1,721,032 research outputs found
Book reviews
No full textTaking New Zealand Seriously: the Economics of Decency, by Tim Hazledine, Harper-Collins (Auckland) 1998, 237pp. ISBN 1 86950 283 3 The Role Of Government In East Asian Economic Development, Masahiko Aoki, Hyung-Ki Kim and Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara (eds) (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997), 448pp. ISBN 0 19 8294913. The Structure and Dynamics of New Zealand Industries, edited by Michael Pickford and Alan Bollard (The Dunmore Press), 1998, 384pp. ISBN 0 86469 320 6.
Easy as, bro - raising the GST, New Zealand style
No full textWhen long-time Kiwi expat John Clarke was asked why he left New Zealand, he said: “Because it was there.” Clarke at least knew what being “there” meant, in contrast to most of his new compatriots, whose interest in and knowledge of their ANZAC cobbers (or “bros”, as we would say) extends little beyond the usual clichés.
Of course, lack of mutual understanding is, well, mutual. For example, I am a NZ economist interested in policy matters. I did know that Australia had followed NZ (and many other countries) in adopting a general retail sales tax, known in both countries as the GST, and I also happened to know that – like Canada and other countries, but not NZ – the Australian government had made the usual capitulation to the farm lobby by excluding food from the tax.
I didn’t know that the Australian GST was introduced so long ago (in July, 2000), I didn’t know its level (then and now set at 10%) and I certainly hadn’t been told that its list of exclusions extends to such upper-middle class trinkets (as they are in NZ, anyway) as private health care and private school fees.
I found out these snippets when asked to comment on remarks made by your Treasury Secretary, Martin Parkinson in a “hard-hitting” speech last week to the Sydney Institute, with the prime minister Tony Abbott in the Chair.
Dr Parkinson did indeed offer an unusually frank and far-reaching set of comments on how Australia best should deal with long-run prospects somewhat less sanguine than those until recently enjoyed by the “lucky economy” that, uniquely in the OECD, sailed through the global financial crisis without recession on a torrent of mineral revenues (did I get that right?).
In a response to a question about increasing the GST, Dr Parkinson said that he was “not going to speculate on what tax changes Australia might want to do”, and then went right ahead with some quite forthright speculations. (Good for him.) In particular, he referred to the political ease with which GST increases were introduced in NZ along with cuts in personal income taxes, after “long public debate”. There are “probably some lessons” there for Australia, he said.
Ok, that gives me three questions to address: Is the Treasury Secretary on target with respect to political aspects of the changes in NZ? Are comparisons in any case valid? And what do I think of the economics of sales versus income taxes?
The NZ GST was introduced in 1986 at 10% and increased the first time to 12.5% in 1989. While I was living in Canada at the time, I do know that its introduction was linked to a truly massive halving of the top marginal income tax rate from 66% to 33% – quite an attractive trade-off there, at least for higher income taxpayers! And when the most recent increase to 15% was made, in 2010, it was packaged with a cut in the top income tax rate from 39% (where the Helen Clark government had raised it) back to the 33% rate. My recollection is that there wasn’t particularly long or intense public debate before the increases, nor much of a political kerfuffle following them.
What about the appropriateness of the comparison? Here I would be more cautious. In New Zealand, with our remarkably (uniquely?) comprehensive GST, just about everyone is paying the same, and if it goes up everyone shares that equally, too. That won’t be true in Oz. If you raise without broadening, you will be widening already problematic disparities between taxed and untaxed sectors. And if you try now to broaden the tax base, after your leaders didn’t have the guts to do it right at the beginning in 2000 – well, that really will be opening a political can of worms, won’t it? I’ll definitely be paying attention to that!
On the economic issues, Dr Parkinson claimed “research consistently demonstrated that relying more on indirect (ie, sales) taxes, than income taxes, can support higher growth and living standards.” I expect he means that sales taxes (if comprehensive!) are less distortionary than income taxes, in particular in terms of the supposed discouraging effect that high marginal tax rates have on wealthy folks’ willingness to get up and go to work in the morning.
I’d say that the research of the brilliant Australian economist Andrew Leigh (formerly at ANU, now a federal MP) along with Tony Atkinson of Oxford University, does show that the income tax taken from the top 1% of earners can increase when marginal rates are dropped from some levels.
But this doesn’t mean that produced income has increased (it may just be less avoidance), and these are complex issues. Good luck, Australia!
Tim Hazledine does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Image: Tax / Shutterstoc
Flying High? Pricing and Competition in the NZ and Tasman Air Travel Market
Get PDFProfessor Tim Hazledine presented Flying High? Pricing and Competition in the NZ and Tasman Air Travel Market at an ISCR seminar on 1 June 2005
Flying High? Pricing and Competition in the NZ and Tasman Air Travel Market
No full textProfessor Tim Hazledine presented Flying High? Pricing and Competition in the NZ and Tasman Air Travel Market at an ISCR seminar on 1 June 2005
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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