This paper identifies the expansion and contraction phases of New Zealand's national and regional house prices, by employing techniques typically used to study cycles in real activity, the so-called Classical cycle dating method. We then enquire into the nature of the cycles, addressing five...

Counterfactual experiments with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's core model provide some insight into the implications for New Zealand's economic performance over the 1990s, had it credibly fixed its currency to the Australian dollar. If New Zealand had faced the relatively more stimulatory...

There are no official quarterly real GDP estimates for New Zealand for the period prior to 1977. We develop a seasonally adjusted series for 1947q2 to 2006q2, by linking quarterly observations from two recent official series to temporally disaggregated observations for an earlier time period....

Intrinsically trustworthy agents never cheat. A society's willingness to trust and the quality of its institutions have their origins in the intrinsic trustworthiness of its citizens. Trustworthiness is the basis for maximizing output in economic exchange and in explaining differences in...

A series of high-profile food-related scares around the globe has drawn attention to the issue of food safety and other health risks associated with agriculture. Because the scope of the problem is different at different levels of economic development, we need nuanced policy options to promote...

We compute classical real GDP business cycles and growth cycles, contrast classical recessions with 'technical' recessions, and assess the sensitivity of our peaks and troughs to data revisions. Calling a technical recession after two successive quarters of negative growth can provide...

On 26 March the Reserve Bank and The Treasury hosted a forum on exchange rate issues for officials and other invited participants to discuss a range of papers prepared by staff of the two institutions. In these concluding remarks, Assistant Governor John McDermott offered some personal...

An important requirement, prior to countries’ adopting a common currency or maintaining an independent monetary policy, is establishing the extent to which they share a common economic cycle and how susceptible they are to region-specific shocks. For example, Kouparitsas (2001) has examined...