The importance of social media for election campaigning has received a lot of attention recently. Using data from the 2011 New Zealand General Election and the size of candidates’ social media networks on Facebook and Twitter, we investigate whether social media is associated with election...

WNew Zealand’s population is ageing rapidly and alongside this the labour force is also ageing. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the labour force and employment trends among older New Zealanders (that is, those aged 55 and over). Specifically, the paper focuses on labour force...

Personal financial literacy is becoming increasingly important in the modern world, especially for young people. In this paper we compare financial literacy of high school students in Hamilton, New Zealand, with samples from Japan and the United States. We compare not only overall financial...

Understanding the financial literacy of young people is an essential prerequisite for developing effective education programmes designed to improve young people’s understanding of personal finance. In this paper, we present results from a survey of high school students which included a...

In 2003, New Zealand significantly reorganised high school education by moving to a standards-based assessment approach. This paper investigates whether the economics standards are associated with economic understanding using 2008-2011 data from students at the University of Waikato. We find...