This paper explores readily available data up to 1996 on New Zealand’s saving rates and the level of savings, and examines the portfolio allocation of savings. It finds that New Zealanders’ household saving rates are low, whilst above average public saving rates leave national saving rates...

Work on assessing Treasury’s forecasting performance to date has focussed on comparisons against consensus forecasts. This study compares Treasury’s GDP and CPI forecast performance against individual private sector forecasters as well as major public sector institutions such as the IMF,...

This review paper examines the link between internal migration and regional labour market adjustment. It outlines the motivation and scope of our enquiry, discusses the three key questions that we plan to pursue, reviews relevant international and New Zealand literature, and outlines proposals...

New Zealand's Current Account of the Balance of Payments has been persistently in deficit since the early 1970s and increased markedly during the late 1990s. Is this a cause for significant concern? This paper tackles this question by evaluating New Zealand's external solvency, the degree of...

The setting of quantitative, time-limited ?targets? backed up by institutional and managerial rewards and sanctions has been a notable feature of performance improvement efforts in the National Health Service (NHS) in England since 1998 and especially in the period 2000-2004. Performance...

This paper constructs a composite index of leading indicators of New Zealand employment. The choice of variables and their weights in the composite index are determined by their concordance with employment. The composite index is included in an indicator model to forecast quarterly employment...

What characteristics push people to move and what pulls them to a new location? Evidence from the US has suggested that people are pulled to cities with a high population density and with large concentrations of skilled people. But how does this apply to New Zealand? Where are people moving to...

The 'excess burden' of taxation represents an efficiency loss which must be compared with any perceived gains arising either from income redistribution or the non-transfer expenditure carried out by the government. An important property is that, under certain assumptions, it increases...

In this paper, I address three questions of government financial policy: how should a government’s aversion to financial risk be determined, when are new financial investments justified, and what is the optimal level of reserves in a flexible exchange rate regime. To answer these questions, I...

Recent research shows that trade of goods and financial products is much greater within countries than it is between countries, even allowing for factors such as transports costs. This lack of economic integration is likely to be costly for small nations, as internal trade is much less diverse...