Productive and Unproductive Capital: A mapping of the New Zealand system of national accounts to classical economic categories, 1972‐95

New Zealand has gained considerable international attention for the neo-liberal economic reform programme it enacted from the mid-1980s; this programme has served as a model for similar reform elsewhere. Within the neoclassical framework of the reformers, the programme has produced many improvements to the economy. Such fundamental indicators as lower inflation, lower budget deficits and higher economic growth are cited as evidence of the improved economic conditions. Yet unemployment remains high, real interest rates are among the highest in the world, nominal interest rates and business confidence fluctuate considerably, and the balance of payments is deteriorating. Using a classical framework, this paper examines the neo-liberal reform of the New Zealand economy to see if there are alternative explanations for the persistence of these problems. The methodology developed by Shaikh & Tonak (1994) is used to map official national accounts data to classical economic categories for the 1972 to 1995 period. This approach is compared with earlier attempts at estimating classical economic categories for New Zealand. This classical view of the economic reforms is compared with the conventional view. The paper's main results are that there was a large increase in unproductive economic activity associated with the economic reforms in New Zealand; that the improvement in economic fundamentals emphasised by the reformers reflects this growth of unproductive activity; and that the persistence of other economic indicators is related to the ongoing weakness of productive activity.     

Fiscal consolidation in the euro area: Long-run benefits and short-run costs

In this paper, we examine the macroeconomic effects of alternative fiscal consolidation policies in the New Area-Wide Model (NAWM), a two-country open-economy model of the euro area developed at the European Central Bank (cf. [Coenen, G., McAdam, P., Straub, R., in press. Tax reform and labour-market performance in the euro area: a simulation-based analysis using the New Area-Wide Model. Forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control]). We model fiscal consolidation as a permanent reduction in the targeted government debt-to-output ratio and analyse both expenditure and revenue-based policies that are implemented by means of simple fiscal feedback rules. We find that fiscal consolidation has positive long-run effects on key macroeconomic aggregates such as output and consumption, notably when the resulting improvement in the budgetary position is used to lower distortionary taxes. At the same time, fiscal consolidation gives rise to noticeable short-run adjustment costs in contrast to what the literature on expansionary fiscal consolidations suggests. Moreover, depending on the fiscal instrument used, fiscal consolidation may have pronounced distributional effects.     

Productivity Trends in Australian and New Zealand Manufacturing

The purpose of this article is to study relative trends in total factor productivity (TFP) between the Australian and New Zealand manufacturing sectors from 1986 to 1996. Since 1984 both economies have undergone major structural changes with varying degrees of speed and intensity. We use the Malmquist index to measure TFP growth and decompose it into an efficiency change and a technical change component. This decomposition provides extra insight on assessing relative productivity trends during a period of economic reform. The results indicate the Australian manufacturing sector exhibits better rates of individual factor productivity performance while multifactor productivity is estimated to be higher in New Zealand manufacturing. TFP growth in New Zealand is driven by technical rather than efficiency change. In fact, the New Zealand manufacturing average rate of efficiency change is estimated to be negative over the sample period.     

Real Effects of Monetary Policy in New Zealand

This article analyses the dynamic effects of unexpected domestic and foreign monetary policy shocks on industrial output in New Zealand based on a new open economy macroeconomic model. Empirical analyses are performed using unrestricted recursive open economy vector autoregressive models involving policy and non‐policy variables for New Zealand and four of its most important trading partners (that is, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States). The empirical findings are in accord with the qualitative predictions of the conventional monetary transmission mechanism applicable to a small open economy. Consequently, no empirical anomalies are observed in the dynamic behaviour of New Zealand industrial output in response to restrictive monetary innovations of domestic and foreign origin.     

How large are the gains to commitment policy and optimal delegation for New Zealand?

This paper measures the benefits of commitment-based monetary policy over discretion for a small open economy inflation targeting country—New Zealand. Significant gains accrue from commitment policy. If commitment-based policy is unavailable, the government can recoup much of the gains to commitment through optimal delegation, asking the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to care more about inflation stabilisation. The 1999 PTA, the core of the policy contract between the New Zealand government and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, placed an increased emphasis on stabilisation of output, interest rates and the exchange rate. This is inconsistent with a shift to optimal delegation behaviour and must stem from a changed perception of the welfare costs of macroeconomic stabilization on the part of the Government. This is shown to be true when the definition of inflation is extended to a medium term measure.     

Firm performance and corporate finance in New Zealand

Low productivity growth in New Zealand has been a paradox. We study New Zealand firms’ profitability, in terms of profit margin and return on assets (ROA), from the viewpoints of productivity enablers using firm-level panel data. We find that tangible fixed investment and a research and development (R&D) tax incentive are associated with higher profitability performance. In addition, the firm size is found to be a key determinant of profit margin. By contrast, we do not find any evidence that intangible investment can improve the profitability. The global financial crisis has not changed the leverage effect on ROA in New Zealand, while the impact of R&D became more prominent after the crisis.     

Worldwide Tax Reform ‘How Does Australia Compare?’

