Immigrants are typically found to have less wealth and hold it in different forms than the native born. These differences may affect both the economic assimilation of immigrants and overall portfolio allocation when immigrants are a large share of the population, as in New Zealand. In this...

Measuring the gain in income from migration is complicated by non-random selection of migrants from the general population, making it hard to obtain an appropriate comparison group of non-migrants. This paper uses a migrant lottery to overcome this problem, providing an experimental measure of...

Immigrants are typically found to have less wealth and hold it in different forms than the native born. These differences may affect both the economic assimilation of immigrants and overall portfolio allocation when immigrants are a large share of the population, as in New Zealand. In this...

Millions of people emigrate every year in search of better economic and social opportunities. Anecdotal evidence suggests that emigrants may have over-optimistic expectations about the incomes they can earn abroad, resulting in excessive migration pressure, and in disappointment amongst those...

We compare successful and unsuccessful applicants to a migration lottery in order to examine the impact of migration on objective and subjective well-being. The results show that international migration brings large improvements in objective well-being. Impacts on subjective well-being are...

This paper investigates the relationship between individual labour market outcomes, household income and expenditure, and inequality and poverty in New Zealand using detailed data from the 1983/84 – 2003/04 Household Economic Survey (HES). We begin by discussing and summarising measures of...

This paper uses data from the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE) to estimate household saving in New Zealand between 2004-2006. Comprehensive data on wealth is collected biannually in SoFIE and we calculate household saving by examining how wealth has changed over time. We find that...

Despite the centrality of voting costs to the paradox of voting, little effort has been made to measure these costs accurately, outside of a few spatially limited case studies. In this paper, we apply Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools to validated national election survey data from New...

Over 200 million people worldwide live outside their country of birth and typically experience large gains in material well-being by moving to where incomes are higher. But effects of migration on subjective well-being are less clear, with some studies suggesting that migrants are miserable in...