This is the draft of a paper for 2009 Conference of the New Zealand Statistical Association, 3 September 2009. The presentation was a PowerPoint based on it. It is part of a study of the impact of drinking by associates undertaken by the Centre for Social and Health Outcomes, Research and Evaluation (SHORE), Massey University….
Continue reading this entry »
Speech to Launch the Report “New Insights into the Experienced Generation” for the Hope Foundation, 30 July 2009 Keywords: Social Policy; Statistics; This report represents a further step to our understanding of ourselves as a society. Only a few decades ago we treated all New Zealanders as the same, with the implicit assumption…
Continue reading this entry »
Paper to the 50th Anniversary Conference of the New Zealand Association of Economists: 1 July, 2009: Wellington. Keywords: Growth & Innovation; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Statistics; This paper looks only at the first 25 years of the New Zealand research program on economic growth. It focuses on the empirical analysis but refers…
Continue reading this entry »
One Stop Update for Accountants in the Public Sector 20 April 2009, Wellington. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Statistics; Balance sheets are integrally involved in the greatest economic crisis in our lifetime. So while my remit is to provide the conference with an economic context to its deliberations, I have to engage with accountancy….
Continue reading this entry »
Paper to the Wellington Statistical Group, 2 February, 2009. (With Quan (Ryan) You Analyst, Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation (SHORE), of Massey University.) Keywords: Health; Statistics; In 2007 the Ministry of Health commissioned Massey University’s Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation (SHORE) and Te Ropu Whariki…
Continue reading this entry »
Report to Ministry of Health by Centre for Social and Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation & Te Ropu Whariki, Massey University. Keywords: Health; Statistics; “The report of the project Assessment of the Social Impacts of Gambling in New Zealand was primarily written by En-Yi (Judy) Lin and Sally Casswell with analysis by Ru…
Continue reading this entry »
Are journalists making the economic situation seem worse? Listener 31 May, 2008 Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Statistics; What is happening to journalism? You will recall that, last year, journalists campaigned for tax cuts based on a total misunderstanding of the Government accounts. They used the wrong measure of the Budget surplus, which…
Continue reading this entry »
Revised Paper for a Seminar, 15 May 2008 Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Statistics; I have been asked to make a few remarks on research into economic growth in New Zealand. Let me begin with some preliminaries. Policy I am going to avoid suggesting any policy conclusions which might follow from the…
Continue reading this entry »
Note prepared 6 April, 2008. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Statistics; The conventional Engel Curve relates expenditure on (usually) food (F) to aggregate household (usually) expenditure (X). Since it is a one-to-one relation it my be mathematically inverted to (1) X = f(F, z) where z is a vector of other variables which…
Continue reading this entry »
Listener: 22 March, 2008. Keywords: Social Policy; Statistics; “Incentives matter” is a routine part of economists’ thinking. Tax a commodity, its price goes up and there is an incentive to reduce consumption. Reduce the tax, the price goes down and the incentive goes the other way. But many real-life circumstances are more complex, and the…
Continue reading this entry »
The 11th Annual Public Sector Finance Forum. 10 September, 2007 Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; Statistics; It has been my lot to be asked to give two papers to this Public Sector Finance Forum. Today’s paper might be called the ‘macroeconomics’ paper, in which I look at the size of…
Continue reading this entry »
The 11th Annual Public Sector Finance Forum. 11 September, 2007 Keywords: Governance; Regulation & Taxation; Statistics; In my paper yesterday, I argued that we too frequently misuse data for rhetorical and political purposes. Today’s paper is an extension of that theme, but it focuses on a less conscious process, while providing an…
Continue reading this entry »
The 11th Annual Public Sector Finance Forum. 10 September, 2007 Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; Statistics; It has been my lot to be asked to give two papers to this Public Sector Finance Forum. Today’s paper might be called the ‘macroeconomics’ paper, in which I look at the size of the…
Continue reading this entry »
Keywords: Distributional Economics; Maori; Statistics; The following summarises the income statistics used in the Listener economics columns of the March 11 & 25, and April 7. The data is derived directly from the official Population Census for the relevant years. As the column details, it is reported income including social security benefits, before tax and…
Continue reading this entry »
This was submitted to http://norightturn.blogspot.com/, posted 3 August, 2006. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Social Policy; Statistics; The New Zealand Living Standards 2004 report depends entirely upon its “Economic Living Standards Index” (ELSI), first used in the previous (2000) report. At that time I expressed reservations about the index. Many have not been addressed. What I do…
Continue reading this entry »
Listener: 25 February, 2006
Keywords: Literature and Culture; Statistics;
March 7 is Census Day, the day on which Statistics New Zealand (like Foreskin) asks “Whaddarya?” The Census may not cover all the questions you think important, but a good quality Census response makes the surveys that ask such questions cheaper and you are surveyed less often.
Some material I prepared just before the election, which my son put on his Vorb website, where there are the graphs and some subsequent comments.
Keywords: Political Economy & History; Statistics;
I thought you might be interested in the following two charts. They combine four polls (NZH, Fairfax, TV1, TV3), interpolate between polls and project after them (out to election day – a very foolish thing I add).
On Friday 23 2005, this was put on the No Right Turn website . It used the election night seat outruns. I have updated it to the final election seat outturns, and added a subsequent comment.
Keywords: Political Economy & History; Statistics;
One of the advantages of MMP is it enables us to think more systematically about the political process (although given much of the nonsense that is being written at the moment, it does not appear to force us to). What this note sets out is a a mathematical procedure which enables us to think systematically about coalitions (although, and as I shall explain, like most mathematical models it has imitations) .
Paper presented to OECD, 10 June, 2005
Keywords: Statistics;
GDP valued at purchasing power parity prices is widely treated as a measure of production, even though it is calculated on the expenditure side of the national accounts. This paper shows that GDP and GDE (or GDI)are not generally equal (although they are if they are measured in transaction prices). It suggests that we should relabel the measure as GDI at purchasing power parity prices which is actually being what is measured or, better still, measure GNI.
A Report prepared in February 2003.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Statistics;
Contents
Introduction
What is GDP?
Comparing GDP Through Time
Comparing GDP Between Countries: Purchasing Power Parity
How Satisfactory is the Adjustment?
Comparisons Through Time
Scaling PPP adjusted GDP
Ranking by GDP
Does GDP Measure Economic Welfare?
Alternative Measures to GDP
Notes