Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Monetary policy New Zealand'

Why do politicians change the legislation governing the central bank to give this institution operational independence in the setting of monetary policy. This thesis examines the political debates over central bank independence in New Zealand, Canada, Australia and New Zealand during the 1980s and 1990s. These cases were selected due to the variation in their levels of central bank independence, while holding key institutional variables constant. Four hypotheses are suggested by the political economy literature to explain the timing of this legislative change: the need to signal creditworthiness to international financial markets, in response to lobbying by domestic interest groups opposed to inflation, in response to proposals from an epistemic community of monetary experts or based on the self-interest of politicians concerned with re-election. The case studies find that politicians delegate to the central bank when this reform has the consensus support of an epistemic community of monetary experts, and a key politician is willing to champion the legislation through parliament. This epistemic community has increased influence during periods of economic uncertainty, such as following a financial crisis. A key politician is motivated to support this reform due to ideological or electoral reasons. This reform was facilitated by political institutions characterised by few checks and balances that concentrated power in the hands of the executive and offered few obstacles to changing the central bank's statute. Central bank independence was rejected in the cases where the epistemic community did not hold a consensus on the need for reform, and politicians saw only electoral risks from changing the central bank's statute. This study finds that politicians retain room to manoeuvre despite the rise of financial globalisation.

This thesis consists of two parts: the first examines the Expectations Hypothesis of the Term Structure for New Zealand, and the latter examines the predictive power of the term spread on future economic activity in New Zealand. For both parts, I divide the sample period into two sub-sample periods – the pre-OCR period and the OCR period. Using Mankiw & Miron’s (1986) approach for testing the expectations hypothesis, the findings in this paper suggest that the theory is consistent with New Zealand data during the OCR period. I attribute the success of the theory to the introduction of the Official Cash Rate system in March 1999. The change from targeting the settlement cash balance to targeting an interest rate variable has substantially improved the predictability of short-term interest rates. In regards to the predictive power of the spread, the findings in this paper support the conventional view that the spread is positively related to future economic activity. Using Hamilton & Kim’s (2002) approach, I decomposed the term spread into an expectation component and a term premium in an attempt to find out whether these two variables have distinctly separate effect on future economic activity. My findings are in contrast to that reported by Hamilton & Kim. In particular, I find that the term premium in some cases is significant and negatively related to future economic activity in New Zealand. I attribute the negative relationship to lower long-term interest rates and a fallen term premium in New Zealand.

It is now two and a half years since the United States suspended military co­-operation with the Armed Forces of New Zealand (AFNZ) following the Labour Government's refusal to grant port-access to the USS Buchanan in January 1985. In this thesis I propose to study the consequences of the breakdown for the AFNZ with a view to establishing exactly what areas of co-operation have been affected and the significance this has for the professionalism and capability of the Services. Thus far, very few public studies have been made of the direct military costs of the ANZUS rift. Most attention has been focused on the state of political relations between the ANZUS powers. It is however, impossible to make a fully informed judgement about the merits of the Government's present defence policy of developing closer relations with Australia in the context of what it claims is a more self-reliant defence posture without some understanding of the problems that policy seeks to remedy. Accordingly, I hope to present that necessary background, and from this point will go on to discuss the extent to which the Government's defence policy addresses itself to the problems generated by the rift with the United States.

This thesis studies monetary policy in a dynamic general equilibrium framework with nominal price rigidities. It analyses monetary policy in a non-linear environment and explores issues concerning optimal monetary policy. The introductory chapter sets out the motivation of the thesis and puts it into the framework of the existing literature. Chapter 2 provides a New Keynesian framework to study the interaction among oil price volatility, firms' pricing behaviour and monetary policy. We show that when oil is difficult to substitute in production, firms find optimal to charge higher relative prices as a premium in compensation for the risk that oil price volatility generates on their marginal costs. Chapter 3 uses the model laid out chapter 2 to investigate how monetary policy should react to oil shocks. The main result is oil price shocks generate a trade-off between inflation and output stabilisation when oil has low substitutability in production. Therefore it becomes optimal to the monetary authority to react partially to oil shocks and some inflation is desirable. In chapter 4 we extend a New Keynesian model considering preferences that exhibit intertemporal non-homotheticity. We show that under this framework the intertemporal elasticity of substitution becomes state dependent, which induces asymmetric shifts in aggregate demand in response to monetary policy shocks In chapter 5 we extend the New Keynesian Monetary Policy literature relaxing the assumption that decisions are taken by a single policymaker, considering instead a Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) whose members have different preferences between output and inflation stabilisation. We show that under this framework, the interest rate behaves non-linearly upon the lagged interest rate and expected inflation.

This thesis examines how cultural heritage policies are developed in New Zealand. Cultural heritage symbolises the development of a society, illustrating past events and changing customs and values. Because of its significance, the government has accepted responsibility for protecting cultural heritage, and has developed a number of institutions and a variety of policies to address this responsibility. It is important to understand how the goverment uses these mechanisms to protect cultural heritage, and the subsequent relationships that have developed between actors in the cultural heritage area. These will have an impact on the effectiveness of the policy which is developed. Cultural heritage is treasured by society for a number of reasons, but as social attitudes change, so does the treatment of cultural heritage. It is re-defined, re-interpreted and used to promote a sense of pride in the commmunity. This manipulation extends to policy making. Since the 1980s, the government has influenced, and been influenced by, two major social changes. There has been an introduction of free market principles such as rationalisation, competition and fiscal responsibility into the New Zealand economy and political structure. These principles have been applied to cultural heritage and consequently cultural heritage is treated as a commodity. As the result of changing attitudes towards the treatment of the Maori and Maori resources, there has been a movement towards implementing biculturalism. This has meant a re-evaluation of how Maori taonga is treated, particularly of the ways Maori cultural heritage has been used to promote a sense of New Zealandness. There are several major actors involved in cultural heritage policy making - government, policy units, cultural heritage organisations and local authorities. Central government is the dominant force in the political process, with control over the distribution of resources and the responsibilities assigned to other actors. Because the use of market principles and movement towards biculturalism have been embraced at the central government level, other actors in the policy making process are also expected to adopt them. Policy units develop options to fit with the government�s general economic and political agenda. The structures adopted for the public service are designed to encompass market principles, particularly the efficient use of resources and competitiveness. While cultural heritage organisations may influence the government�s agenda through lobbying and information-sharing, they are limited by issues such as funding and statutory requirements. Government has shifted many responsibilities to the regions, but while territorial authorities are influenced by the concerns of their communities, they are also subject to directions from the government. The process and structures which have been outlined do not contribute to an effective policy making system. The use of market principles to direct cultural heritage protection tends to encourage uneven and inconsistent policies, both at national and local levels. The range of cultural heritage definitions used by government agencies also promotes inconsistency. Cultural heritage is encompassed in a large number of government departments and ministries, which makes the co-ordination funding by meeting required �outputs� and the government�s requirement of fiscal responsibility. This is not appropriate language for cultural heritage, which should not have to be rationalised as an economic good. Although the government has devolved a number of responsibilities and territorial authorities have a variety of mechanisms available to protect cultural heritage, there is no nation-wide criteria for territorial involvement. Because of regional differences there is an uneven treatment of cultural heritage. Those policies developed by territorial authorities will also be influenced by the government�s economic direction. Organisations supported by the Dunedin City Council, for example, must also provide budgets and strategic plans which fit with Council�s fiscal objectives.

