I had forgotten about this, but a while back CIS released a booklet with a few essays on “how to supersize NZ” (as in make the economy bigger, not supersize in the McDonalds sense). It was called Supersize New Zealand: A collection of essays on how to improve New Zealand’s public policy. Of course I’m …
Category Archive: Productivity series
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/08/13/supersize-nz/
Apr
03
2009
Internet at work is a blessing (for your boss)
It’s always seemed to me a bit over the top to block social internet sites at offices. I’ve wondered if people spend more time looking up free proxy servers that aren’t blocked than they would have if they’d been allowed to check their Gmail. Now a study says that most people do surf at work …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/04/03/internet-at-work-is-a-blessing-for-your-boss/
Jun
10
2008
Kiwisaver and savings types
So far we have described that there is some belief that we have some problems in our capital market, this has lead to the statement that we have a “savings problem” and to solve it the government introduced Kiwisaver – which may not even increase national savings (infact it might reduce it). These articles have …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2008/06/10/kiwisaver-and-savings-types/
May
28
2008
What is this savings problem?
So far we have discussed Kiwisaver and national savings in fairly loose terms. We know that (part of) the purpose of Kiwisaver was to increase national savings and that our interest in national savings stems from the fact that we want New Zealand to have more productive capital. So before we can discuss the myriad …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2008/05/28/what-is-this-savings-problem/
May
27
2008
Why do we care about national savings?
In another of our warm up posts for discussing productivity we are going to discuss why national savings are important. As Fred states in this comment, savings are effectively deferred consumption. The incentive to defer consumption is based on individuals wish to “smooth consumption” over time (which relies on their time discount rate and expectations …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2008/05/27/why-do-we-care-about-national-savings/
May
26
2008
Kiwisaver and aggregate savings: A question for our readers
Over at the NBR comment page Trinh Le from NZIER discusses the research by John Gibson and herself into Kiwisaver and aggregate savings (here and research). The idea that Kiwisaver can actually reduce national savings is an important one – and something that one of us will post on soon, either before or during our …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2008/05/26/kiwisaver-and-aggregate-savings-a-question-for-our-readers/
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