What drives economic growth in New Zealand? How has New Zealand been impacted by globalization and the financial crisis? What will shape future productivity and competitiveness? In this book, leading economists assemble key data to provide an analytical introduction to the contemporary New Zealand economy. Interpreting key economic indicators over time—gross domestic product and interest rates, population, employment and productivity levels, trade and investment, and government accounts—this examination focuses particularly on two issues: globalization and the rise of the Asian economies during the past 30 years, and the origins and continuing effects of the 2007&–08 global financial crisis. Rich with local data and case studies, this is a clear and concise assessment of the current structure and performance of New Zealand's economy from a historical and global perspective.
The COVID-19 pandemic struck the global economy after a decade that featured a broad-based slowdown in productivity growth. Global Productivity: Trends, Drivers, and Policies presents the first comprehensive analysis of the evolution and drivers of productivity growth, examines the effects of COVID-19 on productivity, and discusses a wide range of policies needed to rekindle productivity growth. The book also provides a far-reaching data set of multiple measures of productivity for up to 164 advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies, and it introduces a new sectoral database of productivity. The World Bank has created an extraordinary book on productivity, covering a large group of countries and using a wide variety of data sources. There is an emphasis on emerging and developing economies, whereas the prior literature has concentrated on developed economies. The book seeks to understand growth patterns and quantify the role of (among other things) the reallocation of factors, technological change, and the impact of natural disasters, including the COVID-19 pandemic. This book is must-reading for specialists in emerging economies but also provides deep insights for anyone interested in economic growth and productivity. Martin Neil Baily Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution Former Chair, U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers This is an important book at a critical time. As the book notes, global productivity growth had already been slowing prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and collapses with the pandemic. If we want an effective recovery, we have to understand what was driving these long-run trends. The book presents a novel global approach to examining the levels, growth rates, and drivers of productivity growth. For anyone wanting to understand or influence productivity growth, this is an essential read. Nicholas Bloom William D. Eberle Professor of Economics, Stanford University The COVID-19 pandemic hit a global economy that was already struggling with an adverse pre-existing condition—slow productivity growth. This extraordinarily valuable and timely book brings considerable new evidence that shows the broad-based, long-standing nature of the slowdown. It is comprehensive, with an exceptional focus on emerging market and developing economies. Importantly, it shows how severe disasters (of which COVID-19 is just the latest) typically harm productivity. There are no silver bullets, but the book suggests sensible strategies to improve growth prospects. John Fernald Schroders Chaired Professor of European Competitiveness and Reform and Professor of Economics, INSEAD
Labor productivity growth in the United States and other advanced countries has slowed dramatically since the mid-2000s, a major factor in their economic stagnation and political turmoil. Economists have been debating the causes of the slowdown and possible remedies for some years. Unaddressed in this discussion is what happens if the slowdown is not reversed. In this volume, a dozen renowned scholars analyze the impact of sustained lower productivity growth on public finances, social protection, trade, capital flows, wages, inequality, and, ultimately, politics in the advanced industrial world. They conclude that slow productivity growth could lead to unpredictable and possibly dangerous new problems, aggravating inequality and increasing concentration of market power. Facing Up to Low Productivity Growth also proposes ways that countries can cope with these consequences.
This book addresses the rising productivity gap between the global frontier and other firms, and identifies a number of structural impediments constraining business start-ups, knowledge diffusion and resource allocation (such as barriers to up-scaling and relatively high rates of skill mismatch).
This report presents a comprehensive overview of recent and longer-term trends in productivity levels and growth in OECD countries, accession countries, key partners and some G20 countries.
A guide for constructing and using composite indicators for policy makers, academics, the media and other interested parties. In particular, this handbook is concerned with indicators which compare and rank country performance.
While we New Zealanders live off the cow's back, our long-term economic prognosis looks grim. Our economic growth lags behind Australia and other countries in the OECD. Our universities fall each year in international rankings. We export 24 per cent of our university graduates. The country's lack-lustre economic performance following the free-market reforms of the 1980s is often cast as a paradox: why haven't sound economic policies led to growth? In this book two of New Zealand's leading thinkers tell us to 'get off the grass!' - and explain how we might do so. Shuan Hendy and Paul Callaghan argue that the New Zealand 'paradox' can be explained by our struggle to innovate. On a per-capita basis, OECD countries on average produce four times as many patents as New Zealand. Why is this? What determines a country's capacity for innovation? Shaun Hendy and Paul Callaghan take a quantitative look at how innovation works both in New Zealand and around the world. They show that economic geography plays a key role in determining rates of innovation and productivity. If New Zealand is to grow its economy more rapidly it must overcome geography to build nationwide communities of innovators, entrepreneurs and businesses. It must get off the grass and diversify its economy beyond the primary sector. Hendy and Callaghan pose deep challenges to the country: Can New Zealand learn to innovate like a city of four million people? Can New Zealand become a place where talent wants to live? Can we learn to live off knowledge rather than nature? Are we willing to take science seriously? In a brilliant intellectual adventure that takes us from David Ricardo and Adam Smith to economic geography and the science of complex networks, Shaun Hendy and Paul Callaghan pose the tough questions and provide some powerful answers for New Zealand's future.
Presents the proceedings of two workshops on productivity measurement and analysis, which brought together representatives of statistical offices, central banks and other officials involved with the analysis and measurement of productivity at aggregate and industry levels.