In this paper we compare the transmission of a conventional monetary policy shock with that of an unexpected decrease in the term spread, which mirrors quantitative easing. Employing a time-varying vector autoregression with stochastic volatility, our results are two-fold: First, the spread shock works mainly through a boost to consumer wealth growth, while a conventional monetary policy shock affects real output growth via a broad credit / bank lending channel. Second, both shocks exhibit a distinct pattern over our sample period. More specifically, we find small output effects of a conventional monetary policy shock during the period of the global financial crisis and stronger effects in its aftermath. This might imply that when the central bank has left the policy rate unaltered for an extended period of time, a policy surprise might boost output particularly strongly. By contrast, the spread shock has affected output growth most strongly during the period of the global financial crisis and less so thereafter. This might point to diminishing effects of large scale asset purchase programs. (authors' abstrct)
Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Mi tesis se basa en los resultados de least squares learning, que modela agentes individuales como econometricos: los agentes funcionan como regresiones, usan datos disponibles para formar sus expectativas. En el primer capítulo de mi tesis demuestro que la presencia de principiantes de learning en una economía se puede racionalizar incluso en coexistencia con los agentes racionales. En el segundo capítulo, examino cuál es la implicación en la política monetaria óptima cuando los agentes privados siguen aprendiendo con least squares learning. Este capítulo demuestra que la política monetaria óptima bajo learning introduce unas nuevas características del comportamiento de la política que no son presentes cuando los agentes privados tienen expectativas racionales.
My thesis builds on the results of the least squares learning literature, which models individual agents as econometricians: agents are running least squares regressions using available data in order to form their expectations. I the ¯first chapter of my thesis I show that the presence of learners in an economy can be rationalized even in coexistence with rational agents. In the second chapter, I examine what is the implication on optimal policy when private agents follow learning. This chapter shows that optimal monetary policy under learning introduces new features of policy behavior that are not present under rational expectations.

Human capital is increasingly believed to play an indispensable role in the growth process; however, adequately measuring its stock remains controversial. Because the estimated impact that human capital has on economic growth is sensitive to the measure of human capital, accurate and consistent measures are desirable. While many measures have been developed, most rely on some proxy of educational experience and are thus plagued with limitations. In this study, I adopt a lifetime earnings approach to estimate the monetary value of the human capital stock for New Zealand. I find that the country's working human capital increased by half between 1981 and 2001, mainly due to rising employment level. This stock was well over double that of physical capital. I also model human capital as a latent variable using a Partial Least Squares approach. Exploratory analyses on a number of countries show that age, gender and education combined can capture 65-97 percent of the explained variation in human capital. JEL Classifications: J24, O47.

This research investigates the relationship between principalship and policy in small New Zealand primary schools. A distinctive feature of small primary schools is that their principals typically have to teach as well as manage. Overseas research indicates that in times of educational reform, teaching principals face particular difficulty and may need special support. Following the watershed educational reforms of 1989 and a decade of ‘hands-off’ policy in education (1989-1999), central policy towards school support in New Zealand is now more ‘hands-on’. The impact of this policy change on small schools has not been researched hi New Zealand, where such schools make up over fifty percent of all primary schools. The aims of this study are to analyse the impact of current support policy in New Zealand on small primary school principalship, and to evaluate the extent to which policy adjustment might be needed in the future. Using multiple methods and a case study approach to gather data, the study focuses on small school principalship in one New Zealand region - the Central Districts region. It also considers the recent policy initiatives, their rationale and the extent to which they appear to be meeting the support needs reported by the principals whose work has been researched in the study. Broadly, the study has found that within small schools, the role-balance within a teaching principal’s work is a critical factor, as the ratio within the principal’s role-balance between the teaching role and the management role creates variation in work-demands, work-strategies and types of support needed. Teaching principals in New Zealand generally feel better supported now than they did in the 1990s and the study identifies factors associated with this change. However the analysis in this study suggests that the current policy aim to both rationalise and strengthen the small school network as a whole is rather problematic. Without better targeted support policy in this area, old style parochial and competitive attitudes between schools are unlikely to change in the future.

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a policy towards anticompetitive price discrimination in New Zealand. Price discrimination occurs where the ratio of price to cost in two sales differs. Legislation against price discrimination may be enacted as part of our Competition Law, a set of laws designed to promote efficiency and competition in industry and commerce. The first section of this thesis examines the economics of price discrimination and its effects on efficiency, income distribution and competition. We conclude that the effects are ambiguous and depend upon the circumstances in which the discrimination is practiced. However we conclude that systematic price discrimination can be harmful to competition, whilst unsystematic price discrimination can promote competition and that there are a priori grounds for anti-price discrimination legislation. The second section examines specific approaches taken to price discrimination legislation. Particular emphasis is placed on the U.S. Robinson-Patman Act which is one of the most extensively litigated price discrimination laws in the world. A review of the implementation of this Act shows that it has failed to promote competition or increase efficiency. In fact, it has done more to inhibit these goals than promote them. We conclude that there are conceptual problems with antiprice discrimination legislation and this conclusion is reinforced by a study of the Australian price discrimination law. We therefore examine the conceptual framework in which price discrimination is controlled in other developed countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Eire, France, West Germany and the EEC. We conclude generally that price discrimination is a problem of monopoly and should be treated as such. The final part of this thesis reviews price discrimination law in New zealand and suggests a policy that would align the Commerce Act with our conclusion that legislation against price discrimination is undesirable.

The main focus of this thesis was to learn about the individual investor and their view of dividends. It set out to investigate whether private investors regard dividends as important (to themselves personally or as a signal of the company's performance) and also how dividends impact upon a company's value. The subject group is one which has been neglected by previous finance research as very little is known about their demographics and investing practices. Five major areas of dividend research were examined. These were: do investors believe that dividends affect the value of the share, how they prefer to obtain their income from shares, the reasons for dividend increases and decreases, whether dividend changes (increases and decreases) occur for different reasons and whether an age clientele effect exists. Most of these problems have been investigated previously by other researchers, but few have used individual investors to analyse these areas. A survey of 280 private investors tested these questions and concluded that private investors believe that dividends do affect the value of a share, dividends were perceived to be a safer form of income (but capital gains is preferred), that dividend increases and decreases occur because of different reasons (mostly related to profitability or liquidity) and that an age clientele does exist. Most significantly, this analysis revealed that investors behave in a way best described by Lintner's view of dividend policy, as they: prefer higher dividends to lower dividends, believe dividends are a safer form of income and believe that dividends affect the value of a share.

Two DSGE models are calibrated and simulated to investigate how the role of monetarypolicy differs between a closed and an open economy. The central bank conducts monetary policy according to a Taylor (1993) rule, reacting to inflation- and output deviations. Prices are sticky and there are habit components which slow down adjustment of consumption and exports. The models are subjected to shocks in the interest rate, inflation, technology and consumption. In most of the cases the shocks have a bigger and quicker affect on output and employment in the open economy. In connection with positive consumption- and interest rate shocks inflation is big and negative at first but gets positive already two quarters after the shock, due to effects in the exchange rate channel. In closed and open economies, a stronger reaction to output, than in the standard Taylor (1993) rule, decreases welfare losses dramatically.

Developments in information and communications technologies, the increasing sophistication and deepening of financial markets and the ineluctable process of globalisation have profound implications for the conduct of monetary policy. This thesis identifies three areas in which the impact of such developments may be felt most acutely by modern central banks:\ the electronification of retail payments systems, the increasing frequency and severity of asset market cycles and the continuing integration of the global economy. The high profile debate concerning the threat of e--money to the efficacy of monetary policy has been largely resolved. It has, nevertheless, diverted attention away from other important concerns, including the potential for runs on service providers and systemic risks arising from unregulated offshore issuers. The importance of these issues can only be evaluated with reference to the importance of e--money as a payment instrument. However, e--money usage remains marginal at present and forecasts of its development indicate limited growth potential. This raises a number of regulatory issues. Firstly, regulators must ensure systemic security. Secondly, is existing regulation stifling innovation? Finally, can regulation be designed to promote innovation, and would this be desirable? This thesis argues that regulation must balance systemic security with the incentives for innovation, and proposes a general regulatory framework to this end. Since the onset of global financial crisis in mid 2007, it has become clear that central banks underestimate the macroeconomic influence of financial markets at their peril. The Minskyan financial fragility hypothesis asserts that inflation targeting monetary policy may contribute to financial fragility. The estimation of a small macroeconomic model lends substantial support to this view, suggesting that central banks should manipulate the interest rate with great care. However, it is within the power of the central bank to set differential reserve requirements by asset class, providing an additional policy instrument. This thesis proposes a simple approach in which interest rates and reserve requirements are used in a complementary manner. The majority of monetary policy research is conducted assuming either a closed, or small open economy. However, the exclusion of feedback effects renders these approaches inappropriate in many economically interesting cases. This thesis develops a simple stock--flow consistent model comprised of two mutually dependent economies with financial and real linkages. The performance of various stabilisation policies is analysed using this framework. The results call into question the ability of simple inflation--targeting rules to achieve price stability in an open economy and stress that a combined monetary and fiscal regime is necessary for effective stabilisation. The conclusion of this thesis is threefold. Firstly, regulators are rightly concerned with financial innovation but they must leave room for innovation and technological progress. Secondly, central banks must pursue interest rate policy with great care to avoid exacerbating financial fragility. Thirdly, the interest rate is not the sole instrument of monetary policy and, indeed, the central bank is not the sole institution capable of undertaking stabilisation policy.

