Donal Curtin • Dec 22, 2014 •
"At 3.5 percent", said last week's Monetary Policy Statement, "the OCR" - the official cash rate - "is still providing support to demand".Now, there's a sense in which this is true: a "neutral" rate, neither supportive nor contractionary, is reckoned t... Read More
Donal Curtin • Mar 13, 2014 •
The Commerce Commission, as I blogged a little while ago, has come out with its latest benchmarking report on retail mobile telecommunication services. Produced for it by Teligen, it uses OECD-sourced power parity (PPP) exchange rates to convert overse... Read More
Eric Crampton • Mar 13, 2013 •
Radio New Zealand reports international student visa numbers are down; they blame the high dollar. The real cost of tertiary education in New Zealand can vary substantially with exchange rates. There isn't much that any University can do about levels, but we could perhaps be doing more to reduce uncertainty. Who is better placed to mitigate the risk of … Read More
Matt Nolan • Feb 21, 2013 •
Excellent. The RBNZ has come out and discussed what is going on with manufacturing, what monetary policy can achieve, and the fundamental point that any “failure” stems from distortions in the domestic economy – not from flexible inflation targeting. Globalisation, outsourcing, and international supply chains, along with competition from low cost producers and rising global [...] … Read More
Seamus Hogan • Oct 19, 2012 •
Eric posted on Monday about the Stuff.co.nz article in which he was extensively quoted. I am mostly in agreement, with the article and Eric’s quoted comments, but there are a couple of places where I take issue. First, the article takes as a given... Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 15, 2012 •
Michael Berry looks at New Zealand's exchange rate in this weekend's Christchurch Press. I provided a few comments; he's quoted me accurately. I'm copying below what I'd sent Michael, not because he's gotten anything wrong, but rather because it seems ... Read More