The privatisation of state-owned assets a defining characteristic of the 1980s was not restricted to the United Kingdom. In New Zealand the Labour Government which took office in 1984 was committed to a policy of what was known at the time as 'corporatisation' - converting government departments...

Presentation by Bronwyn Howell to OPTA Den Haag on 13 September 2011.

How do industry structures and other institutional arrangements affect growth and innovation in the New Zealand agricultural sector? Put another way how can those structures and arrangements be improved to better facilitate growth and innovation in the New Zealand agricultural sector? Addressing...

The last thirty years have witnessed a fundamental change in the regulation of infrastructure industries. Whereas firms were subject to rate of return regulation and protected from entry in the past now they face various forms of incentive regulation competition is actively promoted by many...

Toby Daglish and Nimesh Patel discuss the rationale behind banks charging break-fees to recoup their losses as a result of customers prepaying loans. Next they chart the historical levels of these for New Zealand. Lastly they develop a model which allows for fluctuations both in banks' wholesale...

In many countries current water-pricing policies are dictated by the sole objective of breaking-even in each period. This results in large withdrawals which are not sustainable in the long-run hence not optimal. In this paper I derive the optimal dynamic water resource management policy of a...

Generators supplying electricity markets are subject to volatile input and output prices and uncertain fuel availability. Price-risk may be hedged to a considerable extent but fuel-risk - water flows in the case of hydro and gas availability in the case of thermal plants - may not be. We show...

This paper uses an equilibrium model of multipart nonlinear pricing to determine the magnitude of foregone profits due to the implementation of simple tariff options. I then use the available information from a cross-section of independent cellular telephone markets to study how these foregone...

Margeret Beardow presented, The cost structure of electricity lines businesses and performance competitive pressures in March 2003 at an ISCR half day seminar.

Policy organizations such as the OECD and the EU have placed much emphasis on the role of local loop unbundling as a regulatory tool in stimulating the rollout and uptake of broadband technologies and consequently promoting the accrual of economic benefits from electronic commerce. However there...