This dissertation investigates the nature, scope and characteristics of recent adult literacy policy in New Zealand, and explores the reasons and mechanisms by which such reform took place. In this analysis of adult literacy policy, the author considers the context in which adult literacy rose to ascendancy in New Zealand government policy during the first decade of the millennium. In addition, she examines the relationship between adult literacy policy and changes in political ideology and government leadership, assessing the impact of both neoliberalism and inclusive liberalism (Craig & Porter, 2006) and Third Way thought (Giddens, 1999) on policy. Analysis was undertaken of government documents published from 1999-2008, as well as policies released during the previous political era, 1984-1999, to situate later policy. Additionally, interviews were conducted with 20 adult literacy policy actors in the country, including government bureaucrats, literacy researchers, and other experts who worked in and for unions, interest groups, and community and workplace literacy organizations. In drawing from Bowe, Ball and Gold (1992) and Ball (1994), the findings focus on three contexts of policy: the context of text production; the context of influence; and, the context of interpreted practices and outcomes. To address these contexts, the author drew on an array of methodological and theoretical tools. The findings from this study provide four keen insights: First, adult literacy policy formed a legitimate part of economic and social policy; in other words, adult literacy policy was developed for both economic and social purposes and constituted actual policy response beyond rhetoric. Second, adult literacy policy, while developed between 1999-2008, was a continuation of previous government policies set in motion during New Zealand’s so-called neoliberal era (1984-1999). Third, policy was characterized by paradoxical discourses of “control” and “freedom.” And, fourth, government prioritized practices of economically related workplace literacy and of targeted social support. This dissertation contributes to both the understanding of inclusive liberal/Third Way government education policy as well as to the emergent field of policy studies on adult literacy in developed countries.

All policy involves the transmission of language and ideas and therefore power. Public sport and recreation policy, through which millions of tax dollars are allocated and which disseminates knowledge and understandings about sport and recreation, is one arena where power relations are constantly formed, reformed and challenged. To understand more about the exercise of power in New Zealand sport and recreation policy, this research examines the dissemination and challenge of policies written by Sparc (Sport and Recreation New Zealand), the organisation responsible for public sport and recreation policy in New Zealand. Three questions were used to understand the exercise of power in New Zealand public policy. These questions included: How is knowledge about sport and recreation produced and disseminated through public policy? How is �the truth� about sport and recreation proclaimed and constructed in public policy? How can individuals affected by sport and recreation policy challenge existing relations of power? Theoretically, this research draws on Foucauldian conceptions about power, knowledge, truth and the self. Foucault argued that individuals and groups exercise power discursively, by promoting and deploying certain dominant discourses (or understandings) to the exclusion of other (subjugated) knowledges. As such, the way in which individuals within a society understand knowledge, truth and the self is governed by dominant discourses, and is continually formed discursively over time. Discourses are deployed through a variety of means, including the writing, implementation and resistance of public policy. Methodologically, the thesis merges Foucault�s archaeological and genealogical approaches to studying discourses. Further, it is guided by a critical discourse analysis, which enables the researcher to question the assumptions behind policy discourses. Data is gathered from various sources, including policy documents, public debate over policy, media articulations of policy and interviews with individuals involved in the writing and resistance of public policy. This research highlights four distinct practices (or techniques) that illustrate how power is exercised in public sport and recreation policy. These techniques include an analysis of bio-power, techniques used to analyse, control, and define the body; governmentality, which dictates the range of possible actions of individuals and citizens; games of truth, through which �the truth� is part of a constant discursive debate; and parrhesia, a practice through which citizens can lessen the effect of dominant discourses on their lives. These practices are analysed through specific case studies within the discursive terrain of public sport and recreation policy. With each case study both theoretical considerations and practical suggestions for policy making are offered. Four findings are discussed. Firstly, public policy can discursively and problematically construct understandings of the world through policy goals and measurements. Secondly, the thesis suggests that while public sport and recreation policy is often defended by policy makers as scientific and rational, its writing and implementation is formed by a number of other understandings which cannot be reconciled with the espoused, positivist logic. Thirdly, the thesis suggests that because policy writing is an ongoing process, and because of changing social conditions, �the truth� about particular policies is also susceptible to change. Fourthly, despite protestors of public policy often believing their resistance is in vain, this study suggests that their efforts do appear to influence the subsequent writing of policy. The research concludes with reflections about the problematic discursive effects of public policy as well as a consideration of the potential for groups and individuals to challenge or resist understandings about sport and recreation which they do not agree with. In turn, it offers recommendations about the future development of sport public policy, as well as a reflection of this particular type of research approach used. Finally, using this research as a pivot point, sites for future research are considered. In particular, an examination of the effect of public policy on individuals� lived experiences (as distinct from communities or nations) might be of interest, as would an investigation of effects of global discourses about sport, recreation and physical activity on national public policy.

Government involvement in New Zealand sport spans over 70 years from provisions of the Physical Welfare Act in 1937 to current provisions of the Sport and Recreation Act 2002. Thousands of volunteers in non-profit organisations continue to underpin New Zealand's sport system. It is axiomatic that sport defines part of what it means to be a New Zealander. Governments frequently use the rhetoric of community cohesion, national pride, life skills and public health benefits to justify its involvement. This thesis examines the impact of government intervention on the sport sector, its funding paradigms and the extent of sector engagement in a policy for sport. Through an examination of available government and sport sector records, and the author's own experience as a participant in events, the thesis recounts a sequence of five milestones for the New Zealand sport system and views them through a public management system lens. The passing of the Physical Welfare and Recreation Act in 1937, the establishment of a Ministry and Council for Recreation and Sport in 1973, the ministerial Sports Development Inquiry in 1984, the Prime Minister's Review of High Performance Sport in 1995 and the Sport, Fitness and Leisure Ministerial Taskforce. Government funding of sport now stands at around $100 million annually from small beginnings of $3,295 in 1945/1946, despite the absence of a comprehensive national policy for sport. By examining the chronology through a wider state sector lens, the thesis opens a window to the practical effect of public policy processes on matters of importance to the New Zealand sport sector and its voluntary sector foundations. This thesis also provides a rationale for revitalising the engagement between government and the New Zealand sport sector to meet the expectations of a modern state sector to meaningfully engage citizens and the non-government sector in the formation of policy and planning its implementation.

