Priced Out – How New Zealand Lost its Housing Affordability looks at long-term trends in housing regulation and social circumstances as well as the changing roles of local and central governments. The report reveals how and why New Zealand is suffering a shortfall of houses. Read more
New Zealand has depended on overseas trade and capital for its prosperity from colonial times. But prejudice against foreigners and foreign capital will always be with us. Read more
Key points As measured by the OECD's FDI Regulatory Restrictiveness Index and analysed by The New Zealand Initiative: New Zealand has the sixth most restrictive FDI regime in the world New Zealand has the most restrictive FDI regime in manufacturing New Zealand runs the third-most restrictive FDI regime in restaurants and hotels Almost all of New Zealand's restrictiveness comes from screening processes - bureaucrats and ministers assessing how 'good' an investment is going to be for New Zealand, despite their poor incentives and lack of commercial knowledge. Of the 55 countries the OECD measured for FDI restrictiveness, 35 do not even have screening tests In addition: The 'sensitive land' and 25% ownership clauses in the Overseas Investment Act catch virtually any reasonably sized direct overseas investment Over the past 15 years, many other nations have substantially liberalised their overseas investment regimes, leaving New Zealand in a less competitive position to attract FDI Since 1993, the amount of FDI New Zealand attracts has trended down by 2% per decade, although the relationship is suggestive rather than robust at this point All New Zealanders can be expected to bear the cost of these foreign investment barriers through lower property values, a higher cost of capital, and weaker economic growth. Read more
More ladders, fewer snakes proposes that accelerated roll-out of e-learning to low decile schools and improving the school-to-work transition will materially reduce youth unemployment and resulting social issues. Read more
Plugging the gap proposes 14 policy directions to improve the success of internationalising New Zealand businesses. Internationalisation performance improvement will accelerate growth in high value exports and lift prosperity. Read more
This is a revised version of the keynote address to the joint conference of the New Zealand Association of Economists and Law and Economics Association of New Zealand held in Auckland on 30 June 2010. The neoclassical ‘economist king’ has tumbled from his pedestal. Read more
Sir Ronald Trotter was the first chairman of the New Zealand Business Roundtable in its present form, a position he held from 1985 to 1990. Among his many other roles he has been chief executive and chairman of Fletcher Challenge Limited, chairman of the Steering Committee of the 1984 Economic Summit, a director of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, chairman of the State-owned Enterprises Advisory Committee, chairman of Telecom Corporation, chairman of the National Interim Provider Board, a chairman or director of several major New Zealand and Australian companies, and chairman of the board of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Read more
A goal is not a strategy concludes that New Zealand needs to focus on the internationalisation of high value, differentiated export sectors, prioritise labour productivity improvement efforts on these sectors, and reallocate resources from low to high productivity sectors.
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Landowners have traditionally been required to bear the capital cost of works that are undertaken within subdivisions and developments and are necessary to enable council provided services to be used. Landowners have also been required to compensate local authorities for certain costs that councils incur in connecting council provided services for land that is subdivided or developed. Read more
Stand on the shoulders of science identifies opportunities to lift New Zealand’s economic prosperity through improving performance of the innovation ecosystem. Innovation is the key driver of prosperity of advanced economies. Read more
Writing in the Dominion Post in 2006, New Zealand Business Roundtable chairman Rob McLeod (Ngati Porou) reminded us that when the general unemployment rate had been over 8 percent there was widespread anxiety, yet Maori unemployment was still that high and was attracting little comment. 1 At that time, 88,500 or 29 percent of working-age Maori (18-64 years) were receiving a benefit. Read more
Your excellencies, ministers of the crown, members of parliament, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I am Bill Day, vice-chair of the New Zealand Business Roundtable, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to the fourteenth Sir Ronald Trotter Lecture. Read more
Representatives of two separate and distinct peoples signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Maori immigrants from the Pacific region, who had lived in isolation on the islands now known as New Zealand for somewhere between 500 and 700 years, had been connected with the rest of the world in the decades following James Cook’s arrival in 1769.1 Their separation from the traders, religions, cultural achievements, military forces and diseases of other nations was inevitably going to end. Read more
The purpose of this report is to provide a primer on the core role of local government: the provision of public goods. Governments have to distinguish their roles from those of the private sector and prioritise their plans because the demands on them are unlimited, but resources are scarce. Read more
It is interesting in a public policy sense to review the various roles that have been given to the Maori portfolio of government over the last 160 years. Maori Affairs is one of the oldest of all government portfolios. Read more