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Rodney Dickens says the business confidence surveys have major political...
By Rodney Dickens*The ANZ business survey has gone AWOL again.Unfortunately, the bank economists and therefore the media haven't focused enough on the massive political bias that currently overwhelms...
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Rodney Dickens says section prices are the key to solving the housing...
By Rodney Dickens*Maybe reflecting vested interests and complacency, National's housing policies did nothing to solve the affordability problem.In the case of Auckland this is evidenced by section...
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Rodney Dickens doubts landlords' costs drive rents, suggesting it's more...
By Rodney Dickens*With the government targeting housing investors and landlords, rental housing has become a bit of a hot topic and it shouldn't be a surprise there have been claims the result will be...
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Rodney Dickens says higher construction demand will soon attract building...
By Rodney Dickens*A somewhat heated debate is unfolding regarding the government's plan to boost residential building via especially the KiwiBuild plan.The conventional wisdom appears to be that...
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Rodney Dickens checks how reliable economic forecasters' employment growth...
By Rodney Dickens*A review of the predictions for employment growth by the economic forecasters reveals that they are pretty good as long as employment growth is about to head to around average rates;...
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Rodney Dickens says be wary of MBIE's National Construction Pipeline reports,...
By Rodney Dickens*Annually since 2013 MBIE has released the National Construction Pipeline report. The reports include forecasts for national and regional residential building, non-residential building...
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Rodney Dickens criticises Auckland Council's economists, claiming their...
By Rodney Dickens*Special events are the mainstay of news but too often economists also give excessive weight to them.This appears to be the case with Auckland Council's (AC's) chief economist's...
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Rodney Dickens doesn't like the RBNZ policy settings, arguing they will lead...
By Rodney Dickens*As covered in our Monetary Policy Briefing report released to subscribers, Governor Orr's pro-growth experiment will lead to a disaster.His decisions are contrary to global best...
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Rodney Dickens says warning bells are starting to ring over the level of new...
By Rodney Dickens*The national tourism boom is flowing through to a major increase in the building of hotels and other short-term accommodation and rising room rates with around the normal lags.At face...
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Rodney Dickens says the real problem inhibiting affordable housing is the...
By Rodney Dickens*KiwiBuild is experiencing some teething problems. Some people aren't happy that it isn't delivering new housing affordable to low income earners while the extension of the ballot for...
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Rodney Dickens finds the council-controlled subdivision process, the RMA and...
By Rodney Dickens*This Raving follows on from the previous one that criticised the government for not doing enough to get down section prices; with high section prices at the heart of the housing...
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Rodney Dickens challenges Barfoot's optimistic judgment saying the Auckland...
By Rodney Dickens*Barfoot & Thompson's latest monthly update made me chuckle when I read there was a "strong performance from the Auckland housing market as it heads into the year end."This and...
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Rodney Dickens thinks he spots a bust about to unfold in the manuka honey...
By Rodney Dickens*My Pooh Bear physique isn’t much to do with my love of honey but as a child on a pleasant sheep and beef farm on Taupo's drought-prone pumice soil, honey was one of the few sweets we...
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Rodney Dickens thinks Statistics NZ has botched the new migration numbers. He...
By Rodney Dickens*The dumping of departure cards for people leaving NZ from November 2018 meant Statistics NZ (SNZ) had to find a new way of calculating how many people were leaving the country on a...
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Rodney Dickens says there are still issues with new migration numbers even...
Still a bit fishy ...By Rodney Dickens*In the January Raving I suggested Statistics NZ may have botched the new migration numbers. Large revisions to the emigration numbers when the December numbers...
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Rodney Dickens says the stirring of wage inflation worldwide signals official...
By Rodney Dickens*One of the few economists warning of impending doom before the financial crisis is doing so again. His views are easily discounted because the false prophets of doom, including an IMF...
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Rodney Dickens explores why our productivity growth is falling, with a...
It came as a surprise to me that growth in output per employee has all but come to a standstill in NZ. It looks like future generations are at risk of being poorer than the current one.An ex Reserve...
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Rodney Dickens argues the ANZ business survey is a political toy for some...
The January 2018 Raving highlighted that the ANZ business survey went AWOL after the 2017 election.In general the ANZ survey is still corrupted by some respondents using it as a political football, but...
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Rodney Dickens notes it has been many years since the warnings of how jobs...
Reports about the number of jobs that will be lost as a result of technological advancements have been doing the rounds for long enough to start testing whether it and the other factors that drive...
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Rodney Dickens says current official forecasts are tainted by wishful...
A major finding of research of international interest rate behaviour I did at the Bank of England was that recent experience excessively influences people's expectations about the future.In terms of...
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Rodney Dickens says understanding how our local long term interest rates are...
In the May Monetary Policy Statement the Reserve Bank stated that "Movements in domestic long-term interest rates are mainly driven by movements in global rates". This is probably a quite widely held...
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Rodney Dickens says the Reserve Bank used dubious assertions to justify its...
Image sourced from Shutterstock.comThe Reserve Bank used dubious assertions about wage inflation and the impact of global factors on the NZ economy to justify the aggressive 0.5% OCR cut last...
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Rodney Dickens crunches the numbers around the sharp drop in our factory PMI...
Globally the manufacturing sector is most exposed to the US-China trade war. Possibly related to this a useful leading indicator of NZ manufacturing production points to an imminent and reasonably...
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Rodney Dickens identifies the structural shift the RBNZ made during the GFC...
Since the GFC, the RBNZ has forced banks to borrow more locallyBy Rodney DickensWith the OCR at 1% and falling vs. the US Fed Funds Rate at 1.85% and falling you may wonder which country had a...
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Economist Rodney Dickens wonders if bank lending criteria are the reason the...
By Rodney DickensIf dwelling sales reported by the REINZ had responded normally to the significant fall in mortgage interest rates since 2017 the monthly seasonally adjusted number of sales would be...
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