressed, but systematic studies are lacking. With some qualifications, ventilator allocation protocols contain three core elements: who to categorically exclude, who to prioritize among those included, and when to withdraw the ventilator from someone on a ventilator. The protocols recommend strategies that hospitals should follow when faced with ethically difficult choices: Should a patient with other medical conditions that will most likely lead to death in the near future be categorically excluded even if they will survive the current pandemic upon receiving the ventilator? Should healthcare workers be prioritized? Should the ventilator be withdrawn from a child who shows insufficient improvement and is given to an elderly person who will recover upon receiving the ventilator?

While such questions have been debated in academic journals for a long time, COVID-19 has brought them into the public domain. The objectives of this project are to examine,

1. The considerations that people perceive to be central in the allocation of ventilators during a pandemic;
2. The opinion of people regarding the ethical attractiveness of different protocols for the allocation of ventilators during a pandemic; and
3. The factors that explain the potential heterogeneity in responses across people.

Research design

This project will employ online survey questionnaires and administrative data related to COVID-19 to answer these questions.

Potential policy implications

The findings may help improve existing protocols by highlighting aspects of existing protocols that people do not find normatively reasonable.

Researchers

• Professor Amrik Sohal, Professor Julie Wolfram Cox, Department of Management, Monash Business School, and Dr Kamal Gulati, AIIMS-Delhi, India

Background and objectives

With over 1.35 billion people and less than 2% of GDP spent on health, India’s public healthcare system suffers due to poor infrastructure and lack of medical staff. The outbreak of COVID-19 in developing economies such as India presents additional challenges to public hospitals that are already stretched to the limit. Central and state governments took radical action to minimise the spread of COVID-19, leaving vulnerable people in a situation never seen before by many Indians.

There is little known about how Indian public hospitals have responded to the pandemic with respect to new policies/strategies and innovations in terms of new practices introduced. Hence, this project addresses the following questions:

1. What new policies/strategies and practices have been implemented by public hospitals in India in response to COVID-19?
2. How effective have these policies/strategies been?

The Monash University team is collaborating with four public hospitals in North India:

1. All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi;
2. All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand state;
3. Postgraduate Institute for Medical Education and Research based in Chandigarh, Punjab state; and
4. Government Medical College and Hospital in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh state.

Research design

The research team is conducting interviews via telephone and/or video with key informants at each of these hospitals that include the Director/CEO, Medical Superintendent, Head of the School of Public Health, and the senior executive responsible for COVID-19.

Data collected will be analysed to identify (i) the immediate impact of COVID-19 on the public hospitals in terms of demand from Covid-19 infections and the resources available/needed to respond to this demand; (ii) changes in hospital policies/strategies that were necessary for its response and how quickly and effectively these were implemented, (iii) the specific daily operational practices that have been implemented and their impact outcomes. In addition, the study will assess the level of government support to hospitals during this pandemic and how appropriate and effective this has been.

Potential policy implications

The findings will enable the research team to identify how different strategies and practices have impacted on the hospitals’ capability to deal with COVID-19.

Researcher

• Professor Fang Lee Cooke, Department of Management, Monash Business School

Background and objectives

As the COVID-19 global pandemic is affecting more and more countries in different parts of the world, its global socio-economic impact has begun to unfold, although the extent of which would remain unknown for some time. What is known so far is that many businesses have been negatively affected due to forced business shut down, decline of customers, cancellation of business orders, and so forth. Developing countries in Asia have been hit hard, both directly as a result of COVID-19 itself and more so indirectly as a result of the negative impact on the global supply chain, which their economy has relied on heavily and deeply embedded in.

