2012 Conference Papers

The full NZAE Conference 2012 programme is available here. Papers are below.

To find a paper, click on the relevant link to the session below:

Concurrent Session 1, Wednesday 27th June 11.00am – 12.30pm
Concurrent Session 2, Wednesday 27th June 1.30pm – 3.00pm
Concurrent Session 3, Thursday 28th June 10.30am – 12.00pm
Concurrent Session 4, Thursday 28th June 2.00pm – 3.30pm
Concurrent Session 5, Friday 29th June 11.00am – 12.30pm

Keynote Presentations

Jacques Poot Learning from the Flood of Findings: Meta-Analysis in Economics

Leslie YoungMismanaging Complexity


Concurrent Session 1, Wednesday 27th June 11.00am – 12.30pm 

1.1 Finance & Data, chaired by Hugh McDonald

Determinants of Sector Holders’ Bilateral Portfolio Investments. Faruk Balli, Syed Abul, Basher, Hatice Ozer Balli, and Jiayuan Guo.

The treatment of new and disappearing items in rolling year GEKS Price Indexes: Evidence from New Zealand consumer electronics scanner dataFrances Krsinich and Jan de Haan.

Cycle identification: an old approach to (relatively) new statisticsEldon Paki, Louis Liu, James Stonehouse, and Jing You.

1.2 Growth & Productivity

Firm Entry and Exit New Zealand Industries. Philip Stevens, Hilary Devine, Tinh Doan, and Kris Iyer.

Economic Growth in the Economic History Literature: a Methodological Study. Geoffrey Brooke.

Capital Account Liberalization, Selection Bias, and GrowthKaty Bergstrom and Kuntal Das.

1.3 Wellbeing, chaired by Keith Rankin

Does Higher Social Diversity Affect People’s Contributions to Local Schools? Evidence from New ZealandHayden Armstrong.

Life Satisfaction, Comprehensive Wealth and Sustainability in OECD countries, 1995-2005: A first exploratory analysisHans-Jurgen Engelbrecht.

1.4 Labour 1, chaired by Stuart Birks

Factors influencing women’s paid and unpaid work. Julia Cronin.

Health and retirement of older New Zealanders. Emma Gorman, Grant M. Scobie, and Andy Towers.

Longitudinal Analysis of Assimilation, Ethnic Capital and Immigrants’ Earnings: Evidence from a Hausman-Taylor EstimationXingang (Singa) Wang and Sholeh Maani.

1.5 Treasury, chaired by Stephen Hickson

The requirements for long-run fiscal sustainability. Amy Cruickshank and Bob Buckle.

Fiscal sustainability under an ageing population structureMatthew Bell.

Fiscal projections: reassessing our assumptions and trying out new perspectives. Paul Rodway.

1.6 Housing, chaired by Chris Parker

Institutional Sector Accounts and the Residential Property Boom. Chase O’Brien.

Hedonic Price-Rent Ratios for Housing: Implications for the Detection of Departures from Equilibrium. Iqbal Syed and Robert J Hill.

The politician as a regulatory agent: a case study of leaky homes. James Zuccollo and Mike Hensen.

 

Concurrent Session 2, Wednesday 27th June 1.30pm – 3.00pm

2.1 Productivity Measurement, chaired by Stuart Birks

Taking on the West Island: Steps towards levelling the playing field. Nicholas Warmke and John Janssen.

The Gravity of Ideas: How distance affects translations. Isabelle Sin.

2.2 Education, chaired by Dorian Owen

Assigning grades during an earthquake – shaken or stirred? Stephen Hickson and Steve Agnew.

Constructive Alignment, Engagement and Exam Performance: It’s (still) ability that matters. Mary Hedges and Gail Pacheco.

2.3 Development 1, chaired by Ram SriRamaratnam

Poverty Impacts of Trade Liberalisation in South Asia on the Sri Lankan Economy. Sumudu Perera.

Nonlinear growth effect of remittances in recipient countries: an econometric analysis of remittances-growth nexus in Bangladesh. Shamim Shakur and Gazi Mainul Hassan.

2.4 Taxes

The effects of income taxes and capital gains taxes on residential land markets in New Zealand. Andrew Coleman.

10 Things we should all agree about taxes. Seamus Hogan.

2.5 Trade

Identifying Terms of Trade Shocks and Their Transmission to the New Zealand Economy. Gael Price and Ozer Karagedikli.

Characteristics of Goods and Services ExportersMenaka Saravanaperumal and Vicki Plater.

2.5 Game Theory, chaired by Arthur Grimes

Testing Psychological Forward Induction in the Lost Wallet Game. Daniel Woods.

 

Concurrent Session 3, Thursday 28th June 10.30am – 12.00pm

3.1 Blogs, chaired by Seamus Hogan

The impact of economics blogs. Berk Ozler and David McKenzie.

Round-table on Economics Blogs. Participants:
Eric Crampton (Offsetting Behaviour) Matt Nolan (The Visible Hand of Economics) James Zuccollo (The Visible Hand of Economics) Bill Kaye-Blake (Groping Towards Bethlehem) Berk Ozler (Development Impact).

3.2 Development 2

Foreign Direct Investment from Developing Countries: Evidence, Trends and Determinants. Sayeeda Bano and Jose Tabbada.

