This report explores the key characteristics of firms at New Zealand’s productivity frontier through the use of Stats NZ’s Longitudinal Business Database.

This study compares the relative performance of New Zealand’s firms to those economies using novel cross-country microdata from CompNet. The authors present stylised facts for New Zealand relative to the economies of Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands and Sweden based on average productivity levels, as well as benchmarking laggard, median and frontier firms.

This paper looks at the economic significance of the dairy industry, the regulatory environment, competition, competing corporate strategies, competing organisational forms and future challenges.

This report investigates how migration can help frontier firms stay at the top of the class and how immigration settings, more generally, might have been holding firms back. It looks at how changes in migration policy could influence firms in New Zealand to make greater use of technology and innovation relative to imported labour.

This paper presents the findings from in-depth interviews with 22 executive and non-executive/ independent directors of New Zealand firms. The discussions focused on how boards make decisions that would foster growth, scale-up, innovation and internationalisation – all of which associated with higher productivity and are characteristics of frontier firms.