By comparison with some other countries, New Zealand relies heavily on education and health services and retirement income support provided by governments and financed through taxation. Much government education and health expenditure benefits families with moderate to high current incomes. Read more
Why should we care about the size of government? There are many reasons to be concerned, but the most obvious answer is that high levels of government spending and taxation suppress economic performance, which is the basis of material living standards. Read more
David Green explains why poverty studies based on expenditure or consumption are superior to those based on income. He argues that a more fundamental objection to many studies of poverty is that they divert attention from the more serious problems of welfare dependency and diminished personal responsibility. Read more
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a radical doctrine. It embodies a new and wider conception of the role of private business and the way in which it should be conducted. Read more
The issue of the best monetary arrangement for New Zealand was debated extensively at the end of the 1980s. The resulting Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 1989 and the relatively light-handed regulation of the commercial banking sector were regarded by many economists as among the major achievements of the New Zealand institutional reform process of the 1980s and early 1990s. Read more
Statistics produced by Stern Stewart and the ANZ Bank on the destruction of shareholder value by New Zealand companies have attracted widespread publicity. They reinforce widespread anti-business sentiments.[1] One business magazine has interpreted them as a condemnation of "our scandalous management". Read more
Describing the shift in the New Zealand public sector from administrative controls to a performance-driven system, this book analyses the evolution of public sector management, its current state and areas for improvement. It offers a rich menu of ideas and experiences for any country determined to improve public management, including lessons from the successes and failures of the New Zealand reformers. Read more
At different stages from the late 1970s onwards, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, without exception, moved in the direction of market-oriented policies of economic reform. That is, they shifted from using public policy instruments, such as regulation or public ownership of enterprise, to a greater reliance on market mechanisms and incentives to increase economic welfare. Read more
This collection of speeches, submissions and articles is the sixteenth in a series produced by the New Zealand Business Roundtable. The material in this volume is organised in six sections: economic directions; the public sector; industry policy and regulation; education and the labour market; social policy; and miscellaneous. Read more
Businesses up and down the country will have started the new year reflecting on the new millennium, the implications of the change of government, and the forces that are shaping the international environment in which New Zealand firms are increasingly operating. The world economy looks to be set for a good year. Read more
There seems to be a widely held view or suspicion in New Zealand that this country's real cost of capital is high, and that this obstructs investment and/or places New Zealand firms at a disadvantage to foreign competitors. Motivated by these concerns this paper examines the following questions: is the real cost of capital high in New Zealand by comparison with other countries? Read more
The general question that I have been asked to address is this: how to think about telecommunications regulation. My comparative advantage is not in particular knowledge of the ongoing New Zealand dispute on how heavy- or light-handed telecommunications regulation ought to be, although I have some weak instincts on that subject that I will share with you in due course. Read more
The NZBR, in its research, is attempting to take the broadest possible view of the concept of a regulatory constitution. We have analysed many attempts at regulatory reform within countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), starting with the initiatives of various US presidents in the early 1970s. Read more
How can we decide what the goals of public policy ought to be? Should equality or some other form of equity be a social goal? Read more
The publication of this paper comes at an important time for the future of the legal profession in New Zealand. Regulation that is specific to the legal profession has been the subject of increasing debate in recent years. Read more