This thesis consists of three essays on the discretionary interactions of fiscal and monetary policy authorities when they stabilise a single economy against shocks in the dynamic setting. In the first essay, I investigate the stabilization bias that arises in a model of noncooperative monetary and fiscal policy stabilisation of the economy, when the monetary authority implements price level targeting but fiscal authority remains benevolent. I demonstrate that the gain in welfare depends on the level of steady state debt. If the steady state level of the government debt is relatively low, then the monetary price level targeting unambiguously leads to social welfare gains, even if the fiscal authority acts strategically and faces different objectives and has incentives to pursue its own benefit and therefore may offset some or all of monetary policy actions. Moreover, if the fiscal policymaker is able to conduct itself as an intra-period leader then the social welfare gain of the monetary price level targeting regime can be further improved. However, if the economy has a relatively high steady state debt level, the gain of the price level targeting is outweighed by the loss arising from the conflicts between the policy makers, and such policy leads to a lower social welfare than under the cooperative discretionary inflation targeting. In the second essay I study the macroeconomic effect of the interaction between discretionary monetary policy which re-optimises every period and discretionary fiscal policy which reoptimises less frequently. I demonstrate the existence of two discretionary equilibria if the frequency of fiscal policy re-optimizes annually while monetary policy adjusts quarterly. Following a disturbance to the debt level, the economy can be stabilised either in a ‘fast but volatile‘ or ‘slow but smooth’ way, where both dynamic paths satisfy the conditions of optimality and time-consistency. I study several delegation regimes and demonstrate that the policy of partial targeting the debt level results in far worse welfare outcomes relative to a strict inflation targeting policy. In the third essay, I extend the framework developed in the second essay to the case with Blanchard-Yaari type of consumers. This brings in two effects. First, an increase in debt results in higher consumption via the wealth effect, the marginal cost is higher so the need for higher interest rate and higher taxation will increase, therefore the dynamic complementarity between actions of the two policymakers become stronger. Second, higher inflation affects consumption via the average propensity to consume and this effect is likely to weaken the dynamic complementarity. I show that when the households are assigned a mortality rate, overall the first effect dominates the second. The transition paths of the economic variables back to the steady state will be more volatile and the multiple equilibriums are more likely to arise.

Hepatitis B emerged as a significant public health problem in New Zealand in the early 1980s. Initially seen as an infectious threat to transfusion recipients and an occupational hazard for health care workers, epidemiological studies revealed the unexpectedly high prevalence of the disease, particularly among Maori children, who were found to be at higher risk of developing chronic hepatitis B and its longterm complications. Despite these findings, however, factors other than scientific research influenced policy makers. The Health Department was reluctant to acknowledge that New Zealand, unlike other Western countries, had a high prevalence of a ‘third world’ disease. An effective vaccine was available from late 1982, but in an era of increasing fiscal constraints, the Health Department cited its high cost as a barrier to state-funded immunisation. From the mid-1980s community-based health activists and prominent Maori, rather than public health officials, drove the hepatitis B policy agenda. Individual policy players proved more influential than central policy advisors; nevertheless, in the absence of a comprehensive control strategy, attempts at hepatitis B prevention faltered. Despite the introduction of universal childhood hepatitis B immunisation in 1990, vaccine uptake was persistently poor, particularly among ‘high risk’ children. Equally, a three-year screening programme to identify and follow up hepatitis B carriers, introduced in 1999 in spite of strong opposition from official advisors, reached less than half of its targeted population. Adopting a chronological approach and drawing on archival sources and oral history interviews, this thesis examines the factors that shaped the formation of hepatitis B policy in New Zealand from 1970, when the first test for hepatitis B provided the means of protecting the blood supply, to 2005 when policy makers finally took a firm stand on the management of hepatitis B infected health care workers. It considers the debates around the introduction of hepatitis B immunisation and screening policies and locates the individuals and issues that influenced those debates within an international context.

In this thesis I portray through a history of music and art education in New Zealand the forms knowledge production took in these subject and the discourses within which they were embedded. This enables a more comprehensive understanding of curriculum and unearths connections with what Lyotard (1984) described as 'grand narrative' used to legitimate knowledge claims and practices at certain historical moments. Through such histories we may chart the progress of European civilization within the local context and provide the historical raison d'être for the present state of affairs in music and arts areas of the New Zealand curriculum. Curriculum and its 'reform' representing in part the distribution of public goods and services, has been embroiled in a market project. I seek to expose the politics of knowledge involved in the construction of the notion of The Arts within a neo-liberal policy environment. This environment has involved the deliberate construction of a 'culture of enterprise and competition' (Peters, 1995: 52) and, in the nurturing of conditions for trans-national capital's freedom of movement, a withdrawal from Keynesian economic and social policy, an assault on the welfare state. The thesis delves beyond the public face of policy-making. It follows and scrutinizes critically the birth of The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum to the production of the first draft of the proposed policy presented by the Ministry of Education in 1999. I examine it as a site of the 'accumulation of meaning' (Derrida, 1981: 57) through a discussion of the history of meaning of 'art' and 'art' education. There is much of value in the Draft document. In particular, the arts have been invested with a new intellectual weight and the professionalism, passion and dedication of those involved in its writing shines through in each of the subject areas within the arts. However, through a process of analysis, I will show that there has been, in fact, a fashioning of a new container for the isolation of artistic knowledge. This is despite official sentiments mentioning possibilities within the document for flourishing separate Music, Art, Dance, and Drama education that implies increased curriculum space. The Draft Arts (1999) document both disguises and rehashes the 'master narrative' of universal rationality and artistic canons and is unlikely to work towards revitalising or protecting local cultural identities though not through lack of intention. I use Lyotard's notion of 'performativity' to critique notions of 'skills' and their 'development' which are implicitly and explicitly stated within the 'levels' of development articulated in the Draft Arts (1999) document. It is argued that this conflation works to enforce cultural homogeneity. There are clear dangers that the Draft Arts' (1999) conception of 'Arts Literacies' might operate as mere functional literacy in the service of the dominant culture's discourse of power and knowledge-one which celebrates the art-as-commodity ideal. It is argued that the Education Ministry's theoretical and epistemological construction of The Arts as one area of learning is unsound, and in fact represents a tightening of modernism's hierarchical notion of culture. New Zealand, now post-colonial or post-imperialist, both bi-cultural and multi-cultural, is situated on the south-western edge of the Pacific Rim. Culturally, it now includes Pacific Island, Asian, and new immigrants, as well as Maori and people of European descent. This therefore necessitates aesthetic practices which, far from promoting a set of universal principles for the appreciation of art - one canonical rule or 'standard' - recognise and reflect cultural difference. Merely admitting cultural difference is inadequate. By working away critically at the deeply held ethno-centric assumptions of modernism, its selective traditions concerned with 'practices, meanings, gender, "races", classes' (Pollock, 1999: 10), its universalising aesthetics of beauty, formal relations, individuality, authenticity or originality, and self-expression, of 'negativity and alienation, and abstraction' (Huyssens, 1986: 209), it is possible to begin to understand the theoretical task of articulating difference with regard to aesthetics. The development of the arts curriculum in New Zealand is placed within the modernism/postmodernism and modernity/postmodernity debates. These debates have generated a number of questions which are forcing us to re-examine the assumptions of modernism. The need for the culture of modernism to become self-critical of its own determining assumptions in order to come to understand its cultural practices, is becoming an urgent theoretical task, especially in disciplines and fields concerned with the transmission of acquired learning and the production of new knowledge. The culture of modernism is often taken as the historical succession of twentieth century avant-gardes (B. Smith, 1998) yet the culture of modernity, philosophically speaking, strictly begins with René Descartes several hundred years earlier, with a pre-history in the Florentine renaissance and the re-discovery of Graeco-Roman artistic and literary forms going back to the thirteenth century. Aesthetic modernism identifies with consumer capitalism and its major assumptions are rationalist, individualist and focus upon the autonomy of both the 'work of art' and the artist at the expense of the artwork, its reception and audience within its localised cultural context. The ideological features of humanism/liberalism - its privileging of the individual subject, the moral, epistemological and aesthetic privileging of the author/artist - are examined as forces contributing to modernism's major values (or aesthetic). Such approaches, it is argued, were limited for dealing with difference. The security and reproductive nature of modernistic approaches to curriculum in the arts areas are destabilized by thinking within the postmodern turn, and the effects of the changes questioning the basic epistemological and metaphysical assumptions in disciplinary fields including art/literature, artchitecture, philosophy and political theory, are registered here, within the field of the education in and through the arts. In a seminal description or report on knowledge, Jean-François Lyotard defines postmodernism as 'incredulity towards metanarratives' (1984: xxiv). Postmodernism, he argues, is 'undoubtedly part of the modern', 'not modernism at its end but in its nascent state and that state is constant (1984: 79). After Lyotard, postmodernism might be seen, therefore, not just as a mode or manner or attitude towards the past, but also as a materializing discourse comprising a dynamic reassessment and re-examination of modernism and modernity's culture. The thinking subject (the cogito) seen as the fount of all knowledge, its autonomy, and transparency, its consideration as the centre of artistic and aesthetic virtuosity and moral action, is subjected to intellectual scrutiny and suspicion. The need for an aesthetics of difference is contextualised through an examination of western hierarchies of art and the aesthetics of marginalized groups. I use the theories of poststructuralist, Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard, to examine the concept of difference. These theoretical inspirations are used as methodological tools for offsetting the privileging of the liberal individual and individualism. Rather than the mere consideration of difference in curricula, I seek to insert and establish the principle of an aesthetics of difference into relations of pedagogy and curricula. The implications for professional practice resulting from a recognition of a politics of representation are examined and a politics of difference. I argue that art education in all its manifestations can no longer avoid the deeper implications of involvement with representation, including forms of gender, ethnicity and class representation as well as colonial representation. The Western canon's notion of 'artists' and their 'art', often based upon white bourgeois male representations and used in many primary school classrooms, are part and parcel of 'social and political investments in canonicity', a powerful 'element in the hegemony of dominant social groups and interests' (Pollock, 1999: 9). Difference is not appreciated in this context. School art, music, and drama classrooms can become sites for the postmodern questioning of representation of 'the other'. In this context, an aesthetics of difference insists upon too, the questioning of images supporting hegemonic discourses, images which have filled the spaces in the 'chinks and cracks of the power/knowledge-apparati' (Teresa de Lauretis, 1987 cited in Pollock, 1999: 7-8). What would an 'eccentric rereading', a rediscovery of what the canon's vicarly cloak disguises and reveals, mean for music, and for the individual arts areas of the curriculum? I hope to reveal the entanglements of the cultural dynamics of power through an examination of the traditions of Truth and Beauty in imagery which are to be disrupted by inserting into the canon the principle of the aesthetics of difference. Art education as a politics of representation embraces art's constitutive role in ideology. This is to be exposed as we seek to unravel and acknowledge which kinds of knowledges are legitimised and privileged by which kinds of representations. Which kinds of narratives, historical or otherwise, have resulted in which kinds of depictions through image? A recognition of the increasing specification of the subject demands also the careful investigation of colonial representation, the construction of dubious narratives about our history created through visual imaging and its provision of complex historical references. How have art, music, dance, drama been used in the service of particular political and economic narratives? Through revisioning the curriculum from a postmodern perspective, suggestions are made for an alternative pedagogy, which offsets the ideological features of humanism/liberalism, one in which an aesthetics of difference might pervade cultural practices - 'systems of signification', 'practices of representation' (Rizvi, 1994). I draw upon Lyotard's notion of 'small narratives' (1984), and present an investigation of what the democratic manifestation of 'the differend', and multiple meaning systems, might indicate in terms of 'differencing' music education as a site in which heterogenous value systems and expression may find form.
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New Zealand experienced dramatic restructuring programs after the Labor party won the national elections in 1984. Deregulation of price controls, removal of the log export ban, and privatization of public assets were the main shocks to the forest sector. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impacts of these reforms on wood and paper industry cost, production, and cost efficiency. Unlike previous work, the effects of privatization and deregulation are compared to determine which shock had the most influence on the forest sector. Results show that production decreased, total cost increased, and cost efficiency decreased after deregulation for the sector, and that deregulation was more significant than privatization for the wood and paper sectors. In particular, removal of the log export ban had the greatest impact, while privatization had little effect on industry production and cost. This suggests that countries with comparative advantages in wood processing who implement deregulation or privatization may suffer through a short term period of lower cost efficiency as the economy adjusts to higher input costs in those sectors. In New Zealand's case, the adjustments most likely affecting efficiency have been investments in new technologies, which require time to attain maximum efficiency. The results are contrary to other studies that have predicted increased efficiency as a result of privatization.
Ph. D.

