Skills, innovation and human capital as they feature prominently on the policy agenda of industrialized countries concerned with productivity and competitiveness issues. Not surprisingly, formal education is the preferred and most conventional policy instrument of governments in pursuing these...

This paper investigates changes in patterns of education and the highest qualifications people gained over the period 1986 to 2001 for the regions of New Zealand. Education is an essential element in the accumulation of human capital. Factors analysed in this paper are highest qualification...

Although there are many excellent documents and online resources available on New Zealand population trends, it is useful to highlight some key trends in one short document. This paper provides a synopsis of trends with respect to population size and age structure, sub-national population size...

In this chapter, Richard Harris points out that a traditional view has been that there is an inherent conflict between economic efficiency and social equality, a view neatly summarized in the title of Okun's famous book, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Trade-off (1975). This view gained renewed...

In this chapter, Quentin Grafton, Stephen Knowles and Dorian Owen examine the implications for productivity arising from the level of social diversity along a variety of dimensions, including ethnic, linguistic and religious differences and inequalities between rich and poor. Their basic...

Productivity research is Canada has traditionally focused on narrow economic issues. In our view, it has given inadequate attention to the broader ramifications of productivity, both in terms of shedding light on the importance of productivity for the advancement of various aspects of social...

The skills issue is currently at or near the top of the federal government’s policy agenda, given its importance for harnessing the benefits of technological advances. Policy initiatives in the area should be premised on an accurate assessment of Canada’s recent experience in education and...

In this paper we examine, in some depth, the research practices of New Zealand’s academic economists. To date, virtually all published work in this area has focussed on the overall productivity of the country’s economics departments. However, such rankings give little information on the...