Drawing principally on the English-speaking countries, where tax reform has proceeded furthest, the common characteristics and causes of the worldwide tax reform movement of the 1980s are examined. Tax reform reflected the change in economic philosophy — disillusionment with state intervention and a revival of belief in the efficacy of markets.
The causes and content of tax reform in Australia have much in common with those elsewhere except that the reduction in marginal rates of income tax was achieved with no real change in the tax mix. The success of tax reform is assessed using as criteria: (i) how far the outcome matched the objectives specified by the reformers themselves — in particular tax neutrality; (ii) the sustain-ability of the reforms; and (iii) how far 'undesirable' consequences (especially distributional effects) were avoided. Applying these criteria to Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and Australia, it is concluded that in all these countries there are deficiencies, but Australia comes second to New Zealand in the success league. The notable Australian deficiencies are the lack of a broad-based consumption tax (Australia is now the only OECD country without one) and the fact that lower marginal rates of income tax have been achieved mainly because of falling real thresholds of the tax brackets.     

New Zealand's Economic Reforms: An assessment

New Zealand's economic policy between 1984 and 1996 is often hailed as an example of comprehensive supply-side reform that successfully improved the performance of a weak economy. In contrast, this paper presents statistical evidence to show that: (1) New Zealand sacrificed a large volume of real per capita gross domestic product after 1987; (2) its average unemployment rate increased substantially after 1988; (3) labour productivity growth declined after 1992; and (4) the per capita real income of low-income households in 1996 was more than 3% lower in absolute terms than it had been in 1984. The paper concludes that the economic reform programme did not achieve the objectives expected at its launch.     

对中国经济增长统计数据可信度的估计

中国经济增长速度统计数据的可信度问题 ,一直受到国内外各方面的注意。这项统计数据是否准确可靠 ,不但会影响经济预测与分析的准确性 ,也会直接影响宏观经济政策的合理性和准确性 ,进而可能对经济运行本身产生积极或消极影响。当研究中国经济增长状况和未来前景时 ,有必要对过去相当长时期统计数据的可信度作出独立分析和判断。本文对不同时期经济增长率的可信度进行了初步的估计。     

LABOUR MOBILITY AND TRANS‐TASMAN CURRENCY UNION*

The prospect of a common currency for Australia and New Zealand has been canvassed by senior poli‐ticians and bureaucrats, and has been the subject of academic debate. According to Mundell (1961 ), a high degree of internal labour mobility is a desirable feature of currency unions. This study looks at the extent to which long‐term migration between Australia and New Zealand responds to output shocks. Estimated VAR models and panel Granger‐causality tests demonstrate that shocks to relative per capita output have a significant and symmetrical impact on migration flows between Australia and New Zealand, and most of the impact is felt after about one year. Separating the shocks to Australia and New Zealand shows that ‘pull’ effects are more important than ‘push’ effects. Additionally, the trajectory of the Australian economy proves particularly influential for the choice of New Zealand emigrants. Although permanent migration responds intuitively to the state of the economy in Australia and New Zealand, the level of these migration flows is low in comparison to Australian inter‐state migration; yet it is high in relation to any third country.     

Analysing shock transmission in a data-rich environment: a large BVAR for New Zealand

We analyse a large Bayesian Vector Autoregression (BVAR) containing almost 100 New Zealand macroeconomic time series. Methods for allowing multiple blocks of equations with block-specific Bayesian priors are described, and forecasting results show that our model compares favourably to a range of other time series models. Examining the impulse responses to a monetary policy shock and to two less conventional shocks—net migration and the climate—we highlight the usefulness of the large BVAR in analysing shock transmission.     

ESTIMATED SMALL OPEN ECONOMY MODEL WITH FRICTIONAL UNEMPLOYMENT

This paper investigates labour market dynamics in New Zealand by estimating a structural small open economy model enriched with standard search and matching frictions in the labour market. We show that the model fits the business cycle features of key macroeconomic variables reasonably well and provides an appealing monetary transmission mechanism. We then extend our analysis to examine the driving forces behind labour market variables. Our findings suggest that the bulk of variation in labour market variables is solely explained by disturbances pertaining to the labour market.     

An index of macroeconomic performance

This article develops a composite index of macroeconomic performance (IMP) and uses this index to ask: did the macroeconomic performance of the US economy improve during the 1990s relative to its own past performance; and has US macroeconomic performance been superior to that of other advanced capitalist economies during the post‐war period as a whole? It is demonstrated that by studying the behaviour of an IMP, it is possible to draw conclusions about these comparative macroeconomic performance puzzles that are robust with respect to changes between multiple index weighting schemes.     

Understanding the economic dynamics behind growth-inequality relationships

In this paper, a dynamic general equilibrium (DGE) model of growth-inequality relationships, with missing credit markets, knowledge spillover and self-employed agents, is calibrated to New Zealand data. The model explains how two distinct policy shocks involving redistribution and immigration imply, subsequently, two completely opposite outcomes. Agents’ inability to borrow aggravates a negative macroeconomic effect of heterogeneity on growth. Redistribution mitigates that effect but creates microeconomic disincentives on saving and work-effort. Consequently, immigration shocks that perturb variance of efficiency induce a negative growth-inequality relationship, while redistribution shocks, in New Zealand’s case, produce larger fluctuations in incentives than in macro benefits, implying a positive growth-inequality relationship.     

