Bibliography of research using the NZIER’s quarterly survey of business opinion

The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) has conducted and published a quarterly survey of business opinion continuously, and with largely unchanged questions, since June 1961. The Institute’s Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion (QSBO) is a business tendency survey based substantially on the Business Test of the IFO Munich. It covers the manufacturing, building, merchant and service sectors and architects. This bibliography lists and classifies some 80 research papers which used QSBO data and published between 1964 and 2011

The impact of monetary policy on New Zealand business cycles and inflation variability

This paper uses the open economy structural VAR model developed in Buckle, Kim, Kirkham, McLellan and Sharma (2002) to evaluate the impact of monetary policy on New Zealand business cycles and inflation variability and the output/ inflation variance trade-off. The model includes a forward- looking Taylor Rule to identify monetary policy and the impact of monetary policy is evaluated by deriving a monetary policy index using a procedure suggested by Dungey and Pagan (2000). Monetary policy has generally been counter-cyclical, thereby reducing business cycles and inflation variability. Exceptions are in 1993 when monetary policy accentuated the business cycle upswing and in 1998 when monetary policy accentuated the recession, although its impact in 1998 was small relative to the impact of adverse climatic conditions. During the initial years of inflation targeting monetary policy tended to simultaneously reduce inflation and output variability. From 1996 to 2001 monetary policy was less effective in reducing inflation and output variability. This latter period included a brief experiment with a Monetary Conditions Index, the Asian crisis and a large adverse domestic climate shock.Monetary policy; inflation targeting, business cycles; open economy; structural VAR models; inflation, interest rates, exchange rates, climate; international linkages

Control of nonenzymatic browning in intermediate-moisture foods

Series of compounds called humectants were found to decrease rate of browning when added to intermediate-moisture foods. Twenty percent level of humectant can increase shelf life of foods by factor of 5 or 6

A Structural VAR Approach to Estimating Budget Balance Targets

The Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994 states that, as a principle of responsible fiscal management, a New Zealand government should ensure total Crown debt is at a prudent level by ensuring total operating expenses do not exceed total operating revenues. In this paper a structural VAR model is estimated to evaluate the impact on the government's cash operating surplus (or budget balance) of four independent disturbances: supply, fiscal, real private demand, and nominal disturbances. Based on the distribution of these disturbances, stochastic simulations are undertaken to derive the level of the ex ante cash budget balance needed to achieve an actual cash budget balance, at a given level of probability, at some future time horizon.Budget target; Fiscal policy; Fiscal Responsibility Act; Structural VAR; Stochastic Simulation

Growth and volatility regime switching models for New Zealand GDP data

This paper fits hidden Markov switching models to New Zealand GDP data. A primary objective is to better understand the utility of these methods for modelling growth and volatility regimes present in the New Zealand data and their interaction. Properties of the models are developed together with a description of the estimation methods, including use of the Expectation Maximisation (EM) algorithm. The models are fitted to New Zealand GDP and production sector growth rates to analyse changes in their mean and volatility over time. The paper discusses applications of the methodology to identifying changes in growth performances, and examines the timing of growth and volatility regime switching between production sectors. Conclusions to emerge are that, in contrast to the 1980s, New Zealand GDP growth experienced an unusually long period of time in high growth and low volatility regimes during the 1990s. The paper evaluates sector contributions to this 1990s experience and discusses directions for further development.Hidden Markov models; regime switching; growth; business cycles; volatility; production sectors; GDP.

Calm after the Storm?: Supply-side contributions to New Zealand’s GDP volatility decline

The variance of New Zealand’s real GDP has declined since the mid-1980s. To investigate why, this paper decomposes the variance of chain-weighted estimates of production-based real GDP growth into sector shares, sector growth rate variances and co-variances. The principal explanation for the decline in GDP volatility is a fall in the sum of sector variances driven by a decline in the Services and Manufacturing sector production growth variances. Sector co-variances have had a dominant influence on the profile of GDP volatility and this influence has not diminished. Despite marked changes in sector shares, notably increases in Services and Primary sector shares and a decrease in the share of Manufacturing, this has not been a significant factor influencing the decline in GDP volatility. We postulate that policy interventions such as “Think Big”, regulatory interventions during the early 1980s, and the introduction of GST are key explanations for the higher volatility until the mid 1980s. Cessation of these interventions, deregulation and possibly changes in inventory management methods are important reasons why GDP volatility has fallen since then.Volatility, growth, production sector shares, manufacturing, services, primary, construction.