This dissertation is divided into four essays, each of them having its own structure and methodological framework. Although each of the essays making the chapters of the thesis is self-contained, their topics are very closely related. Consequently, the reader will be able to follow the thesis in its unity. Essay I is a selective survey of the extensive, mostly theoretic, literature dealing with monetary policy rules. We aim at contextualization of the monetary policy rules in the existing monetary economics literature. We explain the logic, the inspiration and the history of the rules for the monetary policy conduct. We distinguish between instrument rules and targeting rules as two basic categories. Finally, we resume specific issues related to policy rules for small open economies. Essay II studies the logic of short-term interest rate setting pursued by 15 EU countries before and after the launch of the EMU. We employ econometric estimation of the augmented Taylor rule (TR) for individual 15 EU countries and the Euro area. Although a vast empirical evidence is available for the major economies like the US, the UK or Germany, there is an important gap in our understanding of the factors behind the short-term interest rate dynamics in smaller economies. We find that in the period preceding the euro adoption, the TR is a poor representation of monetary policy setting in most EU countries and that many central banks considered decisions made by dominant economies rather than their domestic macroeconomic developments. The analysis of monetary policy rule of the ECB features additional problems related to the heterogeneity of the EMU. We argue that results based on Euro-area aggregated series, commonly presented in empirical studies, are subject to diverse econometric problems. We provide some evidence that the ECB is concerned also with national information and propose quasi-panel analysis as a viable framework. Essay III explores the relation between the existing monetary policy and domestic price stability in small open emerging economies, in particular the 12 EU new member states. This work has three principal objectives. First, it aims at revealing the logic of interest rate setting pursued by monetary authority of each country. The linear specification of the Taylor rule, applied already in the Essay II, is accompanied by an extensive analysis of nonlinearities in monetary policy rules and the inference on their possible sources. We find that the official monetary policy is sometimes inconsistent with the empirical evidence on the short term interest rate setting. The second objective consists in revealing the determinants of the inflation process. We have found that inflation rates are driven not only by backward persistency but also by the forward-looking component. Third, we employ analysis of the conditional inflation variance so as to give account on the viability of the existing monetary policy setting for price stability. We conclude that the policy of inflation targeting seems to be preferable to exchange rate peg because it allows decreasing not only inflation rate but also its conditional variance. Essay IV seeks to shed light on inflation dynamics of four CEEC (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) and test when the predominant model of inflation, the New Keynesian Philips Curve (NKPC), is consistent with the data of these countries. According to the microfounded NKPC, the current inflation is related to inflation expectations and the real marginal cost. The empirical validity of this model has recently become a subject of major controversy in the monetary economics. Although we find some favorable evidence for the NKPC, it seems to be too restrictive model for small open economies. In particular, the failure of the NKPC to explain the inflation dynamics of these countries may be related to the assumption that inflation is related to forward-looking price setting of domestic monopolist firms while our evidence suggests that prices in CEEC have an important backward-looking component and the inflation is significantly driven by external factors like the exchange rate and the foreign inflation rate.

Despite rapid uptake overseas environmental education has received no formal commitment from the New Zealand education system. This study is a multidisciplinary examination of four key questions that are considered to frame the implications of environmental education for educational policy in New Zealand, now. Findings are considered to have international implications.

