In response to Australia's decision to adopt international financial reporting standards (IFRSs) from 2005, New Zealand has subsequently decided to follow. New Zealand reporting entities are required to adopt IFRSs from 2007 with the option of early adoption from 2005.As New Zealand is one of...

In contrast to the trend of research investigating why firms decide to release earnings forecasts to pre-empt any expected change in earnings, our study investigates how firms manage their earnings forecast strategy once they have decided to release earnings forecasts. Using a sample of 350...

The editors of the Mirrlees Review asked us to evaluate the UK VAT and the European Union VAT Directive and compare them to the New Zealand VAT model, which is called GST (Goods and Services Tax). At first sight, this brief might seem strange. After all, the VAT is a European invention that has...

This paper expands our understanding of the introduction of new audit arrangements in the public sector by looking at three cases relating to the audit of local government. The first case saw the Audit Office replacing the elected auditors as the sole auditor of municipalities in 1886; the second...

It has been shown, for non-Communist developed and developing countries, that earlier development of agriculture, a dense population, and a state-level polity is associated with a higher income and more rapid economic growth in the late 20th Century. We investigate whether this was also the case...

Early states like China, India, Italy and Greece have been experiencing more rapid economic growth in recent decades than have later-comers to agriculture and statehood like New Guinea, the Congo, and Uruguay. We show that more rapid growth by early starters has been the norm in economic...

This working paper is intended to shed light on a pressing issue: the apparent growth-dependency of European welfare states at a time of weak growth prospects and strong criticisms of growth. Indeed, while the notion of going beyond GDP growth is gaining momentum in the European Union, as...

This paper analyses macroeconomic aspects of exit from aid-dependence. By 'exit from aid', we mean substantial and enduring decline over time in Official Development Assistance (ODA) as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The relevant macroeconomic variables are identified by systematically...

Several countries around the world have adopted the inflation targeting regime for monetary policy. Despite the growing literature on the issue, it is not clear whether developing and emerging countries can improve their economic performance by adopting inflation targeting. This working paper...

This paper provides derivations necessary for solving an optimal consumption problem with multiplicative habits and a CRRA 'outer' utility function either for a microeconomic problem with both labor income risk and rate-of-return risk or for a macroeoconomic representative agent model.