The dairy industry is an important contributor to the economy of the Waikato region of New Zealand. An understanding of the history and development of the dairy sector in the different districts of the Waikato region is important in terms of informing future policy. Unfortunately there are...

In many developing countries, the composition of rural households is influenced by the migration of adult household members to urban locations in search of employment. Children may be left in the care of their mother alone, or in the care of grandparents when both parents have migrated. Using...

Development agencies spend approximately US$400 million per year on landmine clearance. Yet many cost-benefit evaluations suggest that landmine clearance is socially wasteful because costs appear to far outweigh social benefits. This paper presents new estimates of the benefits of clearing...

The dairy industry is a major contributor to both the New Zealand economy as a whole and to the Waikato regional economy in particular. The industry is experiencing a period of considerable change, with increases in dairy conversion, increased intensification, and increasing use of nitrogen...

Blogs provide a dynamic interactive medium for online discussion, consistent with communal constructivist pedagogy. This paper explores the use of blogs in the teaching and assessment of a small (40-60 students) introductory economics paper. The role of blogs as a teaching, learning and...

WNew Zealand’s population is ageing rapidly and alongside this the labour force is also ageing. This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the labour force and employment trends among older New Zealanders (that is, those aged 55 and over). Specifically, the paper focuses on labour force...

The results of three surveys of freshman economics students (2008-2010) at the Waikato Management School, New Zealand, suggest that incoming students have significant levels of prior economics knowledge. Given this head start in knowledge, we have expanded our freshman lecture material with more...

Understanding the financial literacy of young people is an essential prerequisite for developing effective education programmes designed to improve young people’s understanding of personal finance. In this paper, we present results from a survey of high school students which included a...

In 2003, New Zealand significantly reorganised high school education by moving to a standards-based assessment approach. This paper investigates whether the economics standards are associated with economic understanding using 2008-2011 data from students at the University of Waikato. We find...

This paper estimates the marginal willingness-to-pay for attributes of a hypothetical HIV vaccine using discrete choice modeling. We use primary data from 326 respondents from Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2008-2009, selected using purposive, venue-based sampling across two strata....