The New Zealand government (through its agency the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, MAF) seeks to mitigate the potential negative impacts of importation through requiring commodities that may pose a risk to New Zealand's primary production systems, human health, indigenous flora, fauna or...

The quarantine policy decision-making process in Australia is subject to the principles of the World Trade Organisation's SPS Agreement. It is primarily based on the risks and associated economic costs accruing to producers in the event of disease entry. The costs of a quarantine measure in...

Investment in R&D has long been regarded as an important source of productivity growth in New Zealand and Australian agriculture. Perhaps because research lags are long, current investment in R&D is monitored closely. In this paper trends in public investment in R&D and in productivity growth...

The study examines the importance of community forest resources for income and employment in rural areas of Nepal by studying the effect of current forestry policy on forestland use. Using data from 259 households in six community forest user groups in three hilly districts (Dolakha, Kavre and...

The New Zealand Qualification Authority (NZQA) started to introduce a new qualification; the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) in 2002. NCEA level 3 replaced the University Bursary Examinations in 2004. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship...

Animal welfare policies are often dealing with complex issues that are value laden and quite complex for New Zealand society to consider and evaluate. As a result, it may be difficult for agencies to converge upon policies that provide equally desirable and universally popular solutions. In some...

Economics is an evolving and emerging field of study, so is the management of ecosystems. As such, this paper delineates the co-evolution of economic evaluation that reflects the various recognized ecosystem management approaches of anticipative, adaptive and capacitive ecosystem management....

In the course of another exercise (Johnson, Scrimgeour & Manning 2006) I compiled, with the help of CCMAU, a financial record of the crown research institutes from 1992 to 2005. In this paper I thought I would share with this audience some of the facts that emerged from the exercise and make...

The population in New Zealand is expected to increase to over five million by the mid 2020’s from the current level of 4.3 million (Statistics New Zealand, 2009). An increasing demand for primary produce as a result may put pressure on marginal land to be farmed. Understanding the economic...

Invasive species are significant threats to biodiversity, natural ecosystems and agriculture leading to large worldwide economic and environmental damage. Spread and control of invasive species are stochastic processes with important spatial dimensions. Most economic studies of invasive species...