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Our Research

Economic performance

Economic performance of firms and countries is assessed by looking at long term outcomes, such as sustainable growth and development, or short term outcomes, such as how long an economy takes to stabilise after a sudden and unpredictable event.

Economists measure economic performance through a wide range of economic indicators such as national income, spending, and output alongside wider measures of human development such as child mortality rates and access to health care

Our research focus

Motu’s current and recent research into economic performance includes:

The effects of culture on economic performance.
The value of culture and heritage activities for regional and national outcomes.
Impacts of aggregate credit shocks on the housing market.

Publications

Changes in New Zealand’s Business Insolvency Rates after the Global Financial Crisis

Authors: John McDermott | Viv Hall

Working Paper

Businesses do fail.
Things get worse in recessions
as costs rise sharply.

We examine the question of whether the rate of business insolvencies in New Zealand is related to overall macroeconomic conditions. In…

A Quarterly Post-World War II Real GDP Series for New Zealand

Authors: John McDermott | Viv Hall

Working Paper

There are two essential features of macroeconomic data: growth and business cycles. To understand both phenomena, you need a long historical record.

Unfortunately, official New Zealand data on quarterly real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) only goes…

Changes in New Zealand's business insolvency rates after the GFC

Authors: John McDermott | Viv Hall

Article

We examine the question of whether the rate of business insolvencies in New Zealand is related to overall macroeconomic conditions. In particular, our interest is in whether the rate of business insolvencies changed in the…

Over the Hedge: Do Exporters Practice Selective Hedging?

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Richard Fabling

Article

What determines exporters’ exchange rate hedging decisions and do exporters attempt to “time the market?” We use a unique longitudinal dataset on firm exports to find the determinants of exporters’ currency hedging choices. Determinants include…

Sources of international investment data in the Longitudinal Business Database

Author: Lynda Sanderson

Working Paper

The Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) links together firm-level data held by Statistics New Zealand from a combination of administrative and survey data sources. This linking has opened up a wide range of research opportunities. In…

Storage Under Backwardation: A Direct Test of the Wright-Williams Conjecture

Author: Andrew Coleman

Working Paper

Commodities are often stored when the spot price exceeds the future price in a central market. Wright and Williams conjectured that inventories are held in locations far from the central market on these occasions. In…

The Philpott Database: Macroeconomic and Industry Measures, 1959-2002

Dataset

This archive contains many data sets collected by Professor Bryan Philpott of the Economics Department, Victoria University, Wellington in the 1970s and 1980s.

The data are macroeconomic and industry measures of the economy like GDP, Employment,…

Exchange rate fluctuations and the margins of exports

Authors: Lynda Sanderson | Richard Fabling

Working Paper

This paper examines the relationship between exchange rate fluctuations and New Zealand export performance.

To isolate the impact of the exchange rate, as opposed to contemporaneous (and related) fluctuations in New Zealand's economic performance or overseas market characteristics, we…

Rating Systems in New Zealand: An Empirical Investigation into Local Choice

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Andrew Aitken | Jason Timmins | Suzi Kerr | William McCluskey

Article

New Zealand is unusual in that nearly 60% of local services are funded from property taxes. These are a mixture of land taxes, capital value taxes, annual rental value taxes and uniform general charges.

We explore…

Twenty Years of Modernisation: The Reserve Bank of New Zealand

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Frank Holmes | Gary Hawke | John Singleton

Article

Chapter in a physical book, not available online.

A Smooth Ride: Terms of Trade, Volatility and GDP Growth

Author: Arthur Grimes

Article

International evidence indicates that higher terms of trade levels and lower terms of trade volatility contribute to enhanced growth outcomes, especially for commodity-export and developing countries. New Zealand's terms of trade have been high and…

Economic Growth and the Size and Structure of Government: Implications for New Zealand

Author: Arthur Grimes

Article

The work of Gwartney, Holcombe and Lawson (GHL, 1998) is cited in New Zealand debate to demonstrate that a larger government share of GDP is detrimental for economic growth. Their work is reassessed here. We…

Why are New Zealanders so Wealthy?

