The science is clear. When debating emissions, consider your goals. Biological emissions from agriculture (methane and nitrous oxide) make up almost half New Zealand’s total greenhouse gas emissions, so their importance relative to carbon dioxide is of particular policy interest. Motu Economic and Public Policy Research brought together a group of New Zealand climate change...

Farmers change slowly Avoid pain with clear signals Research; replace cows. This paper explores how New Zealand should address agricultural greenhouse gas emissions: methane and nitrous oxide. The starting point is the internationally agreed-upon goal of limiting global warming to below two degrees, and New Zealand’s commitment to contribute its ‘fair share’ to the international...

In contrast to most economic drivers of land-use change, climate-related drivers display substantial geographic variation. Accounting for this spatial heterogeneity is important in simulations of the land-use response to climate change. I use a discrete choice model to estimate the relationship between pasture yields and rural land use. Land-use predictions from the model respond to...

We combine survey and administrative data for about 13,000 firms from 2005 to 2013 to study the inter-relationships among firm characteristics, intangible investment and firm performance. We find that firm size is associated with higher intangible investment, while firm age, very low competition (‘captive market’) and very high competition (‘many competitors, none dominant’) are associated...

The positive relationship between income and subjective wellbeing has been well documented. However, work assessing the relationship of alternative material wellbeing metrics to subjective wellbeing is limited. Consistent with the permanent income hypothesis, we find that a consumption measure out-performs income in predicting subjective wellbeing. When objective measures of consumption are combined with self-assessments of...