Health status is an important element in the decision to continue working or retire among older workers. Given the demographic projections for the next four decades, there will be increasing opportunities for older workers to remain in the workforce. However, an individual's decision is likely...

KiwiSaver is a voluntary savings scheme aimed at increasing the retirement wealth of a target population. A critical element shaping the success of KiwiSaver is the extent to which individuals participate in the scheme, given its voluntary nature; and, having chosen to participate, the extent to...

Increasing life expectancies and uncertainty about future retirement incomes are likely to lead to various changes in behaviour. As expectations are revised, one potentially important adjustment mechanism is in labour force participation rates. There is already evidence these are rising for...

This paper reviews the flow approach (income less consumption) to measuring saving and the associated trends in sectoral saving rates for New Zealand, as derived from the national accounts. It also presents estimates for the household sector, of the stock measure of savings (changes in net...

The objective of this paper is to analyse the extent to which membership of KiwiSaver has been associated with greater accumulations of net wealth. The paper utilises two linked sources of data which cover the period 2002 to 2010: Statistics New Zealand's Survey of Family, Income and Employment...

To the best of our knowledge, this paper reports the first set of nationally representative results on the importance of ‘absorptive capacity'. Absorptive capacity is generally defined as a firm's ability to internalise external knowledge. Using data principally from the New Zealand Business...

The 21st century global decline in productivity growth is not well understood. One possible contributor is a decline in economic dynamism. We explore the contribution of firm formation and employee movement to productivity using administrative data on the population of New Zealand construction...

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 income...