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Promoting well-informed and reasoned debate on public policy issues that matter to New Zealanders. 
Environment

Review of policy instruments for freshwater management

Authors: Sophie Hale | Julia Talbot-Jones | Suzie Greenhalgh

Working Paper

As pressures on water resources increase in New Zealand, so does the need for alternative policy approaches that can adequately address the demands of competing interests.

Urban & regional

Modelling urban development in New Zealand

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Dave Maré | Stuart Donovan

Working Paper

Firms are attracted to locate in larger cities, consistent with ‘agglomeration economies’ that are found in many countries. Residents, however, are attracted to smaller places; factors...

Updates

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2020-11-20

How could economic policy incentivise better freshwater outcomes?

Issues around the health of our rivers and lakes are front of mind for many New Zealanders at this time....

2020-10-06

What is the nature of subjective wellbeing inequality?

A common wellbeing approach that is used in public policy places emphasis on how people subjectively value their own life...

2020-10-01

Is the Reserve Bank of New Zealand fulfilling its statutory objectives?

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand Monetary Policy Amendment Act (2018) gives it a (new) aim of promoting “the prosperity...

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Motu Research Round Table

14 October 2020

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

A prominent economist and influential professor (The John and Natty McArthur University professor at Harvard), Rebecca is one of the world’s most articulate, insightful and persuasive scholars focused on driving large-scale change.

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Recent events

14 September 2020

Global Productivity: Trends, Drivers and Policies

Alistair Dieppe from the World Bank presentation on his recent paper which presents the first comprehensive analysis of the evolution and drivers of productivity growth, examines the impact of COVID-19 on productivity, and presents a wide-range of policies needed to rekindle productivity growth.

14 August 2020

Thoughts on Climate change in a post Covid world

Suzi Kerr is the Chief Economist at Environmental Defense Fund. She was, until May 2019, a Senior Fellow, and from 1998 - 2009 Founding Director, at Motu Research in New Zealand.

13 April 2020

Exploring Preconditions for Effective Global Responses to Climate Change

When Jeremy Webb started his research, he was looking for options that might help solve climate change. He quickly realised the problem wasn’t a lack of options and shifted focus to exploring who would implement those options and under what conditions. Jeremy has developed an insightful approach to framing scenarios in which the world succeeds or fails at addressing climate change and related impacts.

Featured work

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Environment

Review of policy instruments for freshwater management

Authors: Sophie Hale | Julia Talbot-Jones | Suzie Greenhalgh

Working Paper

As pressures on water resources increase in New Zealand, so does the need for alternative policy approaches that can adequately address the demands of competing interests.
Climate change mitigation

Decision trees: Forestry in the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme post-2020

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Catherine Leining | Sandra Cortés-Acosta

Working Paper

Changes to the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) in June 2020 create incentives for landowners to establish new forests and register them in the NZ ETS as either standard or permanent forestry.From 1...
Productivity & innovation

Research Funding and Collaboration

Authors: Adam Jaffe | Ben Davies | Jason Gush | Shaun C. Hendy

Article

We analyse whether research funding contests promote co-authorship. Our analysis combines Scopus publication records with data on applications to the Marsden Fund, the premiere source of funding for basic research in New Zealand. On average,...
Wellbeing & macro-economics

The Relationship Between Subjective Wellbeing and Subjective Wellbeing Inequality: Taking Ordinality and Skewness Seriously

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Florencia Tranquilli | Stephen Jenkins

Working Paper

We examine the relationship between SWB inequality and individual SWB outcomes across countries and across time.
Wellbeing & macro-economics

How does Monetary Policy affect welfare?

Authors: Robert MacCulloch | Lina El-Jahel | Hamed Shafiee

Working Paper

Theories on the optimal design of monetary policy rely on a social welfare function defined over inflation and unemployment.
Urban & regional

Delineating functional labour market areas with estimable classification stabilities

Authors: Dave Maré | Ben Davies

Working Paper

We use historical NZ census data on commuting flows to illustrate the method and to summarise changing labour market boundaries from 2001 to 2013.
Urban & regional

Modelling urban development in New Zealand

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Dave Maré | Stuart Donovan

Working Paper

Firms are attracted to locate in larger cities, consistent with ‘agglomeration economies’ that are found in many countries.Residents, however, are attracted to smaller places; factors such as congestion in larger cities are a negative for...
Urban & regional

Measuring commute patterns over time: Using administrative data to identify where employees live and work

Authors: Dave Maré | Richard Fabling

Working Paper

We have developed a new database of commuting flows in New Zealand, for use in the Statistics NZ datalab.  It draws on a range of confidentialised datasets within the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) and Longitudinal...
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