Shaun Hendy • Jun 10, 2010 •
This is the last post in my series on Philip McCann’s paper [1], which considers New Zealand’s productivity paradox: why, despite being ranked very highly for the factors that are normally thought by economists to drive economic growth, is New Zealand’s economy is just an average performer? In the previous post, … Read More
Shaun Hendy • Apr 23, 2010 •
In this post, I will continue my discussion of Philip McCann’s paper, ’Economic geography, globalisation and New Zealand’s productivity paradox’ [1]. McCann argues that it is New Zealand’s economic geography that is the reason for its poor productivity performance. In this post I’ll try to sketch some of the … Read More
Shaun Hendy • Mar 31, 2010 •
Let’s continue the discussion of Philip McCann’s paper, ’Economic geography, globalisation and New Zealand’s productivity paradox’, New Zealand Economic Papers, 43: 3, 279 – 314 (2009). In Part II, I looked in depth at the productivity paradox. As McCann notes, the debate about New Zealand’s poor productivity performance often focuses on regulation, taxation and institutions. However, McCann … Read More
Shaun Hendy • Mar 24, 2010 •
After the announcements of the Prime Minister’s Science Prizes earlier in the month, Rod Oram wrote a piece for the Sunday Star Times, where he discussed the type of science that won the top prize. As I wrote at the time, Jeff Tallon and Bob Buckley from Industrial Research Ltd in Lower Hutt were awarded this … Read More
Shaun Hendy • Mar 18, 2010 •
In this post, I will continue my discussion of Philip McCann’s paper ’Economic geography, globalisation and New Zealand’s productivity paradox’, New Zealand Economic Papers, 43: 3, 279 – 314 (2009). In a previous post, I briefly introduced the idea of the New Zealand productivity paradox: The mystery is why a country that seems close to best practice … Read More
Shaun Hendy • Mar 18, 2010 •
Philip McCann is a Professor of Economics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands who has developed a very interesting view of New Zealand’s economic situation. After a talk by Philip in Motu’s public policy lecture series last year (‘Economic geography, globalisation and New Zealand’s productivity paradox’), and a lively discussion over at Public Address, a number … Read More
Shaun Hendy • Jan 15, 2010 •
Having bailed out Wall Street last year, the US is now looking for new industries to kick start its economy. However, many observers feel that the US may have squandered its technological lead over the rest of the world: the US trade balance in high technology products has fallen steadily into the red over the last decade, from US$5.3bn in … Read More
Shaun Hendy • Jan 11, 2010 •
In its 2009 report on global competitiveness, the World Economic Forum identified lack of innovation as one of the key weaknesses in the New Zealand economy. Drilling down into their report, they rate New Zealand’s strengths in innovation as the quality of our research institutions, our collaboration between universities and industries, and its weaknesses as lack of business … Read More
Shaun Hendy • Dec 09, 2009 •
The 2009 RS&T scorecard is now available here. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to obtain a pre-release copy from MoRST so I have not had time to fully digest it. However, I will draw your attention to the interesting plot on page 4 which charts the number of patents per billion dollars GDP (2009 PPP). This measure presumably says something … Read More
Shaun Hendy • Nov 02, 2009 •
The All Blacks may have swept the Wallabies in the Bledisloe Cup this year, but how do New Zealand and Australia stack up on innovation? A few posts ago I looked at how New Zealand’s patents were distributed regionally. Using an OECD database of PCT patents from 1978-2008, I found that Auckland had the most patents per capita … Read More