Gulnara Nolan

Is the NZ dollar 23% undervalued?

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The recent data from the Big Mac index indicated that, in New Zealand a Big Mac costs $6.60 NZD.  However, in the United States it costs $5.71 USD.  As Stuff.co.nz notes this implies an exchange rate of 1.16 in USD/NZD terms (a US dollar is worth 1.16 NZ dollars) if the price of the Big Mac is the same in both countries.  

But instead google tells us the exchange rate is 1.51, and so the New Zealand dollar appears approximately 23% undervalued.  But is that true?  Should global currencies adjust to set the price of Big Macs equal in every market on earth?  Let’s think about that a bit more below.

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Gulnara Nolan

What is price stickiness, and what does this have to do with Chanel bags?

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In this post I am going to talk about price rigidities/stickiness.  What do economists mean about price rigidities and how do we test them?  

On the face of it this sounds pretty simple – if prices change often then there doesn’t seem to be much scope for them to be sticky.  But when we think about it a bit more this isn’t true – and thinking about why it isn’t true can give us useful insights into the macroeconomy.

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John McDermott

Keeping track of the business cycle

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Business cycles, the phases of expansion and recession in an economy, are a durable feature of macroeconomic data. Typically, quarterly real GDP data is used to determine the phase of the business cycle we are in. Learn more by reading this new post on how to sustain your business.

Unfortunately, official New Zealand data on quarterly GDP does not go back very far in time, limiting our ability to understand recessions and expansions. Here I want to share some work I’ve done trying to build a consistent GDP series for New Zealand that goes back until 1947.

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Gulnara Nolan

Do we need to lower interest rates to battle COVID-19?

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There is a lot of talk about a 50bp cut by the RBNZ in a couple of weeks due to COVID-19.  But what does this mean, and why are we cutting interest rates to battle a bad flu?  

In this post I am going to discuss the case for interest rate cuts during a natural disaster, to help to explain what demand shock they are battling and why this cut makes sense. The RBNZ already applied this logic during the Canterbury earthquake in 2011, so it is useful to think about COVID-19 from a similar perspective.

I’d like to thank the people I’ve chatted with about this issue to clarify what is going on – you know who you are, and I appreciate it.  The New Zealand economics community is wonderful!

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John McDermott

GDP forecasters: can we have your confidence intervals please

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There are many forecasts of how well, or otherwise, our economy will do over the next year. However, as a rule these forecasts are not very good at providing a candid account of the uncertainty that is present. Most forecasters simply provide a point estimate for what they expect quarterly GDP growth to be in the next quarter or so.

Unfortunately, the margin of error around these forecasts (if revealed) would encompass the possibility of a spectacular boom or a fairly nasty recession.  Let’s have a look at these below.

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Gulnara Nolan

The coronavirus and the general NZ economy

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The coronavirus has been in the news, with its relatively rapid spread a cause for concern.  This has important welfare and wellbeing effects associated with the pain people might experience due to the coronavirus. 

However, today I am going to discuss how we can think about the consequences of a disease outbreak for the general economy – or in terms of broad macro stabilisation or monetary policy. 

These lessons can help us understand some of the broad consequences of a disease outbreak which can then be extended to ask other policy related questions (eg how the virus might disproportionately affect industry sectors in NZ, what areas are harm reduction policies particularly important).

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