Monthly Archives: November 1998

Globalization and a Welfare State

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Social Policy on by .

In D. Lamberton (ed) Managing the Global: Globalization, Employment and the Quality of LifeI.B. Tauris. (2002) Proceedings of a conference sponsored by the Toda Institute and the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, at the University of Sydney, 28-30 November, 1998. P.163-168.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Social Policy;

Globalization challenges us with the question ‘what choice (or what control), if any, does a society open to the globalized world have over its social and cultural policy?’ A common view is that it will that international competitive pressures are so strong that it will drive every country down to the lowest common denominate of a pure market economy, with a minimum of government intervention.

Some Macroeconomics Of the Employment Contracts Act

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation, Labour Studies on by .

Paper to the Labour, Employment, and Work Conference 7, at Victoria University of Wellington, November 28-29 1996, published in Labour, Employment and Work in New Zealand 1996, pp.148-156.

Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Labour Studies;

Abstract

Earlier this year Wolfgang Kasper produced a book “Free to Work: The Liberalisation of New Zealand’s Labour Markets” (Centre for Independent Studies). By reviewing this book, this paper is able to shed some understanding of the effectiveness or otherwise of the Employment Contracts Act. On the basis of the emperical evidence it is very difficult to reach, in a systematic way, Kasper’s conclusions about the beneficial effects of the ECA. In particular, the poor productivity growth rules out the likelihood that the ECA was a major contributor to the macroeconomic expansion of the mid 1990s. The Act would, however, seem to have contributed to the poor real wage growth, and the failure of many workers to obrtain a share in the increase in propserity of the 1990s.

The Deindustrialization Of New Zealand

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation, Labour Studies on by .

Labour Employment and Work in New Zealand: 1998 Proceedings of a conference, 26-27 November, 1998, pp.38-46.

Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Labour Studies;

Abstract

Deindustrialisation is the phenomenon of the secondary sector growing more slowly than the rest of the economy, whether measured by share of GDP or of employment. Almost all rich OECD countries have been expereincing it. However New Zealand has been deindustrialising faster than the OECD average (even if the energy based industrie developed in the 1980s are included). The paper describes rthe phenomenon and discusses why it happened.1

History Repeats: when Will Financial Markets Ever Learn?

This entry was posted in Business & Finance on by .

Listener 21 November 1998.

Keywords: Business & Finance

Desperately keen to go to a film in a fire-prone theatre, you choose a seat which gives you a good view, near an exit. A fire starts during the screening. You head for the door, and are crushed as everyone else does too. Your mistake is the “fallacy of composition”: that which applies for the individual, may not apply if every individual acts on it. One of my earliest lessons in economics seems forgotten today.