Listener 12 June 2004.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Other than the New Zealand embassy, it was the only occasion I entered an official building in America without having to showing an identity card. For Congress (the American parliament) is insistent that little should come between them and their constituents. (But yes, there was the metal detector.)
Who really benefits from the US/Australian Free Trade Agreement?
Listener: 6 March, 2004.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Free (or preferential) Trade Agreements (FTAs) may not always benefit the economies involved. Certainly, there will be sector beneficiaries, and their acolytes will loudly proclaim the benefits, but within an economy there will also be losers. Do the sector benefits outweigh others’ detriments? The economist’s answer is “not necessarily”.
Listener 10 January, 2004.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation;
The Netherlands produces annually about $9 billion of flowers and related products, of which it exports almost $8 billion (and imports and exports another billion). In contrast, New Zealand exports a paltry $70m. The difference is all the more astonishing because Michael Porter in The Competitive Advantage of Nations argues that the Dutch have no comparative advantage in the growing of flowers. Rather, they have built up a technological excellence and maintain a quality edge at the forefront of world production and distribution.
The Political Economy of the Diminishing Tyranny of Distance.
Accepted for publication by The Journal of Economic and Social Policy (January 2004: the original version was submitted in September 2002).
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Abstract Globalisation can be treated as a consequence of the falling costs of distance, and its problems as arising from different sorts of distances reducing at different rates. The paper is written from the perspective of Australasia, which has suffered more and benefited more from the ‘tyranny of distance’, and will be ultimately impacted more by its falling costs.[1]
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Introduction
The conditions for a Marsden Grant require some technology transfer above the publication of articles and teaching. My successful application for a contribution to my research program on globalisation proposed that I would establish a virtual New Zealand Centre for Globalisation Studies (NZCGS), since I am not in a position to supervise research students directly.
Paper for ‘New Zealand’s Role in World Affairs’ Conference, VUW, 5 December, 2003.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
A few months ago I was awarded a three year Marden Grant to study globalisation and New Zealand’s role in it. It is a topic I have been long working upon, developing out of my earlier study of the New Zealand economy summarised in my book In Stormy Seas: The Post-War New Zealand Economy, whose theme can be summarised as ‘the fate of New Zealand will be largely a consequence of what happens overseas, together with our ability to seize the opportunities and manage the problems those events.’
Listener: 1 November, 2003.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Does it strike you as odd that we drink wine and eat cheeses from Europe and yet New Zealand exports them there? Or that Germans drive Renaults and the French drive Volkswagens? The phenomenon puzzled economists, too. Renaults and Volkswagens are different cars, but they are not that different. Neither the German nor French economies would collapse if they could not import cars: perhaps local manufacturers would make the foreign models, although substantial economies of scale keep the costs of this specialisation down (and diminishing costs of distance make the inter-regional trade possible). Consumers would be only marginally worse off.
Listener 16 October, 2003.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
The fate of New Zealand will be largely a consequence of what happens overseas, together with our ability to seize the opportunities and manage the problems it creates. The truism has been a constant preoccupation of mine, and was the title theme of my macro-economic history In Stormy Seas. Recently, I have been trying to understand more about the long-term trends in the world economy, a phenomenon sometimes called “globalisation”.
Listener October 4, 2003.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Our economic debate is bedevilled by defeatism, the belief that New Zealand cannot survive as an independent nation. Rogernomes seem to conclude that since their policies failed, there is no alternative but for us to become a colony. But even many post-Rogernomes, typically trained in the ideal of the US economy, think we are too small and too distant to survive.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation;
Listener: 16 August, 2002
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Joseph Stiglitz may be the most important economist outside government in today’s world. He first came to notice as the editor of the collected works of Paul Samuelson, the second most important economist of the 20th century. Stiglitz went on to innovate in economic theory (receiving a Nobel Prize in 2001 in the economics of information), write a number of major textbooks and hold positions in many major universities. From 1993 he served on Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, going on to work in the World Bank in 1997. In 2000 he was forced out by a US administration who found his criticisms of them and the International Monetary Fund uncomfortable.
Chapter of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome.
Keywords: Business & Finance; Environment & Resources; Globalisation & Trade;
One of the curiosity of standard economics as it is presented to the public and, indeed, often as it is taught, is the neglect of transaction (and information) costs. Ronald Coase, recipient of a Nobel Prize in economics in 1991, for some seminal insights (identified 30 years earlier) into the way that economic behaviour is modified by them. The section on the Resource Management Act below, sketches the insight. Subsequently, a handful of economists, most prominently Joe Stiglitz who received the Nobel Prize in 2001, have elaborated their role. In fact a considerable amount of government activity is focussed on reducing transaction costs, despite their role often being overlooked. All the more puzzling because those most involved in the economic debate – economists, accountants, bureaucrats, lawyers, politicians, even managers of businesses – are at the transacting end rather than the providing end, of the economy.
