Insufficient attention has been paid to the research of Tim Kehoe published in the New Zealand Economic Papers after a Reserve Bank conference comparing the great depressions in New Zealand and Switzerland in the 1970s and 1980s.
New Zealand lost two decades growth, started growing again at trend rate of growth in 1992 but for reasons not yet understood there was no rebound to recovery lost ground.
As I noted yesterday, the IMF released several “selected issues” background papers in association with the release of the New Zealand Article IV report. These papers are usually a little more in-depth than the main report, and the topics chosen reflect some mix of the expertise and interests of the people on the staff team and the priorities of the New Zealand agencies involved (Treasury and the Reserve Bank). In my experience, the efforts of the team are often spread too thinly and so unfortunately not many of the papers have added very much to the understanding of the macroeconomic issues facing New Zealand.
The papers this time are:
- Prospects for potential growth in New Zealand
- House prices, household debt, and financial stability in New Zealand, and
- New Zealand – Options for Tax Policy Reform
It would be interesting to know whose initiative the last paper was done at. …
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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