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Statistics produced by Stern Stewart and the ANZ Bank on the destruction of shareholder value by New Zealand companies have attracted widespread publicity. They reinforce widespread anti-business sentiments.[1] One business magazine has interpreted them as a condemnation of "our scandalous management". Read more

At different stages from the late 1970s onwards, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, without exception, moved in the direction of market-oriented policies of economic reform. That is, they shifted from using public policy instruments, such as regulation or public ownership of enterprise, to a greater reliance on market mechanisms and incentives to increase economic welfare. Read more

The primary purpose of the tax system is to finance government expenditure. The level of government spending generally provides the best overall measure of the tax burden. Read more

The pre-funding proposal is largely an accounting exercise with no direct economic impact on the retirement income problem. As now spelled out, it is essentially a tax-smoothing scheme. Read more

We have made submissions on successive governments' Budget Policy Statements since their inception. This is because we believe that fiscal policy and the disciplines introduced by the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994 are important for sound economic management and the quality of the communications between the government and the wider community, particularly the investment community. Read more

This collection of speeches, submissions and articles is the sixteenth in a series produced by the New Zealand Business Roundtable. The material in this volume is organised in six sections: economic directions; the public sector; industry policy and regulation; education and the labour market; social policy; and miscellaneous. Read more

Businesses up and down the country will have started the new year reflecting on the new millennium, the implications of the change of government, and the forces that are shaping the international environment in which New Zealand firms are increasingly operating. The world economy looks to be set for a good year. Read more

There seems to be a widely held view or suspicion in New Zealand that this country's real cost of capital is high, and that this obstructs investment and/or places New Zealand firms at a disadvantage to foreign competitors. Motivated by these concerns this paper examines the following questions: is the real cost of capital high in New Zealand by comparison with other countries? Read more

The Minimum Wage Act 1983 (the Act) states that the governor-general may prescribe by order in council minimum rates of wages payable to any class or classes of workers. The class or classes of workers are to be defined by reference to their ages. Read more

We have long regarded the existing legislation embodied in the Securities Amendment Act 1988 to be seriously deficient. No sound case was ever made for New Zealand's current insider trading law. Read more