Growth Induced Threat to Poor Man’s Consumption BasketDebabrata Datta.

Remittances and the Real Effective Exchange Rate. Mark Holmes and Gazi Hassan.

3.3 Labour 2

Regression Estimates of the Elasticity of Taxable Income and the Choice of Instrument. Simon Carey, John Creedy, Norman Gemmell, and Josh Teng.

Can we level the playing field? A comparative analysis of levels of labour productivity between industries in New Zealand. Shanella Rajanayagam and Nicholas Warmke.

Employment growth and unemployment rate reduction: Historical experiences and future labour market outcomesRam SriRamaratnam, Xintao Zhao, and Will Bell.

3.4 Firm Behaviour, chaired by Trent Smith

Productivity, real wages, and workforce age structure at industry level. Adam Tipper.

Foreign acquisition and the performance of New Zealand Firms. Lynda Sanderson and Richard Fabling.

Unsportsmanlike behaviour: An investigation into the commodity-bundling practices of Sky Television. Ross Kendell.

 3.5 Income Distribution/miscellaneous, chaired by Andrew Coleman

An analysis of changes in the Australian income distribution, 2001-2009. Sean Hyland and Dean Hyslop.

High Birth Weight and Socio-Economic Status. Rachel Webb.

Measuring and Modelling Equity in Retirement Income Policy. Nicola Kirkup, Lucas Kengmana, and Katherine Meerman.

3.6 Misc 1, chaired by James Zuccollo

How should we manage diffuse water pollution? Insights from recent NManager simulations. Hugh McDonald, Suzi Kerr, and Simon Anastasiadis.

Is economics still a branch of moral philosophy? Reflections on the history of economic thought. Geoff Bertram.

No ethical issues in economics? Stuart Birks.

 

Concurrent Session 4, Thursday 28th June 2.00pm – 3.30pm

4.1 NZ Economy, chaired by Philip Stevens

Stylised facts for New Zealand business cycles: a post-1987 perspective. Viv Hall and Stuart McKelvie.

Fiscal Incidence in New Zealand: The Distributional Effect of Government Expenditure and Taxation on Household Income, 1988 to 2010. Omar Aziz and Matthew Bell.

4.2 Health

An investigation of regional infant mortality trends in New Zealand, 1873-1940. Katya Sadetskaya and Les Oxley.

Changing Health and Safety in Employment Guidelines and the Composition of Sentences in New Zealand: An Empirical Analysis. Stephen Hickson, Andrea Menclova, and Alan Woodfield.

4.3 Land & Housing

Appraising transport strategies that induce land use changes. Chris Parker.

Are New Zealand Housing Prices Still Overavalued? (+ housing tables). David Preston.

4.4 Markets – Theory

Hidden Quality and Consumer Search. Trent Smith and Attila Tasnadi.

The “Hypothetical Efficient Competitor” and Farm-gate Milk Prices. Ben Temple, Ben Gerritsen, and Alex Sundakov.

4.5 Employment, chaired by Matthew Bell

Youth unemployment outcomes and the youth minimum wage. Eric Crampton.

Mental health, physical health and employment propensityGail Pacheco and Don J. Webber.

 

Concurrent Session 5, Friday 29th June 11.00am – 12.30pm

5.1 Perspectives on Economics, chaired by Mary Hedges

A Note on Financial Stability and Sovereign Risk. Susan Schroeder.

Circular Flow: Drawing Further Inspiration from William Harvey. Keith Rankin.

Economic theory: consistency and rhetoric? Stuart Birks.

5.2 Measurement, chaired by Amy Cruickshank 

The economic impact of medication non-adherence. Bill Kaye-Blake, Chris Schilling, and James Allen.

Economic impact studies as justification for government involvement in the hosting of sports events: Do impacts materialise? Sam Richardson.

Simulating distributions of competitive balance measures in sports leagues: The effects of variation in competition design. Dorian Owen and Nicholas King.

5.3 Housing 2, chaired by Gail Pacheco

Estimating the Rental Vacancy Rate for Canterbury. Shamubeel Eaqub and Julie Loke.

Housing Affordability in New Zealand: Evidence from Household Surveys. Lisa Meehan and David Law.

The effects of Auckland’s metropolitan urban limit on land prices. Guanyu Zheng.

5.4 Industry, chaired by David Preston

Explaining Productivity Dispersion in New Zealand:The effect of input quality on firm productivity differences. Hilary Devine, Tinh Doan, Kris Iyer, and Philip Stevens.

Decomposition of New Zealand firm productivity growth, 2001-2008. Tinh Doan, Hilary Devine, Kris Iyer*, Penny Mok, and Philip Stevens.

Comparing Approaches to Compiling Macro and Micro Productivity using Statistics NZ Data. Nicholas Warmke, Brendan Mai, Yolandi De Beer, and Peter Gardiner.

5.5 Misc 2

Does Money Buy me Love? Testing Alternative Measures of National Wellbeing. Arthur Grimes.

The effect of New Zealand Superannuation on intergenerational wealth distribution in New Zealand. Andrew Coleman.

Economic Relations between New Zealand and Philippines: An Empirical Analysis. Sayeeda Bano.