Down with the drain : looking after our urban runoff and waterways in the era of sustainable management : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Resource and Environmental Planning at Massey University

Recent reforms of environmental and local government legislation have radically changed the nature of environmental management in New Zealand. There is a new mandate for the "sustainable management" of natural and physical resources. This thesis examines how environmental considerations are currently being incorporated into the management of urban runoff and waterways in New Zealand. Three case studies of urban councils were conducted. Two main data collection methods were employed. Interviews were conducted with the relevant council staff and this information was supplemented by an analysis of regional policy statements, regional plans and district plans that employed a method of plan coding. This sought to establish what policies and programmes the councils were involved in, whether this was different from the late 1980s, and the extent to which they were carrying out various types of innovative solutions to environmental problems. The research findings suggest that councils vary considerably in their approach to urban runoff and waterways. It showed that urban streams in New Zealand have suffered levels of degradation including pollution and channel modification that are consistent with many urban areas overseas. Recently, elements of a new philosophy have been applied to their management, which has coincided with the introduction of the Resource Management Act (RMA). Following overseas trends, there has been a recognition by managers of our waterways and stormwater systems that former practices in managing urban runoff have neglected environmental issues and natural resource conservation. This research suggests that stormwater management practices are taking on board the considerations of water quality, quantity and biodiversity to a greater extent than that which happened in the past. The extent to which this is happening in any particular area depends on the scale of the issues, the sensitivity and utility of affected resources, and the level of commitment by both community and council to changing traditional practices

The role of capital, liquidity and credit growth in financial crises in Latin America and East Asia

We construct a dataset of bank capital adequacy and liquidity to test their relationships to crises in Asia and Latin America. Event studies, logit and ROC estimations suggest these variables are valuable leading indicators of crises. They can be used to improve Early Warning System design although there are trade-offs between model simplicity, which implies less monitoring costs and complexity which may improve accuracy. There are significant differences between the regions so pooling assumptions are unsound. AUCs show that capital and/or liquidity can be used in a parsimonious model without substantial loss in crisis predictive accuracy. We find no direct role for credit growth in either region. Our results have implications for Asian and Latin American financial regulators concerned with the impacts of Basel III on their banking systems.This work is funded under ESRC Grant No. PTA – 053 – 27 – 0002, entitled “An Investigation into the Causes of Banking Crises and Early Warning System Design”

Equity prices and the real economy - A vector error-correction approach

We assess the impact of equity prices on the level of output in the Europe Union economies and the US using Vector Error Correction (VECM) time series techniques. The distinction between impacts in bank based and equity market based economies is shown to be important, with equity prices having a greater impact on output in market-based economies. Share prices are shown to be largely autonomous in variance decompositions, whilst equity price do have a strong impact on output in the UK and US in their variance decompositions. An analysis of impulse responses suggests that large market based economies have more effective fiscal and monetary policy instruments

Asymmetric Labour Markets in a Converging Europe: Do differences matter? ENEPRI Working Paper No. 2, January 2001

Asymmetric economic structures across Europe may result in common shocks having asymmetric effects. In this paper we investigate whether the differences in the structure and dynamics that we observe in the European economies matter for policy design. In particular it is widely believed that labour market responses are different, with the structure of labour demand and the nature of the bargain over wages differing between countries. In addition the European economies move at different speeds in response to common shocks. In this paper we construct three different models of Europe, one where the labour market relationships are separately estimated and assumed to be different, one where the most statistically acceptable commonalties are imposed and one where common labour market relationships are imposed across all member countries. We use panel estimation techniques to test for the imposition of commonalties among countries. We find that it is possible to divide Europe into sub-groups, but it is not possible to have one model of European labour markets. We use stochastic simulation techniques on these different models of Europe and find that the preferred rule for the ECB is a combined nominal aggregate and inflation-targeting rule. We find that while this rule is dominant in all our models, the more inertia that is introduced into the labour markets, the more a nominal aggregate-targeting rule alone may be preferred. However, we conclude, that differences in the labour market transmission mechanisms across the European countries appear to have little influence on the setting of monetary policy for the ECB, although this depends on the relative importance of the different components in the welfare loss function

