Economic geography, globalisation and New Zealand’s productivity paradox

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Economic geography, globalisation and New Zealand’s productivity paradox

Document Format: PDF

Publication Year: 2009

Authors:
Philip McCann

Abstract

This presentation examines New Zealand’s poor productivity performance from the reform period onwards from the perspective of economic geography. Rather than employing institutional or free-market versus interventionist arguments to explain New Zealand’s low productivity, as is usually the case, the argument developed here is that the debate should be considered from a very different viewpoint. If we adopt an economic geography perspective, there is nothing really paradoxical about New Zealand’s productivity performance. New Zealand’s productivity performance is rather more of a conundrum, a riddle, with a fairly straightforward solution. Possible policy responses will also be discussed.