Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin articles
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September 2006 (Vol. 69, no 3)
Download the complete issue of the September 2006 Bulletin (PDF 1,018KB)
Articles
Editor's Note (PDF 33KB)
The policy origins of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (PDF 326KB)
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand formally began operations on 1 August 1934, with responsibility for currency issue, debt management and the exchange rate. Although the establishment of the Bank can be seen partly as a response to the depression of the early 1930s, it also reflected forces that played out over much of the period following the First World War. Britain's push to see its Dominions establish their own central banks and the long-standing case for an independent New Zealand currency were both important factors shaping the debate around the case for a central bank.
This article discusses these historical influences, the personalities that played a key role in the policy debate, and the events that culminated in the opening of the Bank.
Modelling New Zealand inflation in a Phillips curve (PDF 425KB)
This article presents some simple estimates of Phillips curves for New Zealand inflation and outlines a recent reorganisation of the inflation process in the Reserve Bank's Forecasting and Policy System (FPS). While modern economic theory suggests the traditional Phillips curve should be used only with care, empirical estimates for New Zealand suggest it continues to have some value. We find that estimates of the impact of resource pressure (the "output gap") on inflation are easiest to obtain from an equation on the non-tradables component of CPI inflation, and show that this relationship can be improved statistically by introducing a (fairly smooth) measure of inflation expectations on the right hand side.
We present some evidence that the relationship between resource pressures and non-tradables inflation is stronger in New Zealand than some comparable countries, and further evidence that this could be related to the cyclicality of housing construction costs in New Zealand. In the latest version of the Reserve Bank's macro-model, FPS, the inflation process has been written with a tradables/non-tradables split and an explicit empirical measure of inflation expectations. This does not greatly change model properties but allows the model's congruence with the data to be assessed more directly.
An assessment of recent Reserve Bank forecasts (PDF 326KB)
The Reserve Bank's ability to produce good quality forecasts is critical for it to operate monetary policy in a forward-looking environment. As part of the Bank's regular review of its own forecasting performance, we compare the Reserve Bank's forecasts of key variables from the past three years against a benchmark of forecasts prepared by other forecasters. The results from this review suggest that the Bank's forecast performance over recent years has been at least comparable to the average of other forecasters. In the case of CPI inflation and 90-day interest rates, the Bank's forecasts performed slightly better than the average of other forecasters.
The views expressed are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Articles published in this Bulletin may not be wholly or substantially reproduced without the permission of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Data, brief extracts from articles, and other material appearing in the Bulletin, may be used without restriction provided due acknowledgement is made of the source.
(c) Reserve Bank of New Zealand
