This paper explores the capability of the state to affect the individual's decision to work for free. For this purpose we combine individual-level data from the European and World Values Survey with macroeconomic and political variables for OECD member countries. Empirically we identify three...

In seeking economic immigrants, especially those who are skilled, entrepreneurial and with capital to invest, a settler country such as New Zealand has assumed that national and city labour markets/economies will gain by adding to the human capital pool as well as creating new 'economic'...

New Zealand has a unique accident insurance system that pays the direct costs of all accidental injuries and compensates workers 80% of their earnings for any time post-injury that they are unable to work. Statistics New Zealand’s Linked Employer-Employee Database contains monthly information...

This paper analyses the effects of a large reform in the minimum wages affecting youth workers in New Zealand since 2001. Prior to this reform, a youth minimum wage, applying to 16-19 year-olds, was set at 60% of the adult minimum. The reform had two components. First, it lowered the eligible...

Taxation data have been used to create long-run series for the distribution of top incomes in quite a number of countries. Most of these studies have focused on the national experience of individual countries, but we can also learn from cross-country comparisons. Comparative analysis is...

This paper examines the impact of a reduction in the legal drinking age in New Zealand from 20 to 18 on alcohol use, and alcohol-related hospitalisations and vehicular accidents among teenagers. We use both a difference-in-differences approach and a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to...

Despite considerable research on differences in labour market outcomes between native born New Zealanders and immigrants, the extent of discrimination experienced by the foreign born in the workplace remains relatively unexplored. We use micro data from the Confidentialised Unit Record File of...

Many immigrants are overqualified in their first job after arrival in the host country. Education-occupation mismatch can affect the economic integration of immigrants and the returns to education and experience. The extent of this problem has been measured in recent years by means of micro...

Between 1984 and 2003, New Zealand undertook comprehensive market-oriented economic reforms. In this paper, we use Census data to examine how the internal mobility of Māori compares to that of Europeans in New Zealand in the period after these reforms. It is often suggested that Māori are less...

This paper reconsiders the link between welfare state provision, globalisation and competitiveness empirically. We challenge the conventional wisdom that welfare states, large-scale public provision of social insurance and progressive systems of redistributive taxation are incompatible with...