Shocks and shock absorbers: The International Propagation Of Equity Market Shocks and the design of appropriate policy responses

Equity prices are major sources of shocks to the world economy and channels for propagation of these shocks. We seek to calibrate macroeconomic effects of falls in share prices and assess appropriate policy responses, using the National Institute Global Econometric Model NiGEM. Based on estimated relationships, falls in US equity prices have significant impacts on global activity; potential for liquidity traps suggest a need for complementary monetary and fiscal policy easing. However, fiscal easing boosts long-term real interest rates and hence moderates one of the automatic shock absorbers provided by the market mechanism

The evolution of the financial crisis of 2007–8

The financial crisis that started in August 2008 reached a climax in the autumn of 2008 with a wave of bank nationalisations across North America and Europe. Although banking crises are not uncommon, this is the largest since 1929–33. This paper discusses the build-up to the crisis, looking at the role of low real interest rates in stimulating an asset price bubble. That bubble was stocked by financial innovation and increases in lending. New financial products were not stress tested and have failed in the downturn. After discussing the bubbles we look at the collapse of the complex asset structure, and then put the crisis in the context of the literature. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy implications of the crisis, and advocates a significant improvement in the regulatory structure

Accounting for the determinants of banks’ credit ratings

The contribution of the banking industry to the recent financial crisis 2007/8 has raised public concerns about the excessive involvement of banks in risky activities. In addition there have been public concerns about the ability of credit rating agencies to evaluate these risks in advance. In this context, this study uses an ordered logit analysis to examine the determinants of banks’ credit ratings using a sample of US and UK banks’ accounting data from 1994 to 2009. Our intention is to examine to what extent banks’ ratings reflect banks’ risks. Our analysis shows that a small number of accounting variables, namely: bank size, liquidity, efficiency and profitability are able to correctly assign credit rating for approximately 74% to 78% the sample banks. Surprisingly, the association between banks’ credit ratings and each of leverage asset quality and capital is not robust, suggesting that the rating agency’s models did not pick them up despite their importance in the crisis. In addition, the relationship between banks’ credit ratings and liquidity is the reverse of that which an adequate early warning system would require. As banks benefit from higher credit ratings they will have addressed their determinants rather than taking care of systemic factors that affect underlying risk. Policy makers therefore need to intervene to address this market failure.This study was financially supported by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS)

Macroeconomic impact from extending working lives (WP95)

This report presents findings from research, conducted by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and funded by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). NIESR were commissioned to use their global econometric model, NiGEM, in order to model various scenarios involving extending working lives, and to quantify the macroeconomic effects therein. The core scenario is a one year increase in working life for the UK population that is gradually phased in over the period 2010-14. In addition to this, NIESR carried out a series of counterfactual analyses which modelled the loss to the economy from older people leaving the labour market early

Financial liberalization and capital adequacy in models of financial crises

We characterize the effects of financial liberalization indices on OECD banking crises, controlling for the standard macro prudential variables that prevail in the current literature. We use the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World database. This yields a variable that captures credit market regulations which broadly measures the restrictions under which banks operate. We then test for the direct impacts of some of its components, deposit interest rate regulations and private sector credit controls, on crisis probabilities and their indirect effects via capital adequacy. Over the period 1980 – 2012, we find that less regulated markets are associated with a lower crisis frequency, and it appears that the channel comes through strengthening the defence that capital provides. Deposit interest rate liberalisation adds to the strength of capital in protecting against crises. However, private sector credit liberalisation, appears to increase the probability of having a crisis, albeit not significantly. If policy makers are concerned about the costs of low risk events, they may wish to control private sector credit even if it has a probability of affecting significantly crises of between 10 and 20 per cent