Listener 28 June, 2003.
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
Even the International Monetary Fund is beginning to talk about the possibility of world deflation, that is the general level of prices falling over the medium term. Although the tendency over the last thousand years has been for inflation (rising prices), deflation with slightly falling prices has happened: notably in England during the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, from 1660 to 1730, and during the life of Queen Victoria. There have also been sharp price falls for short periods – most memorably in the 1930’s depression. (My source is David Hackett Fischer’s splendid The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History.)
Brad Patterson (ed). An unpublished review written in June 2003.
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
There are probably as many New Zealanders of Irish descent as there are of Maori descent – around 600,000 or 15 percent of each. But historian Edmund Bohan reminds us in this stimulating set of essays from a seminar in 2000, of a question posed by Patrick O’Farrell (who contributes a personal reflection on being New Zealand Irish). ‘How was it that New Zealand’s history came to be hijacked by English?.’
Listener 14 June 2003.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
Americans take great pride in their role in the rehabilitation of Japan and Germany after the Second World War. Each went through great trauma – famine in Japan, inflation in Germany – but today they are generally respected members of the world community in contrast to their dreadful records before their reconstruction, and are the second and third to largest economies in the world.
The following consists of all the Listener columns, feature articles and reviews published on the website, in chronological order. All the items since 1998 are there, plus a selection of those published earlier, beginning with the first one in December 1977.
The New Zealand Listener Home Page
(The first 76 columns up to January 1981 were published in Economics for New Zealand Social Democrats.)
Chapter of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
It is dangerous to focus – as the last chapter had to – solely on the aggregate economy. Being excessively aggregate means that some of the most important features of the economic transformation are ignored, especially how a small part of the world economy – New Zealand – can grow at a different rate from the world as a whole. The growth occurs in businesses, and so we need to think about how businesses grow. However being too disaggregated can also lead to misunderstandings. Some businesses grow at the expense of others, as they increase their market share. But we need not be detained by such activities despite their being important in terms of inter-business competition, indicative of business striving.
Chapter 3 of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
As in most human endeavours, a historical perspective is invaluable, especially since economic thinking on growth has evolved over the last forty odd years. Historically, economists concerned with economic growth focussed on the accumulation of capital. But in the 1950s there were two major developments in economic thinking about growth. The first, which had a microeconomics focus, was concerned with the allocation of inputs into production and the outputs that were produced. The second was concerned with the more aggregate (macroeconomic) concerns of technical progress. Each has an important role for capital accumulation, but it had a less important role in economic growth than in earlier theories.
Appendix 2 of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome. (Some of this may be too technical to publish)
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
Appendix I: The Maddison-OCD Data Base
Angus Maddison has provided a annual data base for production and population of the world economy between 1950 and 1998 (with some data going back to the beginning of the Common Era, but not continuously). [A. Maddison (2001) The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (Development Centre Studies, OECD]
Chapter 2 of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
This chapter looks at New Zealand’s post-war economic performance via the measure of GDP per capita. It does not consider the relevance of the measure – the topic of the next Chapter – but we note here that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the standard international measure of output, in which the net value production of each market sector of the economy is aggregated together and (for international comparative purposes) valued at a standard set of international prices (a phenomenon which is indicated by the expression ‘purchasing power parity’ (PPP) prices). The effect of using the same prices for every year is that year to year changes measure the volume of production (or real output) independently of inflation.
Appendix 1 of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
The growth debate in New Zealand assumes an appropriate economic target is per capita Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. This appendix pays little attention to the population dimension of the target, but it looks at, as intensively as space allows, GDP. Initially it explains what the concept is, what was the measure’s original purpose – understanding the business cycle, and how it became interpreted to have a broader meaning – as a measure of welfare. Then the chapter looks at some of the criticisms of the measure – most notably its coverage and its distribution. However far more important is the extent to which it actually measures a nation’s welfare. The evidence is that it does not.
Chapter 1 of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
The Purpose of Policy
Asking about the purpose of public policy is only a little less frustrating than asking about the purpose of life. But if we dont ask either question we may lock ourselves into paths which are patently wrong. There is a danger of New Zealand doing this, if public policy focusses exclusively on maximizing material output, as measured by GDP or one of its related indicators.
