Browse by publication topic: Public Good publications

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  1. 24 April 2012

    Ahead of the RBNZ Thursday 26 April statement, the NZIER Shadow Board recommends interest rates are kept on hold. Some participants saw room to cut, rates but the Board placed only a small chance (7%) on raising rates being a good move.

  2. 18 April 2012

    The Canterbury earthquakes have disrupted lives and the economy. This Insight brings together key economic indicators to provide a second snapshot of the economic disruption.   We find encouraging signs of stabilisation.

  3. 18 March 2012

    The recovery will be shallower than previously thought, according to the NZIER Consensus Forecasts. The economy will still grow; accelerating from 1.8% in the year ending March 2012 to 3.2% by 2014.

  4. 14 March 2012

    Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time) inspired the Proust index in The Economist newspaper of 25 February 2012. The Economist looked across a number of economic measures to see how far back countries have slipped since the global economic crisis. We replicated the Proust index for New Zealand. The recession has cost us dear. In economic terms, New Zealand is now back in 2005.

  5. 27 January 2012

    New Zealand struggles to grow its economy partially due to its small size and remote location. There is little that can be done to change location, but the size can be increased over time. It is feasible to adopt a population policy with the aim of the population reaching 15 million in the next 50 years – an annual growth rate of 2.5% per annum. This would bring the size and density of the population to levels closer to more prosperous European countries. Fifteen million – two and a half times current projections – is a good target, too, as it allows for several large cities, fostering competition within New Zealand.

  6. 12 December 2011

    The recovery will slower than previously thought, according to the NZIER Consensus Forecasts. But the economy will still grow: 2.2% in the year ending March 2012 and then accelerate to 3.0% in 2013 and 2014. The Canterbury reconstruction will be a key driver, with the rest of the economy growing more modestly, averaging 2.2% over the next three years.

  7. 02 December 2011

    Do you get the sense that New Zealand doesn’t invest in the major public infrastructure facilities like we used to? Previous generations built entire networks for rail, road, water and energy. Only Muldoon’s Think Big projects and the current ‘Roads of National Significance’ might compare. Major infrastructure investment decisions come down to how much we care about our future, and the future of our children and grandchildren. The government’s social discount rate policy captures in a single number how much decision makers care about the future relative to today. The default public sector stance is to use an 8% real (i.e. net of inflation) discount rate. But is 8% right?

  8. 18 November 2011

    This Insight discusses the common pitfalls with undertaking policy development and ultimately writing a snappy, easy to follow RIS.

  9. 08 November 2011

    The Canterbury earthquakes have disrupted lives and the economy. This Insight brings together key economic indicators to provide a snapshot of the economic disruption. The true cost of the disaster will not be known for some time. The immediate clean-up and reconstruction is boosting demand in certain sectors like utilities, construction, safety, healthcare and social assistance. These have not fully offset reduced activity in other sectors.

  10. 02 November 2011

    Performance indices are used worldwide as indicators of activity in key sectors to assist analysts and decision-makers. An advantage of these indices is that, by pooling information from the series that make up the indices, idiosyncratic variation is smoothed out, and a stable and potentially more robust indicator of direction is constructed. Our study shows that individual sector diffusion indices from the QSBO are both good coincidental and leading indicators of economic activity.

  11. 19 October 2011

    NZIER’s Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion (QSBO) contains a 50 year history of business opinion. While its predictive capabilities are well known, there are many more applications that can be pursued using QSBO data. This paper investigates one application, using the QSBO to forecast GDP and inflation up to four quarters ahead of official data releases.

  12. 13 October 2011

    Assumptions on export elasticities can have a big impact on CGE model results, especially at the industry level. Export elasticities measure the responsiveness of demand for a country’s exports to a change in the world price. The greater the elasticity, the greater the change in export demand following a price shift.  We find that the size of the export elasticities has an important impact on the magnitude of Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling results.

  13. 07 October 2011

    Speech to Public Symposium on New Zealand, Australia and China‟s rise. The symposium was organised by Centre for Strategic Studies: New Zealand and the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre, held at Victoria University of Wellington on 7 April 2011.

