This study investigates a number of inequality indicators in New Zealand. The research examines the current gaps in the indicators between the European population, and MÄori and Pacific people. The study also undertakes a comparison of the changes in the gaps over a period approximating 10...

I consider the literature surrounding the television market. Two important issues in the literature are: the market's two-sided nature, and bundling of channels. I discuss how an asymmetric pricing structure arises in television markets. The literature on bundling in the television market is...

This note computes revenue-maximising tax rates in personal income taxes in the presence of consumption taxes. It finds that the traditional Laffer analysis, which neglects the effects of marginal tax rates on consumption, overestimates the magnitude of revenue-maximising tax rates. The bias...

Effective marginal tax rates can be very different from the statutory rate and vary across firms, reflecting such factors as the extent and nature of taxable deductions (losses, depreciation), asset and ownership structures, and debt/equity financing. We estimate firm-specific EMTRs and related...

This paper investigates the choice of the composition of government expenditure using both positive and normative approaches. The former involves aggregation over selfish voters (simple majority voting and stochastic voting are examined), while the latter involves the choice by a single...

The objective of the paper is to explore the saving and consumption responses of a representative household to a range of policy interventions such as changes in taxes and pension settings. To achieve this, it develops a two-period life-cycle model. The representative household maximises...

This note provides an elementary introduction to the measurement of welfare gains from the introduction of a new good, based on the concept of the ‘virtual price’ and standard expressions for welfare changes arising from price changes.

This paper illustrates the effects of using different distributions and summary measures, using New Zealand data for the period 2007 to 2011. Using an annual accounting period, alternative welfare metrics and units of analysis are investigated. In addition, the sensitivity to assumptions about...

Recent years have seen a series of natural disasters place significant social and fiscal strain on a number of economies. Determining the appropriate tax response to a natural disaster involves multiple complex decisions that often need to be made under time pressure with limited information....

This note considers the problem of distributing a fixed amount of money (‘income’) among a given number of people, such that inequality (measured by either the Gini or Atkinson measure) takes a specified value. It is well known that simultaneous equations admit of many solutions where the...