Capital Shallowness: A Problem for New Zealand?

There is now substantial evidence that New Zealand’s overall rate of economic growth relative to Australia’s has been lower in part because of lower levels and slower growth in our labour productivity. This then requires us to explore why the labour productivity is lower in New Zealand. This paper explores the extent to which a lower level of capital per hour worked (or lower capital intensity) is associated with less output per hour worked in New Zealand. We find that the capital intensity in New Zealand has not been increasing as fast as in Australia for nearly 25 years. Between 1995 and 2002, lower capital intensity explains 70 percent of the difference in output per hour worked. Whereas the cost of labour relative to capital has been rising in Australia, it has fallen by 20 percent in New Zealand between 1987 and 2002. The relative price of labour to capital in New Zealand fell to 60 percent of the Australian value in 2002 after being comparable in the late 1980’s. It is to be expected that New Zealand enterprises would therefore tend to adopt less capital intensive production methods. Differences in capital intensity could also have arisen because the underlying production technologies are different even if the relative prices of labour and capital in the two economies had been similar. We explore this issue and find a similar response of capital intensity to changes in the wage rate relative to the return on capital for the economies as a whole. However when we exclude the mining sector we find that the responsiveness in New Zealand is about one half that of Australia. Whether there are impediments or greater uncertainty in New Zealand that limit the ability of firms to respond to economic signals as much as their Australian counterparts remain as possible explanations requiring further investigation.New Zealand; Australia; Capital-labour ratios; relative factor prices

The Role of R&D in Productivity Growth: The Case of Agriculture in New Zealand: 1927 to 2001

Productivity growth is a key determinant of rising living standards. The agricultural sector has been an important contributor to the overall growth of productivity in New Zealand. The average rate of multifactor productivity growth in agriculture from 1926-27 to 2000-01 was 1.8%. We find evidence that this rate has been increasing especially since the reforms of the 1980s. This paper estimates the contribution that R&D has made to agricultural productivity. It develops a theoretical framework based on the stock of knowledge available to producers. This model incorporates foreign stocks of knowledge and the spill-in effect for New Zealand. The estimation allows for extended lag effects of research spending on productivity. We find that foreign knowledge is consistently an important factor in explaining the growth of productivity. It appears that the agricultural sector relies heavily on drawing on the foreign stock of knowledge generated off-shore. The contribution of domestic knowledge generated by New Zealand’s investment in R&D is less clear cut. However, there is typically a significant positive relation between domestic knowledge and the growth of productivity. We find a wide range of estimates of the return to domestic R&D. The results are sensitive to the type of model used and the specification of the variables. Based on our preferred model we estimate that investment in domestic R&D has generated an annual rate of return of 17%. The results underscore the importance of foreign knowledge in a small open economy. The very existence of foreign knowledge may be a necessary condition for achieving productivity growth in a small open economy. However in no way could it be argued that this was sufficient. Having a domestic capability that can receive and process the spill-ins from foreign knowledge is vital to capturing the benefits. The challenge is to be able to isolate those effects from aggregate data for the agricultural sector. In that task we claim only modest success.New Zealand; technological change; R&D; productivity; economics of knowledge; spillovers; rates of return; agriculture

Flyer News, Vol. 65, No. 03

Student-run newspaper of the University of Dayton

A Steward\u27s Eye-opening Easter

The last text message I received before I turned off my cell and hoisted my overstuffed pack over my shoulder read, “Jules- You’ll be touching God on Easter morning.” My dad had just sent me this message, as I was about to embark on a four day, three-night adventure in Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois with UD’s Outdoor Adventure Club. Those words reaffirmed my decision to skip out on the typical family Easter to go backpacking. Instead of listening to static while driving to grandma and grandpa’s house, I was listening to the crunch of hiking boots in a silent forest. Instead of hunting for Easter eggs, I was hunting for a glimpse of a flower bud. Instead of talking to my sister about high school, I was talking with horseback riders along the bridal trail. Instead of sitting in a pew, I was sitting awestruck at the striking star infested sky

Memory in depression

The memory of clinically depressed psychiatric patients was compared with that of anxious patients and control subjects. The depressed patients had impaired ability to learn new material and to remember past public events; they retained information in memory as well as controls and did not have a more conservative response bias. These impairments were not attributable to the psychotropic medication the patients were receiving or to the after-effects of ECT. The retarded depressed patients were most severely ill and most impaired; the neurotic patients were only impaired on the more difficult tests. The anxious patients' scores were not significantly different from those of either the depressed or control subjects. The relative effects of depression and anxiety on performance were assessed using regression analysis; depression was related to performance on the easier tests, whilst something common to both depression and anxiety was related to performance on the more difficult tests. The retarded depressed subjects reported more cognitive failures than the other subjects whilst both the depressed and anxious subjects complained of significant deterioration in memory. There were statistically significant, although modest, correlations between these self-assessments of memory and performance on the memory tests. Anxiety was related to self-assessments of memory but depression was not. The memory of depressed general practice patients for information given to them by their general practitioners was investigated directly; they did not in fact have impaired memories in this everyday situation. These results suggest that the degree of memory impairment shown in depression depends both on the severity of depression and the difficulty of the task. They are discussed In the light of the suggestion by Johnson and Magaro (1987) that memory Impairments may not be specific to depression but instead be related to the overall level of psychopathology. The working memory capacity model of memory in anxiety (Eysenck, 1982) is also discussed and extended to depression, as is a model developed by Williams and Teasdale (1982) which argues that effort expenditure is largely determined by perceived task difficulty. Finally, it is concluded that the best understanding of memory in depression will come from the concurrent use of experimental studies, metamemory questionnaires and studies of memory performance in everyday life

The Family and the Nation: The Centrality of Gender Politics in the Rise of European Illiberalism

This paper analyzes how illiberal far-right parties employ discourses of traditional family values to advocate a range of anti-feminist, anti-queer, and anti-sexual education stances that have become critical in European national politics. Illiberal politicians use the concept of traditional family to reassert heteronormative ideas of gender and sexuality that advance their majoritarian, nationalist, and anti-pluralist platforms while infringing on the rights and freedoms of gender and sexual minorities. I explore three realms where this family-centered rhetoric presents itself in policy and political movements—gender roles and reproduction, LGBTQ+ rights, and sexual education—and analyze relevant actors, movements, and policies demonstrating the central role of anti-gender discourse in amassing illiberal support. Two case studies, Italy and Poland, illustrate how anti-gender rhetoric and family-centered discourse are at the core of the party platforms of two of Europe\u27s most illiberal governments, and are central to their expressed ideals of national identity