New Zealand Economic Papers articles from June 2002

New Zealand Economic Papers archives from June 2002

Editor's introduction.
June 1, 2002... Most of this issue of NZEP is given over to a symposium on Database Integration, guest edited by Julia Lane and Tim Maloney. Lane chaired and Maloney was a member of the organising committee for a very successful international conference on...

Overview: the New Zealand conference on database integration and linked employer-employee data.
June 1, 2002... Introduction The development of linked employer-employee data in Europe and North America has been referred to as the "Holy Grail" for the study of labour economics and industrial organization alike. A conference (1) was held March 21-22,...

Unlocking the information in integrated social data.
June 1, 2002... 1. Introduction Modern national and research statistical systems acquire their information from three related sources: censuses, periodic surveys, and administrative records. In this talk, I want to focus on benefits of using these three...

Understanding aggregate growth: the need for microeconomic evidence.
June 1, 2002... 1. Overview Recent research using firm and firm-level data has raised a variety of conceptual and measurement questions regarding our understanding of aggregate growth. (1) Several key, related findings are of interest. First, in a...

An analysis of New Zealand's business demography database.
June 1, 2002... Given that a future linked employer-employee database may use Business Demography data as a backbone, what are the basic qualities of this dataset? What are the observed patterns in job creation and destruction in New Zealand? What are the...

Matching and cleaning administrative data.
June 1, 2002... This paper addresses the cleaning and linking of individual-level administrative data for the purposes of social program research and evaluation. We define administrative data as the data collected in the course of programmatic activities for...

Building and validating an administrative records database for the United States.
June 1, 2002... The Statistical Administrative Records System (STARS 1999)is a prototype database of addresses and person records built from national administrative records sources. The impetus for creating STARS arose from an administrative records census...

A Norwegian perspective on data integration.
June 1, 2002... Labor market outcomes are the results of interactions between workers and firms. To analyze such interactions empirically one needs data with both worker and firm characteristics. Although such data are rare, a number of studies using linked...

Labour characteristics and wage-productivity gaps.
June 1, 2002... We study the influence of the work force structure on wages and productivity at the plant level for both the Finnish manufacturing and entire business sectors. Less data are available on plant characteristics for the service sector relative to...

Can the workplace explain Canadian gender pay differentials?
June 1, 2002... The fact that men earn more than women is one of the most studied issues in labour economics. Most studies rely on the assumption that wages are tied to the individual worker and find that a sizable portion of wage gap cannot be explained by...

Working with personnel records: outcomes of research with a large historical database.
June 1, 2002... This paper uses a large data set constructed from the personnel records of the Victorian Railways for the period 1864-1921 to investigate a series of questions regarding the employment practices and outcomes for the largest employer in the...

Job and worker flows: how establishments adjust their workforce.
June 1, 2002... Studies using micro-level data on employers have been used to characterise the dynamics of gross job flows. Unfortunately, given the absence of data on employees, they shed little light on the dynamics of `worker flows' associated with these...

Skill-group size and wages.
June 1, 2002... Our study focuses on the long-recognised fact in labour economics that wages vary with firm or establishment size. We show that this effect on wages dwindles or disappears once we control for the number of employees in the establishment of the...

Firm size-wage effect and careers of white collar workers.
June 1, 2002... It has been known for a long time that larger firms pay their workers higher wages. I show in this paper that larger firms also give higher percentage wage increases to workers over a career at a single firm. Upon retirement, a worker's wages...

The return to firm-specific human capital.
June 1, 2002... The theory of firm-specific human capital is a core part of all courses in Labour Economics. Theory predicts that workers build up firm-specific capital in the current job, which they lose if they leave the current job. Although theoretically...

Understanding New Zealand children's experiences of low family income: what could data integration add?
June 1, 2002... Concern about the effects of growing up poor on the current wellbeing and future attainments of children, has prompted new research into childhood experiences of low income. A major constraint on our ability to understand those experiences in...

New Zealand's Student Loan data integration project.
June 1, 2002... The Student Loan Scheme was established in 1992 to assist students to overcome financial barriers to undertaking tertiary study. Administration of the scheme is currently shared with three agencies, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of...

Quality versus quantity: ranking research records of economics departments in New Zealand.
June 1, 2002... 1. Introduction In economics, as in many other specialized disciplines, it is often very difficult for outsiders to assess the quantity and (especially) the quality of the research done in different institutions. For this reason, repeated...

Ranking research records of economics departments in New Zealand: comment.
June 1, 2002... 1. Introduction As Ian King (2002, p.97) observes, `it is often very difficult for outsiders to assess the quantity and (especially) the quality of the research done in different institutions'. The issue is especially topical in New...

Ranking research records of economics departments in New Zealand: reply.
June 1, 2002... First of all, I would like to thank Paul Dalziel, Ross Cullen, and Caroline Saunders for taking the time and effort to go over the calculations so carefully and pick out the dozen or so errors. This is very time-consuming work, given that over...

At the Crossroads.(Book Review)
June 1, 2002... By Jane Kelsey (Wellington, Bridget Williams Books, 2002), xiv + 137 pp., ISBN 1 877242 91 8. Metaphors of the road abound in discussions of social and economic policy, but I had not realised how much until I read Jane Kelsey's latest...

Free Trade Under Fire.(Book Review)
June 1, 2002... By Douglas Irwin (Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2002), xiii +257 pp., ISBN 0 691 08843 8. Together with Jagdish Bhagwati's Free Trade Today (also reviewed in this issue of NZEP), this latest book by Douglas Irwin was...

Free Trade Today.(Book Review)
June 1, 2002... Free Trade Today by Jagdish Bhagwati (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), ix + 128 pp.,ISBN 0-691-09156-0. Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective by Ha-Joon Chang (London, Anthem Press,...

Final Report, Tax Review 2001. .(Book Review)
June 1, 2002... By Robert McLeod (Chair), Srikanta Chatterjee, Shirley Jones, David Patterson and Edward Sieper, (Wellington, New Zealand Treasury, October 2001), xiii + 169pp., ISBN 0 478 11819 8 This is the second publication emanating from the Tax...