Are there policy markets in Australia, and if so, how do they operate? This is the core question for this dissertation. Beginning with a focus on this simple formulation of the problem, the thesis explores the idea of policy markets, breaking it down into its constituent parts��policy� and �markets��and develops four different ways in which policy markets (i.e. markets for policy analysis, research and advice) might be modeled: 1. the dimensions of knowledge, values and competition in policy development systems and processes; 2. a hierarchy of policy markets according to strategic, programmatic and operational concerns; 3. policy markets in the context of cyclical process models of policy-making, especially the variant posited by Bridgman and Davis (1998); and 4. a typology of policy markets ranging from �pseudo� forms through to a form of full (or �pure�) policy market. Against the background of this theory-building, the empirical evidence�which was gathered through a combination of documentary investigation and some 77 interviews with senior public servants, consultants and ministers�is addressed through three interrelated approaches: an analysis of the (relatively limited) government-wide data; a comparison of this material with experience in New Zealand; and a set of three extended case studies. The three case studies address the idea and experience of policy markets from the point of view of: � the supplier�in this case, the economic forecasting and analysis firm, Access Economics; � ministers-as-buyers�through a study of the Coalition Government�s 1998 efforts to reform the waterfront; and � the bureaucracy as implementers of an extensive program of outsourcing�through a detailed examination of the outsourcing of corporate services (especially human resource management) by the Department of Finance and Administration. Several conclusions are drawn as to the character, extent and theoretical and practical significance of policy markets in Australia. While various elements of actual markets (e.g. contracts, price and service competition, multiple sources of supply, etc.) can be detected in the Australian approach to policy-making, policy markets are not as prevalent or as consistent as the rhetoric might suggest. In particular, while the language of the market is a common feature throughout the Australian policy-making system, it tends to mask a complex, �mixed economy�, whereby there is a continued preference for many of the mechanisms of bureaucratic ways of organising for policy analysis, combined with a growing challenge from various forms of networks, which are sometimes �dressed� as markets but retain the essential elements of policy (or, perhaps more particularly, political) networks. Nevertheless, the growing use of the language and some of the forms of the market in Australia�s policy-making system suggests that practitioners and researchers need to take this form into account when considering ways of organising (in the case of practitioners) or ways of studying (for researchers) policy development in Australia.

Questo lavoro si compone di due parti. La prima parte, costituita dal capitolo primo, fornisce una comparazione teorica di due teorie economiche in ambito di dottrina monetaria, ovvero la teoria New Keynesiana e quella Post Keynesiana. Nella seconda parte, viene ideato e implementato attraverso il software un modello teorico macroeconomico di impostazione Post Keynesiana. L’argomento di analisi è il processo di cartolarizzazione – illustrato nel capitolo 2 – che è stato al centro della crisi finanziaria che ha colpito gli Stati Uniti nel 2007-2009. L’obiettivo del lavoro è quello di analizzare, attraverso la costruzione di un modello – esposto nel capitolo 3 – che utilizza la metodologia Stock-Flow Consistent, i collegamenti tra il settore finanziario e il mercato delle case al fine di stabilire la natura della crisi: si è trattato di una crisi trainata dalla finanza o dal comportamento delle famiglie? La novità del nostro lavoro consiste nella descrizione dettagliata nell’ambito dell’approccio Stock-Flow Consistent del comportamento delle banche private, assumendo una gestione attiva di bilancio da parte delle banche di investimento.
This work is basically divided into two parts. The first part – chapter 1 – provides a comparison between two theory of monetary economics: New Keynesian and Post Keynesian. The second part is represented by the elaboration and implementation of a theoretical macroeconomic model, grounded in Post Keynesian theory. The subject under investigation is the securitization process – illustrated in chapter 2 – which has been at the centre of the 2007-2009 crisis in the United States. The aim is to analyze, through the construction of an elaborate model – in chapter 3 – the links between the financial sector and the housing market and to assess the nature of the crisis: was the 2007-2009 financial crisis a households-led or a finance-led crisis? The novelty of our work is represented by the detailed description in the Stock-Flow Consistent approach of the private banking sector, assuming that investment banks carry out an active management of their balance sheets.

This thesis is composed of three papers, each of which makes a distinct contribution to the study of the political economy of monetary policy. The first paper reassesses our empirical understanding of central bank independence (CBI) and its relationship with economic performance. To overcome flaws in existing indices commonly used to test the economic impact of CBI, I propose a Bayesian item-response approach to the measurement of crossnational CBI levels. After generating a new set of CBI scores I present a simulation extrapolation procedure enabling researchers to properly account for measurement error when using these scores in subsequent regressions. Using these methods to replicate a prominent existing study yields strong empirical evidence for a conditional economic impact of CBI. The second paper examines whether politicians use central bank appointments to induce electoral monetary policy cycles. An item-response model is used to measure the monetary policy preferences of appointees to the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) based on interest rate voting records. Comparing the preferences of new appointees with their predecessors and studying movements in the median MPC ideal point over time, there has not been a straightforward electoral cycle in MPC appointments. Nevertheless, central bank appointments are important to UK monetary policy, since they have clearly shifted the median MPC ideal point. The third paper conducts a uniquely clean test for partisan central bank appointments by examining the National Bank of Poland (NBP), where we can observe the interest rate voting behaviour of different central bankers directly appointed by different partisan political actors. A novel statistical model of interest rate voting is derived and estimated, yielding monetary policy preference estimates for each appointee. In line with a partisan appointments hypothesis, parties with a more right-wing economic ideology tend to appoint central bankers with more restrictive monetary policy preferences.

The relationship between the European Union (EU) and New Zealand has expanded considerably since the protracted trade negotiations of the 1970s and now includes dialogue and cooperation on a range of policy issues. In recent years, environment has become an increasingly high priority matter and is increasingly referenced as playing an important part in EU-New Zealand relations. At the same time, the EU has been praised for its leadership role in climate change negotiations, and some scholars have described it as a “green” normative power with the ability to influence other actors internationally on environmental policy. Taking the EU-New Zealand relationship on environment as its case study, this thesis attempts to address a gap in the academic literature concerning relations between New Zealand and the EU on environmental issues. It compares and contrasts the concept of EU normative power with that of policy transfer, arguing that both address the spread of ideas, but finding that what might appear to be normative power and the diffusion of norms, can in fact be best explained as policy transfer and the diffusion of policy or knowledge.

The main objective of monetary policy is to protect the value of the currency, and in so doing, achieve the objectives of maximum economic growth, development, and the creation of employment opportunities. As from 1985, under the advice of the De Kock Commission, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), implemented the classical cash reserve system of monetary control. Under this system, the SARB was willing to refinance the money market shortage fully, automatically, and on certain predetermined terms, conditions and costs. However, since the new political dispensation in 1994, South Africa’s financial markets have become more globalized, liberalised, and integrated. Thus, the classical cash reserve system had lost its usefulness, and was no longer effective. As from March 1998, the SARB implemented the new repurchase system of monetary control. In implementing the repurchase system of monetary control, South Africa was adopting a more eclectic approach. This system is aimed at making monetary policy more effective and more flexible in a financial environment filled with complexities. This study finds that the repurchase system has thus far been successful in meeting its objectives. Interest rates are more flexible and sensitive to developments in the domestic and external environment, the signalling mechanism of the SARB has proved to be successful, accommodation and interest rates are closely related and the interbank market has become more developed. Therefore, the repurchase system appears to be more efficient than the previous system of monetary control in South Africa.

Active labour market programmes are an important component of government labour market policy internationally and in New Zealand. The growth in unemployment, and in particular male and long term unemployment, since the mid 1980's in New Zealand have contributed to the enhanced role of active labour market programmes in government policy. In the early 1990's the New Zealand government introduced a menu of interventions including subsidy, work experience and training programmes. Concomitant with this development has been increased pressure from political, business and social groups to assess the effectiveness of this approach in lowering unemployment. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the effect of active labour market policy utilised in New Zealand from 1989 to 1997. Whether or not these active labour market interventions were beneficial to those males who participated in them, the effect of treatment upon the treated, is the parameter estimated. The range of programmes makes it possible to analyse a number of programme evaluation issues. These include the overall question of the impact of subsidy, work experience and training programmes in general, but also other specific research questions. In particular the range of subsidy programmes makes it possible to identify that subsidies to private sector firms are more effective than those to public sector organisations. The effectiveness of start-up subsidies for the unemployed are also evaluated and found to be beneficial. The effects of participation upon selected education and ethnic groups are also estimated. Since there is no one estimation approach that works in all circumstances, both regression and matching estimators are used. In order to achieve this it is necessary to create two estimation datasets as the data requirements vary for each technique. The main findings from the research are that participation in active labour market programmes is beneficial in reducing the length of time that participants are registered as unemployed. Work experience programmes have the largest impact, followed by subsidies. The effect of training programmes is smallest. The major beneficial effect occurs in the year following participation and then reduces in subsequent years. There are also some important methodological findings, including the sensitivity of results to the time frame, to the datasets chosen, and to the estimation techniques used.

