There are actually a few interesting looking papers in the
latest issue of NZEP:
Does stadium construction create jobs and boost incomes? The realised economic impacts of sports facilities in New Zealand
by Samuel A. Richardson
Government involvement in facility construction is typically justified on the basis of ex-ante predictions of economic impact resulting from events hosted at the new or upgraded facility. This paper examines the impact of facility construction on construction sector employment and real GDP across 15 New Zealand cities between 1997 and 2009. Results from static and dynamic models indicate that certain types of facilities had short-term (during construction) positive impacts on construction sector employment growth, although only stadium projects generated positive post-construction employment impacts. There is also little in the way of empirical evidence to suggest that new or upgraded facilities had any significant impact on local area real GDP either during or post-construction.
The effects of home heating on asthma: evidence from New Zealand
by Andrea Kutinova Menclova and Rachel Susan Webb
New Zealand, along with the USA and Australia, has one of the highest asthma rates among developed countries and previous analyses attribute this partly to insufficient home heating in certain neighbourhoods. International public health and medical studies corroborate this link but strong evidence of causality is lacking. In this paper, we empirically investigate the effect of home heating on hospital asthma admissions using panel data techniques and controlling for endogeneity. The hypothesis that higher electricity prices (via less adequate heating) increase hospital asthma admissions is tested and receives strong empirical support across a number of model specifications and datasets used.
and, of course, the truly magnificent - he says with all modesty
From complete to incomplete (contracts): A survey of the mainstream approach to the theory of privatisation
by Paul Walker
Privatisation is a common, yet controversial, policy in many countries around the world, including New Zealand. In this essay, we survey the literature on the theory of privatisation to see what insights it provides to the privatisation debate. We divide the literature into two periods defined by their relationship to the theory of the firm. In the period up to 1990, the literature followed the theory of the firm in using a complete or comprehensive contracting modelling framework. By the end of the 1980s, the ownership neutrality theorems highlighted a major weakness with this approach. The contemporary (post-1990) literature took advantage of incomplete contracting models to explain the difference in the behaviour of state and privately owned firms.
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