This project aims to understand the role of governments, employers and trade unions as key stakeholders in the field of employment in selected Asian developing countries in combating the impact of COVID-19 on employment to maintain economic development and social wellbeing of the workers and their family. It seeks to address the following research questions:

1. What may be the impact of COVID-19 on businesses and their responses in selected developing countries and sectors in Asia?
2. How have employers' responses affect workers in these countries and sectors?
3. What are the government’s regulatory and policy interventions and their effects on different groups of workers particularly those in informal employment and low-income households?
4. What are the responses from other key stakeholders such as the trade unions, and how effective have these responses been?
5. What may be the lessons learned and to be shared for better policy decisions and impacts?

Research design

This project mainly adopts a desk-based research method to examine the financial support from governments to small- and medium-sized businesses in the form of wage or other benefits so that they can continue to employ staff, esp. in the low pay sector. It surveys (via publically available information), compare and contrast these policy initiatives across selected countries: Australia, UK, China, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Pakistan. The project will investigate in greater depth key stakeholders’ actions and policy interventions across the selected countries. The purpose of examining two developed countries, Australia and the UK, is to serve as an indication of what initiatives may exist and contemplate if these could be relevant to developing countries via adaptation and further initiative innovation. In particular, the project will examine the impact of COVID-19 on low-income households and female workers, who are often additionally burdened with care responsibilities, and the potential rise of inequality through secondary data. This data will be supplemented by data from a small number of informal interviews to be conducted via zoom or telephone with key stakeholders in selected developing countries.

Potential policy implications

The findings of the project will highlight the uneven impact of COVID-19 on different groups of workers and businesses, with policy implications in these countries and beyond, through informing policy decisions and institutional learning. Findings and recommendations will show policymakers what intended and unintended consequences certain policy and regulatory decisions, and their implementation, may yield. Findings will also facilitate workers’ organizing bodies, such as the trade unions, to learn from strategies, practices, and lessons from peers while developing their own capacity to organise and represent workers. Finally, findings of the project help foster a social partnership approach for government, businesses, workers’ organizing bodies, and other key stakeholders to work together to provide optimal solutions that balance the needs of businesses and workers in a fair and equitable manner.

Researchers

• Associate Professor Tatsushi Oka, Dr Dan Zhu, and Dr Wei Wei, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash Business School

Background and objectives

The outbreak of COVID-19 causes multiple crises: a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a financial crisis, which interact in a complex manner. Although policymakers are providing substantial support to stimulate the economy and financial markets, lockdown is one of few effective policies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, until the development of therapeutics and vaccines. After the introduction of lockdown policy, infection rates of COVID-19 decreases slowly across many countries. Still, important questions, such as the timing of lifting lockdown restrictions, how to lift the lockdown (gradually, regionally or depending on risk groups), and how likely that another outbreak happens, are yet to be answered. To answer those questions, we shall analyse the effectiveness of lockdown and the risk of lockdown easing (either sifting or lifting lockdown) in the proposed project.

This research aims to analyse data in China, where the first lockdown against COVID-19 took place and gradually eased.

Research design

We will use cutting-edge statistical methods to analyse the spatial-temporal data and will examine the effectiveness of lockdown and the risk of lockdown easing.

Potential policy implications

Our data analysis will provide critical insights for policymakers on how to lift or soften lockdown and its possible threats. Also, the methods developed under this proposal can be applied to regional data in Australia and predicting the potential risk of lockdown easing. Our approach will be able to quantify the effectiveness of the hard lockdown policy to prevent the spread of coronavirus, even if the infection rate is very high locally. At country-level, a sort of this hard lockdown is currently employed, and our research will examine the effectiveness of the lockdown policy at regional or community level

Researchers

• Professor Daniel Prajogo, Associate Professor Sean Way and Dr Tui McKeown, Department of Management, Monash Business School

Background and objectives

Small businesses in Australia have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, with 63% reporting a significant reduction in revenue and demand resulting from the country’s lockdown measures. While state and territory responses have varied, the COVID-19 crisis has presented small business with a distinct challenge, a challenge which calls for alternative solutions for survival.