Author: Arthur Grimes

Article

It is commonplace in New Zealand to bemoan our fall in living standards relative to the rest of the developed world. In 1950 New Zealand ranked third in the OECD in terms of GDP per…

Insolvency and Economic Development: Regional Variation and Adjustment

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Richard Fabling

Article

We examine the determinants of forced insolvency in New Zealand. The study incorporates three key features. First, we use regional as well as national data. Second, we analyse the role of property prices, which influence…

Cutting the hedge: Exporters’ dynamic currency hedging behaviour

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Richard Fabling

Article

We use a dataset that includes all New Zealand merchandise export transactions to analyse exporters' dynamic currency hedging behaviour. We focus on whether exporters change their hedging behaviour ("selectively hedge") when the exchange rate and/or…

The Long Term Impact of Capital Gains Taxes in New Zealand

Author: Andrew Coleman

Article

Land taxes are known to be amongst the most efficient forms of taxation, as land is an immobile factor; property (capital value) taxes are less efficient owing to the tax on improvements. However there is…

Commercial Bank Loan Loss Recoveries

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Kurt Hess

Working Paper

Produced for University of Waikato as University of Waikato Working Paper in Economics 09/09

We present a new approach to analyse historical recovery rates on distressed bank assets. Our approach uses banks’ reported impaired assets and the corresponding specific…

Capital Intensity and Welfare: Traded and Non-Traded Sector Determinants

Author: Arthur Grimes

Working Paper

Produced for New Zealand Economic Papers 43:1 pp. 21-39 (publication available for purchase).

Why do some countries and regions have higher capital intensity than others? This question is at the heart of economic development analyses since capital intensity, per…

Approaches to Economic Growth: Implications for Policy Analysis

Author: Arthur Grimes

Working Paper

First shown in Ways of Thinking about Economic Growth: Papers from MED's Growth Seminar Series, but produced as MED Occasional Paper 08-07 for the Ministry for Economic Development.

Each of the preceding contributions emphasises the importance of knowledge creation in…

HR Practices and Firm Performance: What Matters and Who Does it?

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Richard Fabling

Working Paper

Produced as MED Ooccasional Paper 07-02 for the Ministry of Economic Development

We examine the impact of human resource practices on firm performance. The analysis uses data from an economy-wide survey to determine whether firms that adopt certain individual…

A Comparison of Qualitative and Quantitative Firm Performance Measures

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Richard Fabling | Philip Stevens

Working Paper

Produced as MED Occasional Paper 08-04 for the Ministry of Economic Development

Many analyses of firm performance are based upon self-reported measures. However, not only are these likely to be more subject to general reporting error than alternative official…

Some Rise by Sin, and Some by Virtue Fall: Firm Dynamics, Market Structure and Performance

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Lynda Sanderson | Richard Fabling | Philip Stevens

Working Paper

Produced for the Ministry of Economic Development, as a MED Occasional Paper 08-01

This paper investigates the microeconomic dynamics of the New Zealand economy using a powerful new SNZ-held dataset. For the first time, tax data covering operating performance…

Foreign Acquisition and the Performance of New Zealand Firms

Authors: Lynda Sanderson | Richard Fabling

Working Paper

Published firstly as the New Zealand Treasury Working Paper 11/06,

This paper examines the firm-level determinants of foreign acquisitions of New Zealand companies, and the consequences for both the purchased firms and the workers within those firms.…

Over the Hedge? Exporters’ Optimal and Selective Hedging Choices

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Richard Fabling

Working Paper

Produced for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand as a Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper DP2008/14

How do exporting firms manage currency exposures?

We examine this issue at the firm level using comprehensive data from the prototype…

Fiscal, Distributional and Efficiency Impacts of Land and Property Taxes

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Andrew Coleman

Working Paper

Land Taxes and Revenue Needs as Communities Grow and Decline: Evidence from New Zealand

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Andrew Aitken | Suzi Kerr

Working Paper

Housing and Economic Adjustment

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Andrew Aitken | Suzi Kerr

Working Paper

Housing is the most important component of wealth for many New Zealanders. Its location is fixed and its value is influenced by economic and other factors specific to that location. Hence when people live in…

Cyclical Labour Market Adjustment in New Zealand: The Response of Firms to the Global Financial Crisis and its Implications for Workers

Authors: Dave Maré | Richard Fabling

Working Paper

This paper examines the dynamics of employment adjustment in New Zealand, focusing on the response of firms to the 2008/09 Global Financial Crisis.

We use data from Statistics New Zealand"s prototype Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) to…

Passing the Buck: Impacts of Commodity Price Shocks on Local Outcomes

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Sean Hyland

Working Paper

The extent to which exogenous international agricultural price fluctuations are internalised by rural communities is of major interest for policy-makers concerned with regional economic performance. So too is the link between rural sector performance and…

The Performance of New Zealand Exporters: Some Firm-Level Evidence

Author: Richard Fabling

Presentation

Export performance is both an indicator of, and a factor in, New Zealand's economic success. In an increasingly globalised environment, the ability to reach and supply international markets is a clear measure of firm performance.…

Economic Growth and the Size and Structure of Government: Implications for New Zealand

Author: Arthur Grimes

Working Paper