Insights

Like much of the world, New Zealand’s economy is still feeling the lingering consequences of the global financial crisis and the hang-over of its own asset price bubble. The economy is recovering slowly. In the last few years, households have spent cautiously and paid down mortgages. This was an adjustment that needed to happen. But net foreign liabilities are still very high and recent credit growth raises concerns that the adjustment has not been enough. Major action will be needed to contain the ageing-related growth in government spending that is about to hit us, and lift economic growth. Steps have been made in the right direction, but further reforms are needed. New Zealanders need to be prepared to make sacrifices in the short run to make progress in the long run. The longer we delay action, the bleaker our prospects.

Hosting large events like the Rugby World Cup are expensive undertakings. That makes value-for-money evaluation critical. But most impact event analysis doesn’t stack up, missing displacement effects. It means benefits are often far smaller than people think.

Before Graeme Wheeler starts his new job as Governor of the Reserve Bank, he must sign a new Policy Targets Agreement (PTA) that sets the goalposts for monetary policy. This is an opportunity to introduce macro-prudential tools to help ease the exchange rate impact of inflation targeting.

Recent angst about trade agreements challenging domestic regulatory power distracts from an undeniable truth: the international implications of domestic regulatory settings have never been more important for New Zealand businesses. Rather than fighting it, New Zealand policymakers and firms need to better understand how changes to domestic regulation that are taking place in an environment of closer regional cooperation can enhance productivity, growth and incomes.

New Zealand's population is ageing – confronting firms to respond to the opportunities an ageing population brings. The most successful firms will need to have a clear understanding of the impacts of demographic change on not just consumer demand, but also the supply side of business. This means putting in place strategies to address the impact of ageing on the make-up of the workforce, succession planning and where new ideas will come from.

Consumers, supermarkets and distributors in Germany and the United Kingdom have been demanding reduced chemical use on fruit. The innovative growing programme ‘Apple Futures’ brought scientists and growers together to figure out how to reduce sprays and residues while producing export-quality fruit. Analysis from NZIER found that the research programme preserved between $25m and $35m per year of industry net income from 2008 to 2011, at a research cost of $3.2m. In just four years, the apple industry earned up to an extra $113m by reducing chemical residues to one-tenth of the maximum set by the European Union.

Breaking an addiction is difficult: only about 3% of smokers who go cold turkey manage to successfully quit. New research by behavioural economists shows that getting people to make a financial bet on their success could lift those rates by over half again. Economists at NZIER think it's an option that should be considered as the government aims to achieve a smoke-free nation by 2025.  

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.

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.

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?