A Note on Perry's Reconsideration of Macroeconomic Evidence from New Zealand

Perry in this journal draws on two new sources to challenge claims by Dalziel (2002) and Peetz (2005) about relatively weak labour productivity growth in New Zealand after the introduction of its Employment Contracts Act (ECA) in 1991. While new data raise further research questions, they do not overturn our original conclusions. Whether the ECA contributed to higher labour input growth compared with Australia, it failed to improve labour productivity growth.     

A macroeconomic model of aggregate supply and demand for the UK

In this paper we publish for the first time the econometric model of the UK economy recently developed at City University Business School (CUBS). The differentiating feature of the CUBS model is its concern with the ‘supply side’ and its attempt to estimate an aggregate production function. The model distinguishes between markets in goods and services, labour, capital, money and foreign exchange.     

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.     

Pareto, Parsons, and the Boundary Between Economics and Sociology

A bstract .   Recent discussions of the separation bUniversity of Bremenetween economics and sociology in the United States highlight the way Talcott Parsons used Vilfredo Pareto's Trattato di Sociologia Generale to propose that economics study logical actions and sociology study nonlogical actions. This article argues instead that in Pareto's treatise: (1) sociology is a synthetic discipline concerned with the study of human society in general; (2) human behavior is nearly always logical from a subjective point of view; and (3) sociology studies both logical and nonlogical behavior judged from an objective viewpoint. Thus, Pareto is an important intellectual ancestor for economic sociology.     

THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO MONETARY DISINFLATION

Abstract. During the 1980s many countries adopted tight monetary policies to reduce high inflation rates which were the legacy of the 1970s. As inflation threatens to rise at the beginning of this decade, this paper provides a survey of the 1980s literature which sought to provide theoretical understandings of how monetary disinflation is achieved. Four models are presented—monetarist, neo-Keynesian, new classical and post-Keynesian. Each model's explanation of the recession which accompanies the monetary disinflation is outlined, as well as possible policy measures to reduce the extent of the recession and to hasten the return to full employment.     

Twenty-Five Years of Counting for Nothing: Waring's Critique of National Accounts

Marilyn Waring’s If Women Counted (1988) shows how national income accounting became infused with the patriarchal values dominant during its post–World War II development. This article revisits Waring’s analysis in the light of continued support of gross domestic product as a useful statistic. It explains the historical and personal context for her analysis, emphasizing postwar patriarchal values as well as Waring’s experience as a Member of the New Zealand Parliament (1975–84) and her active engagement with women in developed and developing countries. It illustrates the support If Women Counted gives to reformers and recognizes that change has occurred, including provision for satellite accounts in the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA). Nevertheless, the paper concludes that Waring’s profound challenge to the central framework of UNSNA will continue as long as the system excludes unpaid household work and impacts on the natural environment from its core statistics.     

Alternative Poverty Lines for Malaysia

Because of the shortcomings of the Malaysian official poverty line, this paper offers several alternative regional poverty line estimations with varying underlying assumptions. Using the Household Expenditure Survey 2004/2005, poverty lines are estimated based on the consumption patterns of 10th and 20th percentile household per capita expenditure. The regional poverty lines from these reference groups produced robust poverty measurement rankings across regions in the country. We suggest that the poverty lines from both reference groups be used as lower and upper poverty lines for the country.