The Treasury has, at times, suggested giving greater consideration to reforms to narrow the Saving-Investment gap. However, there has been less discussion of specific policy options for doing this. This paper helps to fill the gap by asking what policy reforms could help to narrow the...

The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

The Treasury has, at times, suggested giving greater consideration to reforms to narrow the Saving-Investment gap. However, there has been less discussion of specific policy options for doing this. This paper helps to fill the gap by asking what policy reforms could help to narrow the...

Recent social security reform has significantly improved the long-run sustainability of the pension system. However, the pension system continues to serve as an important barrier to a more rapid expansion of the formal-sector economy in two ways. First, early-retirement incentives (including...

This article surveys some of the main economic trends in New Zealand and Australia over the 1990s, with particular emphasis on those aspects relevant to the Reserve Bank: inflation pressures, the business cycle, and monetary conditions and policy.

This article examines the latest trends in external and internal competitiveness of New Zealand's tradable goods sector.

In this article we summarise the recent economic literature on the relationship between inflation and growth, to assess what inflation target might be most consistent with the fastest pace of sustainable economic growth. One conclusion is that the relationship between inflation and growth seems...

Changes in the global financial system, together with new experience with fixed and floating exchange rates, have resulted in a reassessment of exchange rate strategies for both developed and emerging market economies. The emergence of a currency union in Europe has been seen by some as showing...

This article sets out the "stylised facts" of the last business cycle - what actually happened to the economy during the course of the cycle, and in what respects this was similar to, and different from previous New Zealand economic cycles and experiences internationally.

This paper documents some features of recent trends in bond yields and discusses the drivers of these trends. This includes a discussion of the relationship between fiscal balances and interest rates -- with a summary of key empirical results from the literature provided in the Appendix. The...