The New Zealand Economy

What drives economic growth in New Zealand? How has New Zealand been impacted by globalization and the financial crisis? What will shape future productivity and competitiveness? In this book, leading economists assemble key data to provide an analytical introduction to the contemporary New Zealand economy. Interpreting key economic indicators over time—gross domestic product and interest rates, population, employment and productivity levels, trade and investment, and government accounts—this examination focuses particularly on two issues: globalization and the rise of the Asian economies during the past 30 years, and the origins and continuing effects of the 2007&–08 global financial crisis. Rich with local data and case studies, this is a clear and concise assessment of the current structure and performance of New Zealand's economy from a historical and global perspective.

Well-being in New Zealand is generally high, although there is room for improvement in incomes, housing affordability, distribution, water quality and GHG emissions. Economic growth is projected to remain around 21⁄2 per cent. The main risks to the outlook are rising trade restrictions and a housing market correction. Labour market reforms have been initiated to increase wages for the low paid but will need to be implemented cautiously to minimise potential adverse effects. Substantial planned increases in bank capital requirements should reduce the expected costs of financial crises but might reduce economic activity.

The FIRE economy – built on finance, insurance and real estate – is now the world’s principal source of wealth creation. Its rise has transformed our political, economic and social landscapes, supported by a neoliberal regime that celebrates markets, profit and risk. From rising inequality and ballooning household debt to a global financial crisis and fiscal austerity, the neoliberal ‘orthodoxy’ has brought instability and empowered the few. Yet it remains remarkably resilient, even resurgent, in New Zealand and abroad. In 1995 Jane Kelsey set out a groundbreaking account of the neoliberal revolution in The New Zealand Experiment. Now she marshals an exceptional range of evidence to show how this transfer of wealth and power has been systematically embedded over three decades. Today organisations and commentators once at the vanguard of neoliberal reform, including the IMF and Financial Times journalist Martin Wolf, are warning the current model is unsustainable. A post-neoliberal era beckons. In The FIRE Economy Kelsey identifies the risks posed by FIRE and the barriers embedded neoliberalism presents to a progressive, post-neoliberal transformation – and urges us to act. This is a book New Zealand cannot afford to ignore.

In a brilliant intellectual adventure that ranges from David Ricardo and Adam Smith to economic geography and the science of complex networks, Shaun Hendy and Paul Callaghan explore how New Zealanders can learn to live off knowledge rather than nature. The key to increasing New Zealand's prosperity, they argue, is innovation in high-tech niches. To catch up with the countries that lure young Kiwis away, New Zealand needs to start innovating like a city of four million people; it needs to start taking science seriously; it needs to start seeing its people as people of learning, not just of the land. Get off the Grass provides a readable introduction to a wide variety of ideas including economic geography, network theory, and complexity theory; offers unique insights into the New Zealand economy and its long-term prospects; adds to current debates worldwide about innovation, science, economic growth, and networks.

"Between 1984 and 1988 New Zealand's fourth Labour Government undertook the most comprehensive revision of economic policy which the country had ever seen. Subsidies were abolished, the tax system reformed and state-owned enterprises moved steadily down the path to privatisation. The process became known as "Rogernomics" after the Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas. Douglas became Euromoney's "Finance Minister of the Year" and an internationally admired economic reformer. At home his policies proved more controversial. Although Labour was convincingly re-elected in 1987, a year later the consensus benind Rogernomics collapsed. Roger Douglas and two other ministers left an increasingly divided administration. A major struggle over economic direction lay ahead. Nonetheless, the face of the New Zealand economy had changed irrevocably. In this book, Influential analysts, journalists and participants in the process of reform examine the events and impact of Rogernomics. "Rogernomics : reshapig New Zealand's economy 1984-1988" is an account of an individual's determination to effect change in the teeth of political opposition and institutional inertia."--Back cover.

Jane Kelsey’s exploration of the effects of globalisation on the New Zealand economy was eye-opening when published in 1999. She offered a trenchantly expressed response to the neoliberal slogan of the time, ‘There is no alternative.’ Kelsey’s analysis remains a critical yardstick for current policies and an alternative perspective on the development of global relationships. The recent global financial meltdown and subsequent recession give new relevance to her questions about globalisation’s consequences for sovereignty and democracy. Kelsey continues to offer a bold voice of challenge and critique, pointing the way for open-eyed engagement with the economic realities of the future.

New Zealand has built its economy around natural resources? exporting wool, wood, meat and dairy and importing tourists. But can that economy sustain us in the twenty-first century? From the second most prosperous country on earth fifty years ago, New Zealand has slipped to the bottom half of the OECD rankings in everything from wealth to life expectancy. Whether to London or Los Angeles, nearly a million New Zealanders have moved abroad in search of better opportunities. If we are to turn around those trends, what is the alternative? In this book, physicist Paul Callaghan talks to leadi.

Provides data and graphs of more than 45 key indicators of macroeconomic performance in New Zealand over the last 35 years.