Over the next 50 years, New Zealand's population will age substantially. There has been wide debate about whether New Zealand should prepare for population ageing by increasing national savings. The debate had not, however, involved explicit consideration of possible time paths for savings,...

The purpose of this paper is to extend the simulation analysis of population ageing in Guest, Bryant and Scobie (2003). In that paper a single-good Ramsey-Solow model was calibrated for New Zealand and used to simulate the impact of population ageing on optimal national saving and average living...

There is an on-going debate about the level of savings in New Zealand. A fundamental question pervades the debate: namely, are we saving enough? This question arises at two levels: for the economy as a whole and for individual households. At the macroeconomic level, the concern is whether our...

Bargaining models of household wealth accumulation point to a potential conflict of interest between husbands and wives. Since wives are typically younger than their husbands and have longer life expectancy, they have to finance a longer expected retirement period. Thus, it is argued that when...

There is now substantial evidence that New Zealand's overall rate of economic growth relative to Australia's has been lower in part because of lower levels and slower growth in our labour productivity. This then requires us to explore why the labour productivity is lower in New Zealand. This...

New Zealand's unrelenting current account deficits, its trade performance and high external debt level remain central to ongoing economic policy debates. However, what has been overlooked in the discussion of New Zealand's economic relations with its trading partners is the positive contribution...

This paper develops a simple model that captures the essential features of the supply and demand for housing, and which is used to evaluate the impact of a range of policy interventions. The model incorporates functions describing the demand to rent or purchase housing, a function describing the...

There is now substantial evidence that New Zealand’s overall rate of economic growth relative to Australia’s has been lower in part because of lower levels and slower growth in our labour productivity. This then requires us to explore why the labour productivity is lower in New Zealand. This...

New Zealand’s unrelenting current account deficits, its trade performance and high external debt level remain central to ongoing economic policy debates. However, what has been overlooked in the discussion of New Zealand’s economic relations with its trading partners is the positive...

There is an on-going debate about the level of savings in New Zealand. A fundamental question pervades the debate: namely, are we saving enough? This question arises at two levels: for the economy as a whole and for individual households. At the macroeconomic level, the concern is whether our...