Respondent dynamics within the NZIER survey of business opinion: An introductory perspective

This paper considers respondent dynamics within the NZIER quarterly survey of business opinion. The paper concentrates mainly on the potential usefulness of matched and individual survey responses with particular reference to business confidence. The main framework is a three-by-three matrix of responses by firms who have participated in adjacent surveys. This framework provides information on the dynamics (flows) of business opinion as opposed to the usual published information on end-of-period net balances (stocks). The paper highlights the volatility of business opinion with respect to both economy-wide and own-outlook. Almost half the firms replying to adjacent surveys, for example, changed their outlook between quarters regarding business confidence, output and profitability

Help wanted in New Zealand: The ANZ Bank job advertisement series

The ANZ Bank publishes a monthly count of the number of job advertisements appearing in New Zealand newspapers and, more recently, internet sites. It is New Zealand’s de facto vacancy or help-wanted series. Apart from its role in economic commentaries, there is very little published research using this data. This paper is a preliminary attempt to remedy this omission. It covers descriptive aspects of the ANZ job ads series including the vacancy rate, the hiring rate, regional characteristics and proxy vacancy series. This is followed by an outline of the vacancy-unemployment (Beveridge curve) and hiring frameworks and some initial econometric work. Overall, the paper highlights the importance of the vacancy rate and the hiring rate in assessing labour market conditions in New Zealand

Some aspects of labour market flows in New Zealand 1986-2001

It is now commonplace to study labour market dynamics using flows data from labour force panel surveys. The analysis of labour market flows to and from the states of employment, unemployment and non-participation has received most attention. This paper considers some New Zealand aspects of these flows with particular reference to concepts, descriptive features, the behavioural responses implied by the Markov approach to modelling labour market transitions, a brief literature review and some preliminary econometric results on the trend and cyclical features of New Zealand's gross flows

Gross labour market flows in New Zealand: Some questions and answers

Data on the flow of workers moving between employment, unemployment and non-participation provide some of the most interesting and useful insights into labour market outcomes. These insights include information on the number and probability of workers moving between labour market states from, say, unemployment to employment. Despite the usefulness of labour flows data, New Zealand’s official gross flows statistics are relatively neglected and almost entirely unused in published public and private sector commentaries, forecasting, modelling activities and policy debates. Using a framework of questions and answers, this paper considers selected aspects of New Zealand’s gross labour flows data as well as international comparisons

Asymmetric adjustment of unemployment and output in New Zealand: Rediscovering Okun’s law

Okun's law - the relationship between unemployment and output - is one of the best known empirical regularities in macroeconomics. It is an important relationship because the way in which unemployment reacts to changes in output has implications for labour market and monetary policies and for forecasting. Most specifications of Okun's law assume a symmetric relationship: expansions and contractions in output have the same absolute effect on unemployment. In this paper, we test this assumption against the alternative view that the relationship is asymmetric. We use New Zealand data from 1978 to 1999 and contemporary econometric techniques including asymmetric modelling. Our main finding is that changes in unemployment and output in New Zealand are related in both the long run and the short run but only if an asymmetric approach is taken

Insights into business confidence from firm-level panel data

Business confidence announcements attract widespread attention, yet relatively little is known about the series itself. What, for example, does an improvement or deterioration in business confidence mean? We consider this question using a panel of firm-level responses to a business opinion survey that includes a question on business confidence. We relate the confidence responses of the firms to microeconomic and macroeconomic variables that have a direct interpretation and, as a result, determine the variables that firms associate with business confidence. Our analysis of firm-level data reveals that what firms associate with business confidence changes over time and means different things to different firms. Consequently, it is not immediately apparent what a change in business confidence actually means

Okun’s law, asymmetries and jobless recoveries in the United States: A Markov-switching approach

This paper offers a new perspective on Markov regime-switching approaches to asymmetries in Okun’s law by modeling the existing approaches as special cases. Prevailing models assume either asymmetry between unemployment and output across regimes or asymmetry within a single regime. Our specification combines both approaches. Our empirical results give an insight into the apparent ‘jobless recovery’ experiences that began in the United States in 1991 and 2001

Business confidence and cyclical turning points: A Markov-Switching approach

Markov regime-switching analysis is used to consider the relationship between business confidence and the probability of turning points in cyclical GDP. We find, in an application to New Zealand, that confidence is related to both the deepness and duration of the business cycle and is asymmetric regarding the probability of the economy remaining in a given regime. Overall, the New Zealand business confidence series is a useful indicator of cyclical turning points

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