Publication by type: Public discussion documents (NZIER WP)

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.

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.”

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.

The economic impacts of retaining tariffs in New Zealand - a  dynamic CGE analysis

The government has decided to freeze all remaining tariffs in New Zealand to 2015. The only reductions will come about through Free Trade Agreements. We use a dynamic Computable General Equilibrium model of the New Zealand economy to examine the economic impacts of this policy decision. The results show that retaining these tariffs has a very small negative impact on GDP. We also show that households are in fact very slightly better off if tariffs remain in place, due to the negative terms of trade effects associated with tariff removal. The overall conclusion is that the decision to freeze tariffs is not a big deal from an economic perspective.

NZIER working paper 2009/6 by Dr Ralph Lattimore & Dr Trinh Le (NZIER), Iris Claus (Inland Revenue) & Adolf Stroombergen (Infometrics)

A paper prepared for the NZIER 50th Anniversary Research Award
NZIER working paper 2009/4 by David Law (Commerce Commission), Murat Genc (University of Otago) and John Bryant (Independent Researcher)
See also the associated background paper

NZIER working paper 2009/2 by Grant Andrews and Jean-Pierre de Raad

NZIER working paper 2008/3 by Trinh Le

NZIER working paper 2008/1 by Trinh Le (NZIER) and Bryce Wilkinson (Capital Economics)

NZIER working paper 2006/5 by Johannah Branson and Brent Layton

NZIER working paper 2006/3 by Tahia Eaqub