Macroeconomic equilibrium and welfare under simple monetary and switching fiscal policy rules

Using a standard forward-looking New Keynesian model, this paper investigates rational expectation equilibrium determinacy and macroeconomic performance of simple monetary policy rules under exogenous versus endogenous tax policies when there is tax uncertainty. Under the endogenous tax framework, we found: 1. responding to tax allows monetary policy to have control on the determinacy region, hence higher policy flexibility with respect to the fiscal policy conduct; 2. welfare improvement may come at the expense of cycling. The risk minimizing monetary policy behavior may become problematic since loss function values display huge variations depending on the probabilities given to future tax policy outcomes.     

AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS CYCLE FACTS*

This paper documents the post-war business cycle facts for Australia. The Hodrick-Prescott filter is used to remove the trend component from quarterly macroeconomic series. The business cycle facts we report are the volatilities of the cyclical (detrended) series and their cross correlations with cyclical real output. These facts are consistent with the business cycle facts reported for the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand with one exception. For most of the period since 1974, the real wage in Australia is strongly counter-cyclical whereas for these countries it is procyclical.     

INTERNATIONAL CREDIT CHANNEL OF MONETARY POLICY: AN EMPIRICAL NOTE

A longstanding macroeconomic issue is how monetary policy affects the real economy. There are economists placing an emphasis on the role of bank lending in monetary transmission. Their view, called the credit view, is that a monetary tightening shifts the supply schedule of bank loans left, thereby forcing bank‐dependent borrowers to cut back on expenditures. In the literature, the credit view is typically studied in a closed‐economy context. In reality, however, banks make international loans through their overseas branches and subsidiaries. This suggests that the credit view should be studied in an open‐economy context. This paper proposes the international credit view: a monetary‐policy shock originated in one country propagates to another through banks’ reallocation of funds between the two countries. For testing the hypothesis, Australia and New Zealand provide an excellent case to study. This is because Australian‐owned banks dominate the banking market in New Zealand. This paper aims to test the international credit view within a framework of vector auto‐regression models. A significant and robust finding is that the supply schedule of loans shifts left in New Zealand after a monetary tightening in Australia.     

Would adopting the Australian dollar provide superior monetary policy in New Zealand?

Counterfactual experiments with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's core model provide some insight into the implications for New Zealand's economic performance over the 1990s, had it credibly fixed its currency to the Australian dollar. If New Zealand had faced the relatively more stimulatory Australian monetary conditions prevailing over the 1990s, then output growth may have been temporarily boosted. However, demand pressures would have probably been greater and inflation higher. In particular, results suggest that over the latter part of the 1990s annual inflation would have been approximately 1% point higher on average. Stochastic simulation experiments provide a vehicle to analyse what the implications of currency union might be more generally. Results suggest that if New Zealand were to lose its ability to set monetary policy independent of that set in Australia, then the variability of inflation and output would increase over the business cycle.     

当前经济形势下加强完善宏观经济调控

2008年爆发的这场世界金融危机,给全球经济带来了重大损失,我国经济发展也出现了放缓的情况。但是随着社会主义市场经济体制的逐步建立,我国宏观调控的方式不断创新,体系不断完善,经验不断丰富。根据当前国际国内经济形势,针对经济领域存在的突出问题,进一步加强和完善宏观调控,对于推动国民经济又好又快发展,具有重要意义。本文针对目前我国宏观经济状况,对当前宏观经济中出现物价持续上涨、通货膨胀压力较大、固定资产投资反弹压力较大、转变经济发展方式任重道远、资源消耗快速增长、节能减排压力较大、国际经济环境变化引起的不确定性和风险压力增大等问题进行了详细分析,并提出了宏观间接调控、计划指导原则、集中和重点性以及多种宏观调控手段综合运用等宏观经济调控的重要原则,最后针对当前的国内经济形势,提出了进一步加强和完善宏观调控,坚持科学发展观,深化体制改革,充分发挥市场机制的作用,注意完善价格形成机制的建议和意见。     

The Great Leap Forward, Economic Reforms, and the Unit Root Hypothesis: Testing for Breaking Trend Functions in China''s GDP Data

This paper has two related objectives. The first is to evaluate empirically whether annual data for China's GDP and its sectoral components from 1952 to 1998 can be modeled more accurately as a stationary process around a breaking trend function as opposed to a unit-root process. The second is to identify the long-run growth path of the Chinese economy and shocks that are big enough to have altered the path. The conclusion that China's major output time series are trend stationary with structural breaks has significant implications for the government in policy decisions for long-run growth and short-run stabilization. It also has implications for modeling comovements between output variables and other macroeconomic variables in cointegration analysis of the Chinese economy.J. Comp. Econom., December 2000, 28(4), pp. 814–827. Department of Commerce, Massey University (Albany), Auckland, New Zealand.