This paper surveys the evolution of macroeconomic policy, in the New Zealand context, from the beginning of the end of the Great Inflation of the 1970s/1980s, through to the current recovery from the Great Recession brought on by the Global Financial Crisis. The 30 or so years since the late...

This paper examines the extent to which projected aggregate tax revenue changes, in association with population ageing over the next 50 years, can be expected to finance expected increases in social welfare expenditures. It uses projections from two separate models, dealing with social...

There are many costs associated with international trade. These costs act as barriers to trade and affect the level of trade. This paper first provides a brief discussion of the state-of- the-art methods used to measure trade costs and to quantify their impact on trade. It then empirically...

This paper explores the KiwiSaver information contained in two sources: the administrative data from the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) and the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE). In particular, the paper explores the membership and contribution information, explaining significant...

Increases in longevity mean the size of New Zealand’s public retirement income programme, New Zealand Superannuation, will automatically expand unless the age of eligibility is increased. This paper analyses the consequences of expanding New Zealand Superannuation on a save-as-you-go basis...

I extend the Glick and Rogoff (1995) aggregate time-series, empirical, intertemporal model of country-investment (and the current account) to a sectoral-level, and estimate it for New Zealand. I fit the model to panel data of eleven industries from 1988-2009. The sectoral-level investment growth...

This paper discusses the recent history of the rate of unemployment in New Zealand. The rate of unemployment in New Zealand increased by about 3.5 percentage points between late 2007 and late 2009, and then has remained relatively steady to early 2013. Compared to the most recent previous...

A persistent increase in the unemployment rate ignites speculations about whether the changes to unemployment are structural or cyclical. The New Zealand economy has been through major restructuring since the mid-1980s. The labour market’s institutional changes were the last in the sequence of...

Using a unique dataset that covers all exporting firms in New Zealand from 1996 to 2007, this paper analyses the patterns of their product mix, how it changes over time and how this relates to firm characteristics. We suggest that looking at the relative importance of added and dropped products...

We estimate that the total costs of crime in New Zealand in 2003/04 amounted to $9.1 billion. Of this, the private sector incurred $7 billion in costs and the public sector $2.1 billion. Offences against private property are the most common crimes but offences against the person are the most...