Housing is an important sector of the economy. It has widespread implications for investment, banking, saving and employment. Home ownership has been linked to building social capital and a sense of community. Furthermore housing equity is a significant element of retirement accumulation for...

Housing affordability has been a topic of much interest in New Zealand over recent years with the median house price increasing by over 50% between 2004 and 2008. The aim of this paper is to inform debate by drawing out evidence from two surveys: the Household Economic Survey (HES); and the...

The housing market is both large and complex. This paper develops a simple model that captures the essential features of the supply and demand for housing, and which is used to evaluate the impact of a range of policy interventions. Increases in the stock of housing would reduce rents and house...

This paper applies an overlapping generations model in order to evaluate the implications of intergenerational smoothing of New Zealand’s future fiscal costs. The analysis complements the New Zealand fiscal projections of Bell et al. (2010) and the New Zealand tax smoothing analysis in Davis...

This paper examines the implications for national savings of three retirement income policy options, designed to improve the fiscal sustainability of New Zealand Superannuation (NZS). A simple model is developed that employs population and longevity projections allowing estimation of the...

This paper explores the KiwiSaver information contained in two sources: the administrative data from the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) and the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE). In particular, the paper explores the membership and contribution information, explaining significant...

Increases in longevity mean the size of New Zealand’s public retirement income programme, New Zealand Superannuation, will automatically expand unless the age of eligibility is increased. This paper analyses the consequences of expanding New Zealand Superannuation on a save-as-you-go basis...

The objective of this paper is to analyse the extent to which membership of KiwiSaver has been associated with greater accumulations of net wealth. The paper utilises two linked sources of data which cover the period 2002 to 2010: Statistics New Zealand’s Survey of Family, Income and...

This paper examines the saving behaviour of different generations of households in New Zealand over the period 1984 to 2010 using data from the Household Economic Survey. The paper employs a life-cycle framework to estimate regression models that identify the influence of age and birth year on...

The Treasury has, at times, suggested giving greater consideration to reforms to narrow the Saving-Investment gap. However, there has been less discussion of specific policy options for doing this. This paper helps to fill the gap by asking what policy reforms could help to narrow the...