Productivity profile of New Zealand

In the New Zealand public sector, productivity-related research and policy advice is conducted by the:

·       New Zealand Treasury/Te Tai Ōhanga

·       Reserve Bank of New Zealand/Te Pūtea Matua

·       Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment/Hīkina Whakatutuki

·       Commerce Commission/Te Komihana Tauhokohoko

New Zealand Treasury: Examining New Zealand’s increased rate of income growth between the late 1990s and 2019 (2023), Firm Productivity Growth and the Knowledge of New Workers (2022);

New Zealand Productivity Commission: Productivity by the numbers (2023), Migration and firm-level productivity (2022), Publications, Completed inquiries, Current inquiries;

Motu Economic and public policy research: Living on the edge: An anatomy of New Zealand's most productive firms (2021), Competition and productivity: Do commonly used metrics suggest a relationship? (2019), Improved productivity measurement in New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database (2019), Worker Flows, Entry and Productivity in the New Zealand Construction Industry (2018), A Rough Guide to New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database (2016), Production function estimation using New Zealand's Longitudinal Business Database (2015);

Academic publications: Sustainable consumption growth: New Zealand’s surprising performance (2022), Cities with forking paths? Agglomeration economies in New Zealand 1976–2018 (2022), Migration and firm-level productivity (2022), Who Benefits from Firm Success? Heterogenous Rent Sharing in New Zealand (2022), What Drives the Gender Wage Gap? Examining the Roles of Sorting, Productivity Differences, Bargaining, and Discrimination (2022), Picking up speed: Does ultrafast broadband increase firm productivity? (2021), Benchmarking the Productivity Performance of New Zealand's Frontier Firms (2021), Productivity in New Zealand: The role of resource allocation among firms (2019), Absorptive capacity in New Zealand firms: Measurement and importance (2019), Intangible Investment and Firm Performance (2018), Firm productivity growth and skill (2016);

OECD: OECD Economic Surveys: New Zealand (multiple), Economic Policy Reforms 2023: Going for Growth – New Zealand, Boosting productivity in New Zealand by unleashing digitalisation (2022).

Boosting productivity by unleasing digitalisation:

• Advance the national digitalisation strategy by providing a strong mandate for strategic coordination across all relevant policy areas and by collecting the data needed to support it;
• Develop digital apprenticeships and internships and expand the GOVTechTalent graduate programme to all public sector organisations;
• Develop programmes to help Māori and women pursue digital careers;
• Move toward goal-based regulations that stipulate regulatory objectives while allowing flexibility in technologies used;
• Empower the NZ Commerce Commission to order merger parties to apply for its clearance, to halt integration between parties during its investigation and to order merger parties that are overseas entities to produce information for its investigation;
• Provide seamless support to innovative digital start-ups for their early global expansion through better coordination between Callaghan Innovation and New Zealand Trade Enterprise;
• Ensure interoperability across digital tool platforms by requiring agritech players to adopt common standards, while letting them choose the most suitable common standards to converge to.

Strengthen skills of the workforce:

• Improve mathematics and science teaching in primary schools to enable school students obtaining the university qualifications needed for ICT careers. This includes putting more emphasis on inquiry plus guided teaching using well-articulated knowledge bases for both the student and the teacher.

Promote a competitive and innovative business environment:

• Remove barriers to competition in the retail grocery sector.
• Monitor the effect of reforms in the FDI screening regime and streamline the procedure further if needed.
• Complement R&D tax credits with targeted grants subject to strict evaluation and enhance knowledge transfer from research institutions.
• Consider the appropriateness of the current corporate tax rate.