The Canterbury earthquakes in September 2010 and February 2011 caused major upheaval to the people of the region. The second quake killed 185 people, forced many from their homes, and closed Christchurch’s central business district. This paper examines the consequential effects on business in...

We treat the Canterbury (Christchurch) earthquake sequence as a potential source of new risk information to home buyers in New Zealand. We compare pre- and post-earthquake sales of properties in two other urban areas of the country (one with high and one with low seismicity) to estimate how the...

Published as: Motu Working Paper 14-13 Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, November 2014

We analyse patterns of national R&D and patenting activity across developed countries, accounting for factors that may impact on small, distant countries. Once we control for the effects of economic size, distance, sectoral composition and firm size, New Zealand is not an outlier in its per...

This paper investigates the impact of port infrastructure on exporter behaviour, focusing on the opening of a competing inland port within Auckland. We model adoption of the new facilities among local firms, and test the impacts of uptake on future export growth. We find that the determinants of...