Designing packaging to support the safe use of medicines at home

The design of pharmaceutical products, packaging, information and related materials is a major source of human error. These errors may be stressful, harmful or even fatal. Given the scale of the problems and the global use of medication, design solutions are urgently needed. This paper in Applied Ergonomics demonstrated how such improvements can be made, drawing on research that investigated how the design of methotrexate packaging can influence patient safety. The project, undertaken in light of a number of serious incidents in the UK resulting from accidental overdoses of methotrexate, aimed to collect evidence to provide a basis for the development of new concepts for revised designs by the pharmaceutical industry. Buckle et al. found that patients using methotrexate experience a number of difficulties in using their medicine’s packaging and, as a result, resourcefully adopt a variety of ‘coping strategies’ which may increase the risk of dosing errors. By investigating both the practices of methotrexate users, and the design of the system that supports methotrexate use, additional problems were observed across the healthcare system, meaning that the function of medicines packaging in ensuring safety may be even more critical than first suspected. Buckle contributed to this paper through the derivation of a suitable human-factors approach to studying fatalities, errors and ‘near misses’ associated with the use of packaging for medications. The human factors (human behaviour) associated with these and the need to consider the whole system were essential elements provided by Buckle in the research. As a result of the research project, the National Patient Safety Agency responded with a UK-wide programme of work to improve safety for patients, and continues to work with the pharmaceutical industry to develop more user-friendly packaging and labelling

Mejorando la Ciencia Abierta Usando Datos Abiertos Enlazados: Caso de Uso CONICET Digital

Los servicios de publicación científica están cambiando drásticamente, los investigadores demandan servicios de búsqueda inteligentes para descubrir y relacionar publicaciones científicas. Los editores deben incorporar información semántica para organizar mejor sus activos digitales y hacer que las publicaciones sean más visibles. En este documento, presentamos el trabajo en curso para publicar un subconjunto de publicaciones científicas de CONICET Digital como datos abiertos enlazados. El objetivo de este trabajo es mejorar la recuperación y la reutilización de datos a través de tecnologías de Web Semántica y Datos Enlazados en el dominio de las publicaciones científicas. Para lograr estos objetivos, se han tenido en cuenta los estándares de la Web Semántica y los esquemas RDF (Dublín Core, FOAF, VoID, etc.). El proceso de conversión y publicación se basa en las pautas metodológicas para publicar datos vinculados de gobierno. También describimos como estos datos se pueden vincular a otros conjuntos de datos como DBLP, Wikidata y DBPedia. Finalmente, mostramos algunos ejemplos de consultas que responden a preguntas que inicialmente no permite CONICET Digital.Scientific publication services are changing drastically, researchers demand intelligent search services to discover and relate scientific publications. Publishersneed to incorporate semantic information to better organize their digital assets and make publications more discoverable. In this paper, we present the on-going work to publish a subset of scientific publications of CONICET Digital as Linked Open Data. The objective of this work is to improve the recovery andreuse of data through Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data in the domain of scientific publications.To achieve these goals, Semantic Web standards and reference RDF schema?s have been taken into account (Dublin Core, FOAF, VoID, etc.). The conversion and publication process is guided by the methodological guidelines for publishing government linked data. We also outline how these data can be linked to other datasets DBLP, WIKIDATA and DBPEDIA on the web of data. Finally, we show some examples of queries that answer questions that initially CONICET Digital does not allowFil: Zárate, Marcos Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Centro para el Estudio de Sistemas Marinos; ArgentinaFil: Carlos Buckle. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco"; ArgentinaFil: Mazzanti, Renato. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco"; ArgentinaFil: Samec, Gustavo Daniel. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco"; Argentin