Will Taylor

A Strict Application of “Kiwi Made” Actually Hurts Our Exporters

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While I am all for supporting the domestic economy, I think that a strict interpretation of the requirements for a good to be labelled “Made in New Zealand” actually harms our exporters. People get upset when they find out that something that is “Made in New Zealand” is manufactured using inputs purchased from another country. Any attempt to put pressure on exporting firms to use entirely NZ inputs is detrimental given that we are a small open economy with a very volatile exchange rate. The argument I’m making has absolutely nothing to do with price or quality but instead centres on a corporate finance concept known as “Natural Hedging”. Put simply if you have a company that sells its output in a foreign currency, purchasing your inputs in that currency naturally hedges movements in the exchange rate.  A good example of this is Navman who appear to be doing fine because they purchase a lot of their inputs in US$

While I accept that a good should still in essence be New Zealand made, I  believe that when the firm is an exporter, they should outsource as much of their inputs as possible.

Matt Nolan

One hike too far

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So the RBNZ lifted rates. However, they said this is the end, no more hikes this year.

I’m can understand why Bollard wanted to lift now, Cullen threatened his manhood and Bollard had to show he had some balls. I still think this lift is unnecessary, house sales are easing and firm profit margins have recovered, easing inflationary pressure over the next few months. Furthermore, even in the June quarter when retail sales were red hot, core inflation showed signs of easing.

Bollard has said no more rate rises will happen, however I think he’s taken one more than he needed to. Remember, the OCR hits inflation with a lag, it takes 12 months for effective mortgage rates to peak, and some say the full effect of tightening can take 18 months to come into effect. 2008 looks like it will be a difficult year.

jamesz

There’s taxation and then there’s taxation

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Matt posted recently about environmental taxes on petrol. The
comments section contains some discussion about whether taxation
is a good idea or whether it’s just bureaucratic meddling. This
sort of politico-vs-economist tax argument inevitably involves
people talking straight past each other so perhaps this is a good
time to discuss what we mean when we say `taxation’.

When libertarian types talk about taxation they mean
distortionary, revenue-gathering taxes that form the majority of
the government’s taxation scheme. When Matt (and pretty much all
economists) gets his tax-’em-harder hat on, he’s referring to
corrective Pigouvian taxes that remove distortionary
externalities. Unfortunately, the government doesn’t seem to
listen to economists much when it comes to designing their
taxation mechanisms: rather than taxing methane emissions and
other serious externalities they tax income. Hmmmm…

jamesz

Economics fiction writing

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It’s about a virtual world, similar to our own but slightly removed from it. It purports to have a set of rules that are internally consistent but has to constantly resort to ad hoc explanations for unusual behaviour. Yet, still, there is a lot of stuff that happens that is inexplicable within the rules of the universe and the powers that be tell us that we just have to accept that that’s the way it is.

So runs Megan McArdle’s critique of the new Harry Potter book. I agree with her but it didn’t spoil the book for me. Frankly, critiquing the economics of a book for essentially resembling the current state of the economics profession seems a bit rich to me.

Matt Nolan

Broadband penetration

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Found this little gem on Marginal Revolution.  It says that the OECD methodology for measuring Broadband penetration is flawed, as it measures per capita instead of per household rates (so countries with larger households are penalized, since people living in the same house can just share a connection). 

Now the OECD methodology for pretty much everything is flawed, but it did get me thinking, we are 21st in their measure of broadband penetration, could this be because of their inappropriately defined boundaries on what defines broadband uptake.

The answer is sadly no.  Under the new measure NZ comes in 23rd, down two places.  To make matters worse, Australia jumps 3 places to 13th.  Damn Telecoms lack of penetration.

Matt Nolan

Dairy farmers and their bling

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So, it looks like the dairy farmer is doing well.  This raises an interesting quesiton.  Are dairy farmers doing well because of:

a) Government help

b) The fact that their milk is sold by a monopoly

c) Favourable world commodity prices

d) Some mix of all three (note you can give a zero probablity to one of the options when doing this)

I think its mainly c).  Now the real issue I’d like us to try and figure out, is whether the government provided a positive role in the current dairy boom.  Has the government provided some structural assistance that could not of been provided in the free market?

Personally I doubt it.  But if someone can make a convincing argument for it, that would be pretty cool 😉