Editor's introduction.

Kia ora. In January, 2009 the New Zealand Economic Papers will enter a new era. The New Zealand Association of Economists has entered into a contract with the international publishers Taylor and Francis (owner of the Routledge imprint among others), who will take over the publication of the journal from this date. Under the terms of the agreement, the number of issues for the journal will increase from two to three for the two years 2009 and 2010 before reaching a steady-state of four issues per year in 2011. Next year, the three issues will be published in April, August and December. The second, August 2009, issue will be a special issue in Experimental Economics guest edited by Charles Noussair of Tilburg University and Steven Tucker and Maros Servatka, both at the University of Canterbury. This special issue has attracted a number of very high quality submissions including those from leading researchers in the area such as James Cox (currently at Georgia State and formerly at the University of Arizona) and Werner Guth of the Max Planck Institute of Economics.

Having the backing of a major publishing company confers significant advantages to the journal. One big advantage of having a professional publisher take over the journal is that this will give the journal an on-line presence which has been lacking till now. This means a number of things. First, authors will now be able to submit their papers to the journal using the Manuscript Central software. This will streamline the submission process considerably and also facilitate the reviewing and editorial process by allowing all these decisions to be made using an online platform. With the new submission procedure we will also move from single-blind to double-blind refereeing. Second, published papers will be available in both hardcopy as well as in electronic format on-line. Third, the publishers will also create an electronic archive of all the back issues of the journal, where articles published in previous issues of the journal will be available, most likely in PDF format. Needless to mention, given this tie-up with Taylor and Francis, we expect the journal to enjoy a much higher profile. This should enable us to attract more high quality submissions. This will also significantly improve the journal's production quality as well as marketing and distribution. Taylor and Francis are in the process of setting up the journal's new website: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rnzp. The site should be functional by the time you are reading these words.

I would like to allay any fears in the minds of our readers that with this move to Taylor and Francis, the journal will abandon its traditional mission of publishing high quality research that is of importance to New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region. While the journal will seek to publish high quality research from international scholars in all areas of economics, nevertheless the journal remains committed to serving as the primary outlet for world class research pertaining to New Zealand in particular and Australasia in general. The journal's aims and scope have been slightly reworded and now state:

 
   New Zealand Economic Papers publishes research of the highest 
   quality from leading international scholars in all areas of 
   economics, both theoretical and empirical. At the same time the 
   journal also expects to serve as the primary outlet for world class 
   research on important issues relevant to New Zealand, Australia and 
   the Asia-Pacific. The journal also publishes survey articles, book 
   reviews and welcomes articles that explore important policy 
   initiatives affecting the region and the implications of those 
   policies. 

However, we will no longer publish short notes as a separate category but will treat these as regular article submissions. There are no plans to implement a submission fee.

The board of editors for the journal has been expanded to add a ...