While often cited as attributes of small business (but seldom studied in depth), innovation, flexibility, and agility are likely to be the key factors that will allow small businesses to effectively adapt to changes in demand and needs – to pursue new opportunities – arising from this uncertain and volatile environment.

Our project will explore the strategic, innovative, dynamic capabilities that Australian small businesses are utilising in their responses to COVID-19. This will encourage us to adopt a dynamic research approach ourselves – a perspective that is paramount in studying an issue that continues to emerge and evolve around us. It is also a perspective that will allow us to feed our insights back to the small business community – specifically the effectiveness of their new-found opportunities and developed mitigation strategies against COVID-19.

Research design

The project uses online surveys, as well as interviews to gain both depth and breadth. We are partnering with the Small Enterprise Associations of Australia and New Zealand, as well as the Small Business Mentoring Service, to ensure that the practical, and policy implications of this study are widely disseminated.

Potential policy implications

The outcomes of this research will inform small businesses on the effective mitigation and risk management strategies that can help navigate the impacts of this pandemic and implement successful recovery plan. In a broader sense, this project can be used to establish a knowledge base for building resilience and developing practical tools to assist small businesses in facing future potential volatility and uncertainty in the environment, whether they are caused by a pandemic or other source.

Randomized controlled experiment of a tele-mentoring program in rural Bangladesh

Researchers

• Hashibul Hassan, Ph.D. Candidate, Economics Department, Monash Business School
• Associate Professor Liang Choon Wang, Economics Department, Monash Business School
• Abu Bakar Siddique, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Technische Universität München

Background and objectives

In Bangladesh, because most children do not have internet access or are not used to online learning, the government is using a public broadcasting organization to provide pre-recorded education programs where a 100-minute slot per day is allocated for the 1^st to 5^th graders learning from home under the Covid-19 lockdown. Let alone the quality and duration, these programs are not even accessible to more than half of the rural Bangladeshi children since only 44% of rural households in Bangladesh own a television (MICS, UNICEF, 2019).

Since the shutdown of educational institutions on 18 March 2020, the learning of rural Bangladeshi children now depends heavily on parental input. In general, higher parental involvement can lead to better student learning. But, parents often do not know how to engage fully at home. As a result, parental involvement is not evenly distributed across households. However, past studies suggest that it is possible to increase the parental involvement through nudges, such as providing short and simple tips, texts, take-home report cards, emails, calls, or short in-person meetings, etc. In line with this previous research, we will provide a brief weekly tele-mentoring service to rural children delivered by current university students with funding support from the Center for Development Economics and Sustainability (CDES), Monash University.

Research design

In the first phase, we will invite around 2000 households to participate in this program. During the invitation, we will do a rapid survey to identify the current private educational investment, e.g. home tutors. Then, we will keep households that do not have any private investment and are interested or motivated to participate. From these eligible households, we will randomly select 800 parents for an in-depth baseline survey and offer the tele-mentoring to half of them, while the other half serves as the control group. Note that we already have baseline assessments about the children from an existing project.

The current graduate students from various universities will be a mentor for a maximum of two children for 12 weeks. They will each make a 30-minute call at a pre-determined time of the day. The tele-discussion will cover weekly goal setting (involvement time, study target), parenting assistance (solving textbook problems, idea for better psychical, emotional and social involvement, mental health, etc.), and general counselling. We will provide all relevant textbooks and solutions (digital version) to the mentors and brief training using online platforms. After the program, we will survey the parents and assess the children using over-the-phone assessment, and compare the results with the baseline scenario.

Potential policy implications

The project is significant in two ways. First, by following-up a moderate sample of children that we have measured of their pre-pandemic cognitive and non-cognitive skills, we will shed light on the effects on educational and gender inequality as a result of school closure and barriers to educational technologies. Second, through the use of an RCT, this project will provide evidence on the effectiveness of a cost-effective and easy-to-scale-up educational intervention that applies to other severely resource-constrained developing countries.