This paper investigates whether there is a non-linear relationship between income and the private transfers received by households in developing countries. If private transfers are unresponsive to household income, expansion of public social security is unlikely to crowd out private transfers,...

The economies of the former Soviet Bloc experienced large declines in output during the decade of transition which began with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Yet there are many reasons to believe that measured output and official deflators provide a poor proxy for the change in real...

After two decades of tax neutrality for private saving, New Zealand policy changed radically with the recent introduction of tax incentives for KiwiSaver. A key issue for tax-favoured saving schemes is the extent to which existing saving is reshuffled versus new saving created by reduced...

Bargaining models of household wealth accumulation point to a potential conflict of interest between husbands and wives. Wives are typically younger than their husbands and have longer life expectancy, so they must expect to finance a longer retirement period. Therefore, when they have greater...

There is an on-going debate about the level of savings in New Zealand. A fundamental question pervades the debate: namely, are we saving enough? This question arises at two levels: for the economy as a whole and for individual households. At the macroeconomic level, the concern is whether our...

Human capital is increasingly believed to play an important role in the growth process, however, adequately measuring its stock remains controversial. In this paper three general approaches to measurement are identified; cost-based, income-based and educational stock-based. This survey focuses on...

New Zealand’s approach to retirement incomes profoundly changed with the recent introduction of KiwiSaver and its associated tax incentives. Previous policy reduced lifetime inequality but KiwiSaver and its tax incentives will increase future inequality and lead to diverging living standards...

The economies of the former Soviet Bloc experienced large declines in output during the decade of transition which began with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Yet there are many reasons to believe that measured output and official deflators provide a poor proxy for the change in real...

Human capital is increasingly believed to play an important role in the growth process; however, adequately measuring its stock remains controversial. Because the estimated impact that human capital has on economic growth is sensitive to the measures or proxies of human capital, accurate and...

Immigrants are typically found to have less wealth and hold it in different forms than the native born. These differences may affect both the economic assimilation of immigrants and overall portfolio allocation when immigrants are a large share of the population, as in New Zealand. In this...