Labour Market Outcomes in the UK, NZ, Australia and the US: Observations on the Impact of Labour Market and Economic Reforms.

In this paper, the author focuses on labour market and economic reforms and their impact on economic growth, employment and wage outcomes in the longer term. To make the task more manageable the paper described the economic growth experiences of four English speaking countries. The author looks at the impact of the Tatcher reforms in the UK, the Douglas Reforms in New Zealand, and the Hawke Accord period and subsequent labour market reform in Australia. The US is taken as a comparison country that has not been subject to substantial shifts in government introduced labour market and economic reforms, except, perhaps, in area of immigration and very recently in the area of welfare reforms.