澳大利亚、新西兰政府扶持小企业发展的经验及思考

加强政府对小企业发展的扶持,创新扶持的方式,是我国经济发展中面临的课题。作者通过对澳大利亚、新西兰扶持小企业发展情况的考察,论述了两国政府对小企业管理和扶持的系统做法,重点介绍了澳大利亚政府所资助的商业企业服务中心(简称BEC)的职能、体系、运作方式、服务内容和标准,阐述了政府对BEC实施管理和服务的方式方法,并结合作者所在市实际,对地方政府借鉴澳、新经验构筑中小企业服务平台,运用市场机制发展类似商业企业服务中心等机构,加强对中小企业的政策扶持,提高支持中小企业发展的组织程序提出了对策建议。     

The Australia — New Zealand Farm Problem and the Appropriate Role of Government

Almost throughout the world, farm incomes tend to be low and unstable compared with incomes in other industries, except where heavily subsidised. This instability has become all the more serious because fluctuations have been around a long-term downward trend in the fortunes of agriculture which commenced probably prior to World War I. The long-run world-wide farm problem is an inevitable consequence of economic growth, which results in a surplus of farmers, and especially of small farmers. We must recognise the quite intractable nature of the long-term world-wide component of the problem, as distinct from what can be blamed on our governments, and on the short-term to medium-term world market situation. Temporary assistance policy should centre on facilitating adjustment. The ad hoc, inefficient and inequitable palliatives of the past should be avoided. Short-term assistance should be consistent with longer term objectives for industry development: it should not include output-based subsidies that encourage continued overproduction and usually provide most assistance to those in least need. The emphasis should be on welfare-type assistance based on the individual rather than industry-wide aid.     

The impact of R&D subsidy on innovation: evidence from New Zealand firms

This study examines the impact of government subsidy through R&D grants on innovation output for firms in New Zealand. Using a large database that links administrative and tax data with survey data, we find that R&D grants have a stronger effect on more novel innovation (e.g. applying for a patent or introducing new products to the world) than on incremental innovation (e.g. any product innovation) and that larger, project-based grants are more effective at promoting innovation than smaller, non-project-specific grants. There is little evidence that R&D grants have differential effects between smaller (<50 employees) and larger firms.     

Skill Upgrading in New Zealand, 1986–2001

Educational attainment increased markedly in New Zealand between 1986 and 2001, while the income premia for higher qualifications first increased and then stabilised or decreased over the 1990s. We first document the growth in qualification‐based skills and then examine its contribution to average income growth and the relationship with relative demand changes. Of the 15 per cent increase in real average incomes between 1986 and 2001, upskilling accounted for 25 per cent, while 70 per cent was due to income growth across all qualifications. The pattern of qualification employment share and relative income changes provides evidence of changing demand for skills within detailed industry–occupation cells.     

The Hayekian Approach to Banking Supervision in New Zealand

New Zealand has one of the least regulated banking systems in the world. Instead of relying on deposit insurance, prudential regulation and central bank monitoring to ensure banking stability, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand relies on depositor monitoring. Depositors are aided in their monitoring process by the provision of quarterly disclosure statements. This article suggests that the contractual nature of the banking firm is such that depositor monitoring will not ensure banking stability, and that the Hayekian reforms of the New Zealand banking system are built upon false premises.     

The seasonal unit root structure in New Zealand Macroeconomic variables

ADF unit root tests are generally applied to macroeconomic data prior to testing theoritical models to ensure that all relevant variables are integrated of the same order. Not only is it important to test that these variables are integrated of the same order but also that a cointegrating relationship exists; failure to do so raise the specture of false inference associated with the spurious regression problem. The seasonal nature of quarterly data adds a further proplem which has generally been overcome by seasonally adjusting the data using procedure such as the census X-11 rather than suppressing it, have attempted to determine whether the seasonal component in each variable exhibits stochastic non-stationary. This paper analysisunit roots in a seasonal setting and compares the recently developed tests for seasonal unit roots as well as the standard augmented Dickey-Fuller zerop frequency unit root tests. Of the variables tested relatively few paper to be integrated at the seasonal frequenciues and, as other studies suggest,determinstic seasonal effects are typically more important than stochastic ones.     

Estimating potential output for New Zealand

One of the main indicators of inflationary pressures used by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is the output gap. An alternative to the Reserve Bank's incumbent measure of potential output is obtained using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) methodology with long–run restrictions. The Reserve Bank's official measure of the output gap and the estimate obtained from the SVAR model tend to agree about the state of the cycle, especially during the 1970s and 1990s. However, during the 1980s, the period of economic reforms, they are more dissimilar.     

Income Growth and Earnings Variations in New Zealand, 1998–2004

This article analyses changes in the distributions of working‐age individuals' earnings and total income in New Zealand over the period 1998–2004. We find that there have been broad gains in income across the distribution, suggesting the spoils of growth have been shared widely. Mean and median earnings increased 15 and 23 per cent respectively, while mean and median income increased 12–13 per cent. Inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, was more stable: earnings inequality fell 4 per cent, while income inequality was unchanged. The main drivers of the changes were employment and real wage growth. We estimate that roughly one‐half of the growth in average incomes was due to employment growth, and one‐quarter each to demographic changes and wage growth. The relative employment and wage contributions varied across the income distribution: employment growth dominated gains at the lower end of the distribution, while wage gains dominated changes at the higher end.