This paper estimates the non-increasing inflation rate of unemployment or NAIRU for New Zealand. A NAIRU that varies over time has important implications in considering inflationary pressures. This paper estimates the time-varying NAIRU using a Kalman filter on a reduced form approach and...

This paper investigates and compares the dynamic properties of the New Zealand Treasury model (NZTM) and the current version of the Reserve Bank’s Forecasting and Policy System model (FPS). The main use of both two models is to produce macroeconomic forecasts. The NZTM model produces forecasts...

Many New Zealand-born people migrate overseas, creating a diaspora, and many overseas-born people migrate to New Zealand. Both the diaspora and the overseas-born population in New Zealand may facilitate the international exchange of goods and ideas. Much discussion of international linkages has,...

There is an on-going debate about the level of savings in New Zealand. A fundamental question pervades the debate: namely, are we saving enough? This question arises at two levels: for the economy as a whole and for individual households. At the macroeconomic level, the concern is whether our...

Policy interventions that affect or are mediated through the family typically assume a behavioural response. Policy analyses proceeding from different disciplinary bases may come to quite different conclusions about the effects of policies on families, depending how individuals within families...

The paper uses a simulation model to assess the effects of population ageing on government health expenditures in New Zealand. Population ageing is defined to include disability trends and “distance to death”; government health expenditures are defined to include both acute and long-term...

The purpose of this paper is to extend the simulation analysis of population ageing in Guest, Bryant and Scobie (2003). In that paper a single-good Ramsey-Solow model was calibrated for New Zealand and used to simulate the impact of population ageing on optimal national saving and average living...

Bargaining models of household wealth accumulation point to a potential conflict of interest between husbands and wives. Since wives are typically younger than their husbands and have longer life expectancy, they have to finance a longer expected retirement period. Thus, it is argued that when...

Over the next 50 years, New Zealand’s population will age substantially. There has been wide debate about whether New Zealand should prepare for population ageing by increasing national savings. The debate had not, however, involved explicit consideration of possible time paths for savings,...

New Zealand has, by OECD standards, high birth rates. This has provided New Zealand with a relatively young population and continuing labour force growth. Both these features are, on many accounts, good for economic growth. Yet most discussions of New Zealand’s economic performance and its...