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Our Research

Regions and settlements

Motu’s research frequently relates to specific regions within New Zealand. This section details research about regions and settlements excluding Auckland.

Our research focus

Motu’s current and recent regional economic research focus includes:

  • How do regions within New Zealand adjust to industrial and demographic change, including regional population decline?
  • How large are differences in productivity, innovation, wages between regions - and why? 
  • What are the determinants of success for "second-tier" settlements? (Funded through the National Science Challenge 11.)
  • Effects of the Christchurch earthquakes on outcomes for Christchurch and for property markets outside of Christchurch - funded by the Natural Hazards Platform.

Publications

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…

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.

Hometown & whānau, or big city & millennials?

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Dave Maré | Isabelle Sin | Shaan Badenhorst | Jacques Poot

Working Paper

The economic geography of graduate destination choices in New Zealand

We analyse the location choice of university and polytechnic students in New Zealand following graduation.

Graduates are attracted to locate in places that have high quality production…

The Contrasting Importance of Quality of Life and Quality of Business for Domestic and International Migrants

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Dave Maré | Kate Preston | Shaan Badenhorst

Working Paper

International
and local urban migrants
differ in their tastes 

We examine whether bilateral regional migration flows are driven by the city’s quality of life (QL) or quality of business (QB). The QL and QB measures are…

Relatedness, Complexity and Local Growth

Authors: Dave Maré | Ben Davies

Working Paper

Local job networks    
promote growth in big cities,    
but not in small towns.    

We derive a measure of the relatedness between economic activities based on weighted correlations of local employment shares, and use this measure…

Amenities and the attractiveness of New Zealand cities

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Dave Maré | Kate Preston

Working Paper

People like to be    
dry and sunny, by the sea,    
but firms like cities.    

We analyse which factors attract people and firms (and hence jobs) to different settlements across New Zealand. Using theoretically consistent measures…

Urban influence and population change in New Zealand

Authors: Dave Maré | William Cochrane

Article

While the NZ population overall continues to grow, a large proportion of towns and communities in rural or peripheral areas exhibit near-certain stagnation (Cameron infra) or decline in their populations (Jack & Brabyn infra). This…

Eighty years of urban development in New Zealand: impacts of economic and natural factors

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Anna Robinson | Eyal Apatov | Larissa Lutchman

Article

We analyse impacts of economic and other factors on long-run urban growth in New Zealand. Growing cities must have preferred attributes (such as natural characteristics, social amenities and transport infrastructures) relative to other cities. We…

Price, Quality, and International Agricultural Trade

Authors: Darian Woods | Andrew Coleman

Working Paper

The average value of a particular class of agricultural exports varies widely across different destinations. This raises the question: in the event of a supply shock, such as the implementation of the Emissions Trading Scheme,…

The Long-Run Impact of New Zealand’s Structural Reform on Local Communities

Authors: Andrew Aitken | Malathi Velamuri | Steven Stillman

Article

New Zealand underwent a period of comprehensive market-oriented economic reforms from 1984 to 1993. In this paper, we use data from the 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001 New Zealand census to examine the long-run impact…

Defining Areas and Linking Geographical Data: An Example from New Zealand

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Dave Maré | Melanie Morten

Article

This paper develops a match quality statistic to aid researchers in linking regional data that are available at inconsistent levels of aggregation. The match quality statistic developed in the paper allows researchers to make their…

Defining Areas: Linking Geographic Data in New Zealand

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Dave Maré | Melanie Morten

Working Paper

This paper develops a match quality statistic to quantify the trade-off between ‘specificity’ and ‘completeness’ when aggregating one regional aggregation to another. We apply this statistic to calculate the degree of mismatch between various regional aggregations for New…

Defining Geographic Communities

Authors: Dave Maré | Michelle Poland

Working Paper

The purpose of this paper is to provide a guide to concepts, ideas, and measurements of geographic communities. The paper investigates the various concepts of geographic communities found in the literature and reviews existing studies…

A New Zealand Regional Housing Model

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Sean Hyland | Andrew Coleman | Alex Collier | James Kerr

Working Paper

The New Zealand Regional Housing Model (NZRHM) includes estimated equations for four key housing market variables: house prices, housing supply (new dwelling consents), residential vacant land (lot) prices, and average rents. Long run (cointegration) relationships…

Intra and Inter-Regional Industry Shocks: A New Metric with an Application to Australasian Currency Union

Author: Arthur Grimes

Working Paper

We place regional industry structures at centre stage in currency union analysis, decomposing differences between regional and aggregate cycles into "industry structure" and "industry cycle" effects. The industry structure effect indicates whether a region's industry…

Regional Business Cycles in New Zealand: Do They Exist? What Might Drive Them?

Authors: John McDermott | Viv Hall

Working Paper

We use National Bank of New Zealand Regional Economic Activity data, to identify and characterise classical business cycle turning points, for New Zealand's 14 regions and aggregate New Zealand activity. Using Concordance statistic measures, logistic…

Insolvency and Economic Development: Regional Variation and Adjustment

Authors: Arthur Grimes | Richard Fabling

Working Paper

This paper examines the determinants of the rate of forced insolvency in New Zealand.

The study incorporates two key features. First, we use regional as well as national data to explain insolvencies. The data cover six…

The Long-Run Impact of New Zealand’s Structural Reform on Local Communities

Authors: Andrew Aitken | Malathi Velamuri | Steven Stillman

Working Paper

New Zealand underwent a period of comprehensive market-oriented economic reforms from 1984-93.

In this paper, we use data from the 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2001 Censuses to examine the long-run impact that these reforms had on…
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