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...

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...

This paper exploits the reduction in the legal drinking age in New Zealand from 20 to 18 to study the dynamics of youth risk taking. Using administrative data on the universe of road accidents over a fifteen year period spanning the law change, we undertake three complimentary analyses to...

Since the 1980s, income inequality in New Zealand has been a growing concern - particularly in metropolitan areas. At the same time, the encouragement of permanent and temporary immigration has led to the foreign-born accounting for a growing share of the population; this is disproportionally so...

Theory suggests that groups historically subject to discrimination, such as Jews, could exhibit traditionally high investment in education because discrimination spurred exit facilitated by human capital. Theory moreover suggests that if exit is uncertain, it could induce investment in skill...