IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/revpoe/v14y2002i1p31-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

New Zealand's Economic Reforms: An assessment

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Dalziel

Abstract

New Zealand's economic policy between 1984 and 1996 is often hailed as an example of comprehensive supply-side reform that successfully improved the performance of a weak economy. In contrast, this paper presents statistical evidence to show that: (1) New Zealand sacrificed a large volume of real per capita gross domestic product after 1987; (2) its average unemployment rate increased substantially after 1988; (3) labour productivity growth declined after 1992; and (4) the per capita real income of low-income households in 1996 was more than 3% lower in absolute terms than it had been in 1984. The paper concludes that the economic reform programme did not achieve the objectives expected at its launch.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Dalziel, 2002. "New Zealand's Economic Reforms: An assessment," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 31-46.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:revpoe:v:14:y:2002:i:1:p:31-46
    DOI: 10.1080/09538250120102750
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09538250120102750
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09538250120102750?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Conway & Adrian Orr, 2000. "The process of economic growth in New Zealand," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 63, March.
    2. Erwin Diewert & Denis Lawrence, 1999. "Measuring New Zealand’s Productivity," Treasury Working Paper Series 99/05, New Zealand Treasury.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paresha N. Sinha & Peter Jaskiewicz & Jenny Gibb & James G. Combs, 2020. "Managing history: How New Zealand's Gallagher Group used rhetorical narratives to reprioritize and modify imprinted strategic guideposts," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(3), pages 557-589, March.
    2. Aida Caldera Sánchez & Alain de Serres & Naomitsu Yashiro, 2017. "Reforming in a Difficult Macroeconomic Context: A Review of Issues and Recent Literature," Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy (JICEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(01), pages 1-41, February.
    3. Stillman, Steven & Velamuri, Malathi & Aitken, Andrew, 2010. "The long-run impact of New Zealand's structural reform on local communities," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 432-448, December.
    4. Tim Hazledine & John Quiggin, 2005. "No More Free Beer Tomorrow? Economic policy and outcomes in Australia and New Zealand 1984-2003," Australian Public Policy Program Working Papers WP4P05, Risk and Sustainable Management Group, University of Queensland.
    5. Michael Ryan, 2020. "An Anchor in Stormy Seas: Does Reforming Economic Institutions Reduce Uncertainty? Evidence from New Zealand," Working Papers in Economics 20/11, University of Waikato.
    6. Alshyab, Nooh, 2013. "The Political Economy of Reform and Development of the Washington Consensus," MPRA Paper 46014, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Paul Dalziel & David Peetz, 2008. "A Note on Perry's Reconsideration of Macroeconomic Evidence from New Zealand," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 41(4), pages 389-393, December.
    8. Alison J. Blaiklock & Cynthia A. Kiro & Michael Belgrave & Will Low & Eileen Davenport & Ian B. Hassall, 2002. "When the Invisible Hand Rocks the Cradle: New Zealand children in a time of change," Papers inwopa02/20, Innocenti Working Papers.
    9. Michael Ryan, 2020. "A Narrative Approach to Creating Instruments with Unstructured and Voluminous Text: An Application to Policy Uncertainty," Working Papers in Economics 20/10, University of Waikato.
    10. Starke, Peter, 2005. "Resilient or residual? From the wage earners' welfare state to market conformity in New Zealand," TranState Working Papers 22, University of Bremen, Collaborative Research Center 597: Transformations of the State.
    11. Michael C. Shone & P. Ali Memon, 2008. "Tourism, Public Policy and Regional Development: A Turn from Neo-liberalism to the New Regionalism," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 23(4), pages 290-304, November.
    12. Chatterjee, Srikanta & Dalziel, Paul & Daunfeldt, Sven-Olov & Podder, Nripesh, 2008. "Income Inequality and Transformation of the Welfare State: A Comparative Study of the Reforms in New Zealand and Sweden," HUI Working Papers 20, HUI Research.
    13. L. J. Perry, 2008. "Rejoinder to 'A Note on Perry's Reconsideration of Macroeconomic Evidence from New Zealand'," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 41(4), pages 394-398, December.
    14. Cronin, Bruce, 2008. "Economic restructuring in New Zealand: A classical account," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 340-382.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Athanasoglou, Panayiotis P. & Georgiou, Evangelia A. & Staikouras, Christos C., 2009. "Assessing output and productivity growth in the banking industry," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 1317-1340, November.
    2. Chrysovalantis Karafillis & Evaggelos Papanagiotou, 2011. "Innovation and total factor productivity in organic farming," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(23), pages 3075-3087.
    3. Megan Claridge & Sarah Box, 2000. "Economic Integration, Sovereignty and Identity: New Zealand in the Global Economy," Treasury Working Paper Series 00/22, New Zealand Treasury.
    4. Andrés Maroto-Sánchez, 2010. "Productivity in the services sector: conventional and current explanations," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(5), pages 719-746, October.
    5. Paul Conway & Adrian Orr, 2000. "The process of economic growth in New Zealand," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 63, March.
    6. Jamie Culling & Hayden Skilling, 2018. "How does New Zealand stack up? A comparison of labour supply across the OECD," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 81, pages 1-19, April.
    7. Chandan Sharma & Sanjay Sehgal, 2010. "Impact of infrastructure on output, productivity and efficiency," Indian Growth and Development Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 3(2), pages 100-121, September.
    8. Christie Smith, 2004. "The long-run effects of monetary policy on output growth," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 67, September.
    9. Iris Claus, 2003. "Changes in New Zealand's Production Structure: An Input Output Analysis," Treasury Working Paper Series 03/01, New Zealand Treasury.
    10. Dimitrios Asteriou & Konstantinos Spanos & Emmanouil Trachanas, 2024. "Financial development, economic growth and the role of fiscal policy during normal and stress times: Evidence for 26 EU countries," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(2), pages 2495-2514, April.
    11. Kevin J Fox, 2005. "Returns to Scale, Technical Progress and Total Factor Productivity Growth in New Zealand Industries," Treasury Working Paper Series 05/04, New Zealand Treasury.
    12. Tao Kong, 2007. "A Selective Review of Recent Developments in the Economic Growth Literature," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 21(1), pages 1-33, May.
    13. Engelbrecht, Hans-Jurgen & Xayavong, Vilaphonh, 2006. "ICT intensity and New Zealand's productivity malaise: Is the glass half empty or half full?," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 24-42, March.
    14. José Zofío & Angel Prieto, 2006. "Return to Dollar, Generalized Distance Function and the Fisher Productivity Index," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 113-138, June.
    15. Iris Claus, 2009. "New Zealand's economic reforms and changes in production structure," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 133-143.
    16. Nin-Pratt, Alejandro, 2016. "Comparing apples to apples: A new indicator of research and development investment intensity in agriculture:," IFPRI discussion papers 1559, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    17. Feng, Guohua & Serletis, Apostolos, 2008. "Productivity trends in U.S. manufacturing: Evidence from the NQ and AIM cost functions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 281-311, January.
    18. Daan Steenkamp, 2018. "Factor Substitution and Productivity in New Zealand," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 94(304), pages 64-79, March.
    19. Matthew D Shapiro, 2003. "Has the rate of economic growth changed? Evidence and lessons for public policy," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP2003/07, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:revpoe:v:14:y:2002:i:1:p:31-46. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CRPE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.