Politicians fashionably argue in favour of financial development to promote economic growth following the seminal study of King and Levine (1993a and 1993b). Financial development, however, could come through alternative channels that are sometimes not compatible in small, open economics. A...

Estimates of marginal tax rates (MTRs) faced by individual economic agents, and for various aggregates of taxpayers, are important for economists testing behavioural responses to changes in those tax rates. This paper reports estimates of a number of personal marginal income tax rate measures...

Crucial data on productivity was omitted from my article titled, “Why Haven't Economic Reforms Increased Productivity Growth in New Zealand?. The data consist of GDP per hour and real earnings per hour as two alternative measures of productivity. More importantly, they are crucial to...

Earning regressions often reveal time-invariant industry premiums. Competitive theories explain them by referring to unobservable characteristics or compensating differentials. Non-competitive theories do the same by using efficiency wage, insider-outsider and rent sharing hypotheses. Those...

Productivity, measured by output per hour, grew by less than one percent per annum in post reform New Zealand. During the same period productivity grew at a rate two times faster in relatively protected Australia and one and half time faster in the “free market” economy of the US. This...

Estimates of marginal tax rates (MTRs) faced by individual economic agents, and for various ggregates of taxpayers, are important for economists testing behavioural responses to changes in those tax rates. This paper reports estimates of a number of personal marginal income tax rate measures for...

We present a neo-classical model that explores the determinants of growth-inequality correlation and attempts to reconcile the seemingly conflicting evidence on the nature of the growth-inequality relationship. The initial distribution of human capital determines the long-run income distribution...

No abstract.

An optimal redistributive tax-subsidy formula is derived for a growth model where income inequality is endogenously driven by an adult's choice of occupation between work and management. Investment in human capital is the engine of growth. The world's stock of exploitable knowledge as well as...