Third draft of Chapter 4 of Transforminng New Zealand. Comments welcome. (Second Draft).
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
It is unwise to focus – as the last chapter had to – on the aggregate economy. Being excessively aggregate means that some of the most important features of the economic transformation are ignored. The growth and change occurs in businesses, and so we need to think about how businesses grow. Economists have a theory of how businesses behave, which informs their thinking. But at the policy level they need to avoid detailed intervention at the firm level.
Draft chapters for a book. Readers are invited to comment on these drafts. Not all chapters are complete. A summary of the main economic themes is in Tractatus Developmentalis Economica.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation;
Prologue Not written
These draft chapters are on the web
1. The Point of it All.
2. New Zealand’s Post-war Economic Performance
3. Theories of Economic Growth.
4. The Sectoral Approach to Economic Growth
5. Exporting and Growth
6. Competitive Advantage
7. Infrastructure
8. Intervention and Innovation
9. Working with Technological Innovation
These chapters are in preliminary development and may change dramatically.
10. Is Small Beautiful?
10. It’s Not Easy Being Small
12. Taxation and Spending
13. Distributing the Gains
14. The Quality of Life
Appendices On website
A.1. The GDP Target.
A.2. The Maddison-OECD Data Base.
Chapter of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Michael Porter’s theory of competitive advantage emphasises that ‘firms, not nations, compete in international markets’ even though it recognises that nations have a role in fostering successful businesses (p.33). Thus the focus on exporting has to be on the businesses involved.
Chapter of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Globalisation & Trade;
The export sectors have a key role in the growth of a small open multi-sectoral economy. They can expand faster than the world economy as a whole, and drag the domestic economy along with them, accelerating its growth rate. However there are different sorts of exports, not all of which can be accelerated.
The following is extracts from a research proposal: May 2003. It was awarded a Marsden award and will be the focus of my public interest research over the next three years.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
SUMMARY
Describe in up to 200 words the nature of your proposed research in plain English for a general audience. This summary should be able to be used for publicity purposes if the proposal is offered funding.
Globalisation has shaped the world economy for the last two centuries. It also has shaped New Zealand, as for instance when refrigeration, together with steam ships and telegraph, led to a New Zealand economy based on pastoral farming selling to Britain. While there was a period of stagnation in the globalisation process in the middle of the twentieth century, innovations such as containerisation and mass air travel revitalised the globalisation pressures after the Second World War. More recently, the information and communication technology revolution has transformed access to information and simplified international contacts. Among the consequences of these changes have been an acceleration of globalisation with less restricted trade in more goods and services, foreign investment and capital flows, the potentiality for substantial human migration (as well as the huge tourist industry), a revolution in information access, and the growth of institutions such as the IMF and the WTO which attempt to regulate international economic activity. Local cultures and the nation state are being transformed. This project will trace these impacts on New Zealand in the past, and today, looking forward to the way globalisation will impact on the future, while contributing to international scholarship on the economics of globalisation.
Listener: 19 April, 2003.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money;
We see only vaguely the world order which will follow the flames of Iraq. The whole episode has confirmed the American (Hard) Right’s suspicions of the old order, based on alliances and multilateral institutions, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman (and, indeed Peter Fraser) contributed to creating after the Second World War. They argue the case for, what amounts to, an American imperium – a world empire over which it wields unqualified power. With President Bush they have an administration which could pursue such a unilateralist goal, with profound international political and military implications. But as this is only a short economics column, the focus is on the economic and financial ones.
Note in response to questions arising from the ‘Disorder Afterwards’ Listener Column of 19 April, 2003
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money;
In the past few weeks I have been asked by a number of people about published opinions that argue the US is invading Iraq in order to get access to its oil, and to strengthen the role of the US dollar, it being noted that a few years ago Iraq decided to settle its oil deals would be transacted in euros.
Revised Version of paper for ‘New Zealand’s Role in World Affairs’ VUW, 5 December, 2003. Published in New Zealand in a Globalising World ed. R. Petman, VUP, 2005.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
In late 2003 I was awarded a three year Marsden Grant to study globalisation and New Zealand’s role in it. This paper sketches the research program, which is primarily driven from an economist’s perspective, but also poses some of the international relations issues.