Real minimum wages increased by nearly 33% for adults and 123% for teenagers in New Zealand between 1999 and 2008. Where fewer than 2% of workers were being paid a minimum wage at the outset of this sample period, now more than 8% of adult workers and 60% of teenage workers are receiving hourly...

Increasingly, blogs are being used by educators in higher education for teaching and learning as they have numerous pedagogical benefits. This study describes and analyses the use of blogs as a private journal or e-portfolio for an assessment in a first year bachelor of business programme. Three...

Naudé et al. (2009) present an exploration into economic vulnerability from a subnational, district-level perspective. Their paper is an important and timely contribution because it recognises the heterogeneous nature of vulnerability across areas within a country. However, their analysis is...

The New Zealand health care sector stands out relative to other OECD countries, with relatively low per-capita health expenditure and a public dominant health system. Efficient allocation of resources is therefore paramount. This paper creates a predictive model for patient volume using the...

This paper presents an empirical investigation into the level and stability of money demand (M1) in Nigeria between 1960 and 2008. In addition to estimating the canonical specification, alternative models are presented that include additional variables to proxy for the cost of holding money....

We investigate how the Federal Reserve (Fed) hit the zero lower bound (ZLB) interest rate while operating under a Taylor-type policy rule. We estimate a reaction function and the results indicate that during the crisis Fed increased the weight on output without also increasing the weight on...

In this paper we estimate the growth effects of human capital with country-specific time series data for Australia. Previous empirical studies, based on international data, have been inconclusive, in terms of the extent of the contribution of human capital to growth. We extend the Solow (1956)...

It is well known that high levels of regional integration enable portfolio risk diversification and capital mobility. While there have been a number of empirical attempts to verify the presence of capital mobility using the Feldstein-Horioka (FH) approach, none of them to the best of our...

This paper utilises the Aberdeen Children of the 1950s (ACONF) cohort to investigate how both perinatal factors and changes in a child’s environment impacts on IQ development between the ages of 7 and 11 years. Two methodological frameworks were utilised; (1) linear and logistic regression, the...

This paper presents an investigation into the impacts of mental and physical health on the propensity to be employed. Health status is parameterised using three physical and three mental health indicators. After controlling for various socioeconomic factors, the application of limited dependent...