The paper distinguishes between the classic or traditional foreign banks with their emphasis on corporate and wholesale banking, and the innovators responding to transition, deregulation or crisis in emerging markets. The innovators come in three varieties—bettors, prospectors and...

In the financial crisis literature, it is usually argued that, contrary to the case of currency crises, building a time series index to identify banking crisis episodes is highly difficult, particularly because of the lack of reliable data on banking sector variables (non-performing loans,...

The increased use of information and communications technology (ICT) has helped to raise Australia’s productivity growth, according to a new Commission study. It has enabled firms to innovate in what they do and how they do it. ICT Use and Productivity: A Synthesis from Studies of Australian...

In a classical article, Granger (1966) argued that the levels of most economic time series have spectra that exhibit a smooth declining shape with considerable power at very low frequencies. He termed it "the typical spectral shape of an economic variable." Granger's assertion has not been...

Although a number of studies have been conducted on health production functions, little attention has been given to pharmaceuticals as a separate input into the production of health. Building upon existing published work, this paper uses an alternative specification and more recent data to...

Housing is the most important component of wealth for many New Zealanders. Its location is fixed and its value is influenced by economic and other factors specific to that location. Hence when people live in owner-occupied homes their wealth is strongly associated with their local economic...

New Zealand has had a complex process of adjusting commercial policy since the economic reforms began in 1984. This paper reports on the results of a research project to estimate the trends in industry assistance over this period and the variance of assistance within 2- digit industry groupings.

Economics as a 'trade' does very well in New Zealand. Economists are taken relatively seriously in government policy processes. For better or worse, economic ideas were major drivers of the reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Plenty of well-paid job opportunities exist in the private...

We examine trend economic developments in New Zealand and in each of Australia’s six states and two territories (i.e. nine regions) in order to inform issues regarding economic policy harmonisation across Australasia. Our focus is on trend developments in GDP, population, GDP per capita and...

We use National Bank of New Zealand Regional Economic Activity data, to identify and characterise classical business cycle turning points, for New Zealand’s 14 regions and aggregate New Zealand activity. Using Concordance statistic measures, logistic model and GMM estimation methods,...