Public service broadcasting aims to serve the public good rather than private gain. Advocates believe that the work of broadcasting should be regarded as a public service for a social purpose. To achieve this purpose it should fulfil a number of ideals: cater for all sections of the community, service all geographic regions of a nation regardless of cost, be independent from political or commercial interests, educate, inform, entertain and improve the public it serves. The public service model was used as an ideal, to examine the performance of the Broadcasting Standards Authority in its first five years. It was found that for the Authority to be equitable and efficient requires: independence from political and broadcast industry influences, adequate funding, revision of the complaints system to improve public accessibility, and members with expert and specialised knowledge. Furthermore, there needs to be recognition of the principle that programmes should be assessed on individual merit, to increase the accountability of the Authority's decisions to the public The Broadcasting Standards Authority was instituted to retain public service broadcasting obligations in a deregulated environment. If the above issues are not addressed, then the credibility of the Authority's function as a public forum for the consideration and discussion of broadcasting standards must come into question.

The 1980s and 1990s was a period in which dramatic changes occurred in New Zealand’s political landscape. These changes affected many aspects of the way democracy in New Zealand was understood and operated. In the 10 years from 1984- 1994, New Zealand moved from being a highly protected reasonably insular mixed economy with significant levels of state intervention in most areas of the socioeconomic framework to one with permeable borders that was quickly globalising based on a market-model for both domestic and international business functions. This was accompanied by a change in the electoral system from a simple majoritarian plurality first-past-the-post system to a mixed member proportional representation system that led to the breakdown of single-party government as it gave way to coalition politics. The causes of this latter shift related to a feeling that the previous system was both unfair and gave too much power to a few individuals in one party who seemed to have limited accountability. It was the belief of a substantial portion of the electorate that successive governments had breached the people’s trust by ignoring unwritten conventions around implementing an electoral mandate based on campaign manifesto promises. This thesis seeks for the first time to answer how real these perceptions were by assessing pledge fulfilment before 1984, during the 1984 to 1996 period, and after the advent of MMP, in order to reveal any changes that have occurred across this critical period in New Zealand’s political history in relation to the application of the mandate theory of democratic government. It will also provide insight for the first time into the impact changing an electoral system has on election policy implementation for major parties and raises important questions about popular ideas of democracy, electoral support for election promise-keeping and methods of accountability as traditional notions of democracy are challenged by the revealed reality of both government action and voter reaction.

Ideally, a citizen is an individual who is a formal member of a self-governing political community, with individual rights and freedoms that are equal to those of other citizens, and which are protected by law. This thesis investigates how closely the citizenship status of non-Maori ethnic minorities in New Zealand approximated this ideal during the 1990s. Its particular focus is on how the neo-liberal ideology of National and Coalition Governments between 1990 and 1999, and those Governments' understandings of the nature and political significance of ethnicity, affected the ability of those belonging to non-Maori ethnic minority groups to be full and equal members of the New Zealand political community, with an equal capacity for self-governance at the individual level and as members of the political community. The thesis takes the form of a survey of public policy and law over a period of nine years. Five broad areas or aspects of public policy are examined: the collection and dissemination of official 'ethnic' statistics; immigration and citizenship policy; civil rights provided for in domestic and international law; mechanisms for ensuring access to political decision-making; and social policy. The question asked in the thesis is whether the policies developed and administered in each of these areas during the 1990s enriched or detracted from the citizenship status of non-Maori ethnic minorities.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that one way New Zealand's high prevalence of child abuse can be reduced is by the government increasing the legislative and policy responses within an ecological framework, to child abuse prevention. This is because such responses would ensure a 'best practice' approach to child abuse prevention. This 'best-practice' approach is one where child abuse prevention measures are community-driven, child-centred, multi-disciplinary and inter-sectoral. Section 1 of this thesis will provide a background on the different types of child abuse, why child abuse occurs and what the consequences of child abuse are. This section will also cover some current statistics on the incidences of child abuse in New Zealand. Additionally, there is a discussion on how child abuse is increasingly being minimised within a family violence paradigm - even though family violence is only one form of child abuse. New Zealand does not have a good track record when it comes to its rates of child abuse. Section 1 is intended to give the reader a very clear picture of how children in New Zealand are not currently being protected adequately enough from child abuse. This protection should be coming from the adults in their lives, in their community and in their nation. Section 2 of this thesis outlines an ecological framework for child abuse prevention. More specifically the way in which such an ecological model is operating presently in New Zealand, at particularly an exosystem (community) and macrosystem (national) level. The second part of this section discusses factors which will ensure the 'success' of an ecological framework for child abuse prevention. By 'success' the author is referring to a framework in which the primary outcome is the prevalence of child abuse in New Zealand is reducing. Section 3 of this thesis will contain the substantive arguments of this paper. New Zealand does currently have in place legislative and policy responses to child abuse prevention. However, the author maintains these responses to date have not been sufficient because New Zealand's rates of child abuse continue to escalate. This section consists of 19 recommendations of legislative and policy responses that could be implemented at a macrosystem/national level. At the conclusion of the recommendations contained in this thesis, it becomes clear that the government does need to respond urgently to New Zealand's growing child abuse rates. New Zealand can no longer afford to have a reactive, ad-hoc approach to child abuse. Nor can the response at a macro level continue to be one of rhetoric where there is more talk on child abuse prevention than there is on activating, monitoring and funding practical solutions. It is the author's contention that if the government considered the interests and welfare of children as paramount in legislative and policy decisions that relate to children, then this will send a strong and clear signal to the adults in childrens' lives that children are not to be abused. Instead, children are to be nurtured, respected and cherished in every way.

Since 1984, when the fourth Labour Government was elected to office, there have been major changes in the structures of society in Aoteroa/New Zealand. A wide range of reviews and reforms of economic and social policy have been undertaken, and not surprisingly the structures and policies of adult education have come under scrutiny and been subject to major changes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the politics of policy formation over a six-year period. Using official and unofficial reports and other documents, the paper seeks to identify some of the key changes in adult education policy that have taken place in recent years and to locate them within the context of the contradictory pressures operating upon and within government and the field of adult education.

This thesis focuses on the evolution and framing of xenotransplantation (XTP) policy debate in New Zealand from 1998 to 2011. Its aim is providing a better understanding of both the science-society interface and the importance of issue framing policy debate in understanding of the scientific debate in New Zealand and its relationship with the public. A qualitative study, this thesis draws upon a variety of public science commentary and debate and poses the research question: How did xenotransplantation’s introduction and explanation to the New Zealand public inform its current status as a Restricted Procedure under New Zealand law; and what ethical implications arise from this public policy debate for public participation in bio-medical research in New Zealand?

External economic shocks cause domestic macroeconomic aggregates to fluctuate. This may call for a macroeconomic policy intervention. Since the early 1990s an increasing number of countries have adopted an inflation targeting framework. In reality, inflation targeters do not have perfect information when determining the interest rate in order to maintain their goal of price stability and stable economic growth. Therefore it is relevant to understand how shocks affect the domestic macroeconomic aggregates theoretically and investigate whether the theoretical predictions hold empirically. I use the New Keynesian model by Clarida, Galí and Gertler from 1999 and investigate explicitly the theoretical effects of expected and unexpected supply and demand-side shocks on the monetary policy instrument and the two monetary policy target variables – the interest rate, output gap and inflation rate. By analysing the impulse-response functions of a structural VAR model applied to quarterly Swedish and British data from 1994 to 2011, I test empirically the theoretical predictions according to the New Keynesian model. I find that the empirical results are in line with the theoretical predictions.