  14. 30 September 2011

    The main reason for the growing income gap between New Zealand and Australia are differences in the quality of management, process innovation and the quality of labour and capital, finds new research released by NZIER. This finding contrasts with the more conventional belief that a lack of capital intensity or differences in mining wealth is the issue.  “When we adjust for differences in the structure of our economy, we find that the income gap with Australia is not so much because it does different things, but because, in the things we do too, Australia does it better”, said Jean-Pierre de Raad, NZIER’s chief executive.
    “Only 30% of the productivity gap is due to the structure of the economy. Mining is not the secret to Australia’s success.”
    “We also find that capital intensity is not the main thing we should be concerned about, as differences primarily reflect economic structures. Instead, New Zealand’s main problem is the underperformance of industries.”

  15. 28 September 2011

    An occasional column for the Dominion Post newspaper.

    Unemployment in the most recent recession never reached the hurtful heights of the early 1990s. It is now hovering around 6.5 percent. This is not scary by international standards. But the headline figure obscures an uncomfortable fact.  The unemployment rate among those without formal qualifications is about 10.5 percent.

  16. 19 September 2011

    Economists expect resilience despite global risks. New Zealand economists on average believe the economy is set to recover, in part due to reconstruction of Canterbury. Global fears do not appear to have impacted on New Zealand economists’ expectations much as yet. Economic growth forecasts have been revised up a touch for the next two years, according to the latest NZIER Consensus Forecasts Survey. Economic growth will accelerate from 1.5% in the year ending March 2011 to 2.6% in 2012 and 3.7% in 2013. The Canterbury reconstruction will be the major driver, with a more modest recovery elsewhere.

  17. 18 August 2011

    NZIER’s Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion (QSBO) is one of New Zealand’s leading economic indicators. March 2011 marked the 50th anniversary of the QSBO. The QSBO provides data driven insights into how firms are responding to current economic events. Due to its reliability and responsiveness compared to related official statistics, the QSBO has become a key indicator for businesses and policy-makers. Over the past 50 years a significant number of New Zealand economists have contributed to the evolution of the QSBO.

  18. 22 July 2011

    The National Policy Statement (NPS) on Freshwater Management is a good first step, but it may leave local authorities in the dark about how to meet its intent.

  19. 20 June 2011

    Constructive outlook

    Economic forecasters are more optimistic. Economic growth forecasts have been revised up a touch for the next two years, according to the latest NZIER Consensus Forecasts Survey.

  20. 01 April 2011

    Working for Families (WFF) was introduced between 2004 and 2007 to “make work pay” and ensure income adequacy for families with children. The policy has reduced child poverty, drawn an extra 8,100 sole parents into some paid work, encouraged more of them to work 20 hours or more, and reduced the time they receive a benefit. But it also resulted in 9,300 fewer second earners in paid work, and over half of non-beneficiary families with worse incentives to earn more, at an additional cost of $1.5 billion per year.  The objectives are laudable, but we worry about the cost-effectiveness and poor incentives of WFF. To ensure value for money of government spending, it is time to reconsider WFF.

  21. 21 March 2011

    Earthquake delays recovery until 2013

    Economic forecasters believe the past year was weaker than previously thought, and the recovery has been delayed due mainly to the second Canterbury earthquake, according to the latest NZIER Consensus Forecasts Survey.

  22. 15 March 2011

    NZIER contributed the trade and investment chapter of the book Pacific Partners – The future of U.S.-New Zealand Relations. The case studies that lay behind this chapter have now been published as NZIER working paper 2011/1. These case studies were developed to inform and illustrate the conceptual ideas presented in the chapter, and to provide real world examples of how New Zealand and U.S. firms are working together for mutual benefit.

  23. 08 March 2011

    The Government's infrastructure priorities now need to be reviewed in light of the cost of Christchurch's devastating earthquakes. However, the cost-benefit appraisals of major transport schemes that are likely to form part of the reprioritisation tend to understate the benefits. Thus there is a risk the wrong projects get weeded out or delayed when it would be better to look elsewhere to find the money needed to support Christchurch. We describe the reasons why, and provide some considerations that will help reduce this risk. In the long term we would argue for improvements to methodologies.

  24. 01 February 2011

    The Government has recently announced that it will be extending the policy regarding 90-day trial periods for new workers to all employers, not just those with fewer than 20 employees. NZIER’s preliminary analysis suggests that this extension is likely have a positive impact on employment.

  25. 28 January 2011

    Labour’s proposed tax-free threshold for the first $5,000 of wages and removing GST from fresh fruit and vegetables will cost around $1.7 billion in the first year. This is to be funded by raising the top tax rate for high income earners. From an economic perspective, these proposals would be a big step backward.