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Economic geography, globalisation and New Zealand's productivity paradox

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  • Philip McCann

Abstract

This paper examines New Zealand's poor productivity performance from the reform period onwards, from the perspective of economic geography. Rather than employing institutional or free-market versus interventionist arguments to explain New Zealand's low productivity, as is usually the case, the argument developed here is that the debate should be considered from a very different viewpoint. If we adopt an economic geography perspective, there is nothing really paradoxical about New Zealand's productivity performance. As such, New Zealand's productivity performance is rather more of a conundrum, a riddle, with a fairly straightforward solution.

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  • Philip McCann, 2009. "Economic geography, globalisation and New Zealand's productivity paradox," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(3), pages 279-314.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:nzecpp:v:43:y:2009:i:3:p:279-314
    DOI: 10.1080/00779950903308794
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    Cited by:

    1. Hong Shangqin & Philip McCann & Les Oxley, 2013. "Innovation in New Zealand: issues of firm size, local market size and economic geography," Chapters, in: Frank Giarratani & Geoffrey J.D. Hewings & Philip McCann (ed.), Handbook of Industry Studies and Economic Geography, chapter 19, pages 459-478, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Grimes, Arthur & Le Vaillant, Jason & McCann, Philip, 2011. "Auckland's Knowledge Economy: Australasian and European Comparisons," Occasional Papers 11/2, Ministry of Economic Development, New Zealand.
    3. Falvey, Rodney E & Gemmell, Norman & Chang, Cherry & Zheng, Guanyu, 2014. "Explaining International Differences in the Prices of Tradables and Non-Tradables (with a New Zealand Perspective)," Working Paper Series 18835, Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance.
    4. repec:vuw:vuwscr:19157 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Greene, Francis, 2012. "Should the focus of publicly provided small business assistance be on start-ups or growth businesses?," Occasional Papers 12/2, Ministry of Economic Development, New Zealand.
    6. Heatley, David & Howell, Bronwyn, 2010. "Overseas Investment: is New Zealand 'Open for Business'?," Working Paper Series 4054, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    7. O'Connor, Peter & Stephenson, John & Yeabsley, John, 2012. "Grow for it - How population policies can can promote economic growth," NZIER Working Paper 2012/1, New Zealand Institute of Economic Research.
    8. Benjamin Davies & David C. Maré, 2021. "Relatedness, complexity and local growth," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(3), pages 479-494, March.
    9. Jacques Poot, 2009. "Trans-Tasman Migration, Transnationalism and Economic Development in Australasia," Working Papers 09_05, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    10. Ron Crawford, 2021. "Focused innovation policy: Lessons from international experience," Working Papers 2021/03, New Zealand Productivity Commission.
    11. Paul Conway, 2018. "Can the Kiwi Fly? Achieving Productivity Lift-off in New Zealand," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 34, pages 40-63, Spring.
    12. Matthew Roskruge & Arthur Grimes & Philip McCann & Jacques Poot, 2012. "Social Capital and Regional Social Infrastructure Investment," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 35(1), pages 3-25, January.
    13. Patrick Barrett & Jacques Poot, 2023. "Islands, remoteness and effective policy making: Aotearoa New Zealand during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 682-704, April.
    14. Steven Bond-Smith, 2022. "Diversifying Hawai‘i’s specialized economy: A spatial economic perspective," Working Papers 2022-5, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
    15. Les Oxley & Shangqin Hong & Philip McCann, 2013. "Why Size Maters: Investigating the Drivers of Innovation and Economic Performance in New Zealand using the Business Operation Survey," Working Papers in Economics 13/13, University of Waikato.
    16. Grimes, Arthur & Tarrant, Nicholas, 2013. "A New Zealand Urban Population Database," Working Papers 13_07, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    17. Steven Bond-Smith, 2024. "Diversifying Hawai‘i's Specialized Economy: A Spatial Economic Perspective," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 38(1), pages 40-59, February.
    18. Falvey, Rodney E & Gemmell, Norman & Chang, Cherry & Zheng, Guanyu, 2014. "Explaining International Differences in the Prices of Tradables and Non-Tradables (with a New Zealand Perspective)," Working Paper Series 3425, Victoria University of Wellington, Chair in Public Finance.
    19. Paul Conway, 2016. "Achieving New Zealand's productivity potential," Working Papers 2016/01, New Zealand Productivity Commission.
    20. Philip S. Morrison, 2011. "The Creative City and its Distributional Consequences: The Case of Wellington," Chapters, in: David Emanuel Andersson & Åke E. Andersson & Charlotta Mellander (ed.), Handbook of Creative Cities, chapter 24, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    21. Heatley, David & Howell, Bronwyn, 2010. "Overseas Investment: is New Zealand 'Open for Business'?," Working Paper Series 19157, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    22. Geoff Mason, 2013. "Investigating New Zealand-Australia productivity differences: New comparisons at industry level," Working Papers 2013/02, New Zealand Productivity Commission.

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