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The thesis introduces a system dynamics Taylor rule model of new Keynesian nature for monetary policy feedback in Brazil. The nonlinear Taylor rule for interest rate changes con-siders gaps and dynamics of GDP growth and inflation. The model closely tracks the 2004 to 2011 business cycle and outlines the endogenous feedback between the real interest rate, GDP growth and inflation. The model identifies a high degree of endogenous feedback for monetary policy and inflation, while GDP growth remains highly exposed to exogenous eco-nomic conditions. The results also show that the majority of the monetary policy moves during the sample period was related to GDP growth, despite higher coefficients of inflation parameters in the Taylor rule. This observation challenges the intuition that inflation target-ing leads to a dominance of monetary policy moves with respect to inflation. Furthermore, the results suggest that backward looking price-setting with respect to GDP growth has been the dominant driver of inflation. Moreover, simulation exercises highlight the effects of the new BCB strategy initiated in August 2011 and also consider recession and inflation avoid-ance versions of the Taylor rule. In methodological terms, the Taylor rule model highlights the advantages of system dynamics with respect to nonlinear policies and to the stock-and-flow approach. In total, the strong historical fit and some counterintuitive observations of the Taylor rule model call for an application of the model to other economies.

Esta tesis extiende el modelo estándar Neo Keynesiano con el propósito de contestar dos preguntas: ¿cómo debe ser diseñada la política monetaria en uniones monetarias heterogéneas? y ¿cuál es el efecto de presiones competitivas sobre la dinámica de la inflación? El primer capítulo analiza el diseño de política monetaria en uniones monetarias en las cuales los países miembros muestran diferentes grados de apertura externa. Esta heterogeneidad implica que el plan de la política óptimo muestra una inclinación muy fuerte por la estabilización del tipo de cambio, con el objetivo de disminuir los diferenciales de inflación. El segundo capítulo estudia el diseño de reglas de metas en una unión monetaria con choques idiosincráticos cost-push que tienen diferentes volatilidades. El tercer capítulo estima un curva de Phillips Neo Keynesiana derivada de un modelo con entrada endógena de firmas, en el cual el número de firmas activas está inversamente relacionado con el markup deseado. Se cuantifica el efecto de las fluctuaciones del markup deseado sobre los costes marginales reales.
This thesis extends the basic New Keynesian (NK) model to answer two questions. How should monetary policy be designed in heterogeneous currency areas? What is the effect of competitive pressures on the inflation dynamics? The first chapter analyzes the monetary policy design in currency areas in which countries display different degrees of external openness. Such heterogeneity implies that the optimal policy plan exhibits a stronger motive for the currency area exchange rate stabilization in order to dampen inflation differentials. The second chapter studies the design of targeting rules in currency areas with country-specific cost-push shocks that have different volatilities. The third chapter estimates a NK Phillips curve derived from a model with endogenous firm entry in which the number of active firms is inversely related to their desired markup. It quantifies the effect of the desired markup fluctuations on the pass-through of real marginal cost.
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In Korea, an inflation targeting (IT) regime was adopted in the aftermath of the Korean currency crisis of 1997–1998. At that time, the Bank of Korea (BOK) shifted the instrument of monetary policy from monetary aggregates to interest rates. Recently, central bank policymakers have confronted more uncertainties than ever before when deciding their policy interest rates. In this monetary policy environment, it is worth exploring whether the BOK has kept a conservative posture in moving the Korean call rate target, the equivalent of the US Federal Funds rate target since the implementation of an interest rate-oriented monetary policy. Together with this, the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–2009 provoked by the US sub-prime mortgage market recalls the following question: should central banks pre-emptively react to a sharp increase in asset prices? Historical episodes indicate that boom-bust cycles in asset prices, in particular, house prices, can be damaging to the economy. In Korea, house prices have been evolving under uncertainties, and in the process house-price bubbles have been formed. Therefore, in recent years, central bankers and academia in Korea have paid great attention to fluctuations in asset prices. In this context, the aims of this thesis are: (i) to set up theoretical and empirical models of monetary policy under uncertainty; (ii) to examine the effect of uncertainty on the operation of monetary policy since the adoption of interest rate-oriented policy; and (iii) to investigate whether gradual adjustment in policy rates can be explained by uncertainty in Korea. Another important aim is (iv) to examine whether house-price fluctuations be taken into account in formulating monetary policy. The main findings of this thesis are summarised as follows. Firstly, as in advanced countries, the four stylised facts regarding the policy interest rate path are found in Korea: infrequent changes in policy rates; successive changes in the same direction; asymmetric adjustments in terms of the size of interest-rate changes for continuation and reversal periods; and a long pause before reversals in policy rates. These patterns of policy rates (i.e., interest-rate smoothing) characterised the central bank‘s reaction to inflation and the output gap as being less aggressive than the optimising central bank behavior would predict (Chapter 3). Secondly, uncertainty may provide a rationale for a smoother path of the policy interest rate in Korea. In particular, since the introduction of the interest rate-oriented monetary policy, the actual call money rates have shown to be similar to the optimal rate path under parameter uncertainty. Gradual movements in the policy rates do not necessarily indicate that the central bank has an interest-rate smoothing incentive. Uncertainty about the dynamic structure of the economy, which is dubbed ‗parameter uncertainty‘, could account for a considerable portion of the observed gradual movements in policy interest rates (Chapter 4). Thirdly, it is found that the greater the output-gap uncertainty, the smaller the output-gap response coefficients in the optimal policy rules, and in a similar vein, the greater inflation uncertainty, the smaller the inflation response coefficients. The optimal policy rules derived by using data without errors showed the large size of the output-gap and inflation response coefficients. This finding confirms that data uncertainty can be one of sources explaining the reasons why monetary policymakers react less aggressively in setting their interest rate instrument (Chapter 5). Finally, we found that house prices conveyed some useful information on conditions such as possible financial instability and future inflation in Korea, and the house-price shock differed from other shocks to the macroeconomy in that it had persistent impacts on the economy, consequently provoking much larger economic volatility. Empirical simulations showed that the central bank could reduce its loss values in terms of economic volatility, resulting in promoting overall economic stability when it responds more directly to fluctuations in house prices. This finding provides the reason why the central bank should give more attention to house-price fluctuations when conducting monetary policy (Chapter 6).

The New Zealand Curriculum stipulates the inclusion of community voices in local school decision making, planning and review (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 9). Moreover, in this national document participation is a key value and a key competency for all students. Between this inclusive, participative agenda and the real life positioning of migrants in New Zealand school communities there appears to be an abyss (Bartley & Spoonley, 2008; Ward et al., 2005). This qualitative, ethnographic, participative study, informed by critical theory, explores the hopes and dreams of three groups attached to one urban high school: members of the Korean parent community; senior, successful Korean students; and the three most senior members of the school management team. In collecting data this study aimed to give voice to those on the margins. In focus group interviews the participants (the Korean parents, and the Korean students) took extended turns, spontaneously telling micro stories to each other, using the narrative form to illustrate, and give credence to, their general thoughts. Themes emerging from interviews and field data were coded and analysed using modified grounded theory. The narratives told suggested that the Korean parents arrived with visions of New Zealand as a land of opportunity where they hoped that they and their children would find their own, non-traditional future selves. Disappointingly, they found themselves and their children positioned on the periphery of the mainstream. The parents asked the school for help for their teenaged children to participate in mainstream classrooms, and in particular for stories to build motivating visions of their future selves in the host context. The interviewed successful students, except for one outlier, engaged Korean networks outside school, rather than the mainstream school resources the parents requested, to plan their futures which were decidedly traditional. International research suggests such ethnic networks, while enabling academic success, narrow career choice, and limit employment opportunities (Mak, 2010; Zhou & Kim, 2006). Data analysis shows that members of school management's reliance on the school structures including the pastoral whānau structure and its associated activities, such as school camps, to enact socially inclusive national and local policy appear to be insufficient to realise cross-culturally participative education. My hope is that this study will continue to provide encounters among the school's multiple communities. Dialogue, and increasing negotiation and networking, will assist Korean iii community members to adapt, to reinvent, and to sustain themselves individually and communally in ways that fit their particular local context in New Zealand. Hearing the stories may enable emotional connections for teachers alerting them to their role in provision of increased cross-cultural, participative opportunities for all students, in this way ensuring that the national vision of students as confident, connected, actively involved lifelong learners is more than rhetoric.