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Rodney Dickens says the huge disparities between reported GDP and employment...
By Rodney Dickens*As is normal, interest.co.nz kindly reproduced the last Raving in which I aired my concern about the quality of some official statistics.Statistics NZ (SNZ) provided a thoughtful...
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Rodney Dickens shows the NZD does not move in response to American benchmark...
By Rodney Dickens*In the Morning Brief provided by ASB Securities on Friday was a link to an NBR article in which an economist was reported as saying that interest rate hikes by the Fed would result in...
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Rodney Dickens says now that tourism is vying with dairying as our number one...
By Rodney Dickens*Tourism competes with dairying as New Zealand's largest export earner making it an important industry when assessing economic growth prospects among other things.This Raving looks at...
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Auckland house price rises following Housing Accord to ‘boost supply’ means...
By Rodney Dickens*Despite the Auckland Housing Accord delivering 154 Special Housing Areas that are supposed to deliver more than 60,000 new dwelling sites, since it was ratified in October 2013 the...
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Rodney Dickens questions the threat technology poses to employment, noting...
By Rodney Dickens*Many jobs that exist today will be displaced by technology.But there is nothing new in this.Manufacturing is an industry where technology has already decimated many jobs. Despite...
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Rodney Dickens says the effective OCR is well over double the 1.75% actual...
By Rodney Dickens*We still live in the shadow of the financial crisis. For example, high debt levels in the crisis countries mean international interest rates will remain much lower than "normal" for a...
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Rodney Dickens says there won't be a major catch-up phase for residential...
By Rodney Dickens*Conventional wisdom is that there is a huge unsatisfied demand for new housing especially in Auckland implying the potential for a major catch-up phase for residential building.Such a...
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Rodney Dickens looks at what drives global inflation, what drives New Zealand...
By Rodney Dickens*In the last two Monetary Policy Statements the Reserve Bank included alternative scenarios for the OCR in addition to the central scenario that involved roughly one OCR hike in...
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Rodney Dickens says the latest boom in Auckland house prices is not over but...
By Rodney Dickens*Auckland house prices have in the past experienced Biblical style behaviour (i.e. feasts followed by famines, but also famines followed by feasts). It is too early to warn about the...
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Rodney Dickens thinks respondents are ticking the negative boxes in the ANZ...
By Rodney Dickens*At face value the large fall in many components of the ANZ business survey and especially the falls in business confidence and exporters' expectations provide Governor Wheeler with...
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It is not the downside threats that worry Rodney Dickens but the upside house...
By Rodney Dickens*Bad things inevitably happen when the Reserve Bank governor has a distorted view of house price prospects, as Governor Wheeler currently has.This is particularly the case in terms of...
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Rodney Dickens says we've reached a critical stage in the economic cycle with...
By Rodney Dickens*This Raving looks at two migration issues: (1) the role immigration is and can play in easing the burden of an aging population on taxpayers; and (2) the mystery of the missing...
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Rodney Dickens says the risk isn't that economic & employment growth will...
Image sourced from Shutterstock.comBy Rodney Dickens*At times the economic forecasters say things that are dubious at best, which sets off the bullshit meter in my head.Normally I have a chuckle to...
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Rodney Dickens says forget dairy and housing, consumer spending is the...
Image sourced from Shutterstock.comBy Rodney Dickens*Consumer spending is the meat-n-veg of economic growth but doesn't get the attention it deserves because of the cameo performances regularly put on...
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Rodney Dickens says it's interest rate policy that drives house prices and...
By Rodney Dickens*House prices, especially in Auckland, are extremely high relative to incomes, but this doesn't mean there is imminent or necessarily large downside risk for house prices.It is also...
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Economist Rodney Dickens thinks recent volatility in reported house prices...
By Rodney Dickens*Much that has been written about the behaviour of Auckland house prices since the property tax and LVR changes last year is nonsense.Auckland house prices were reported to have fallen...
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Economist Rodney Dickens says the boost from the OCR cut to the labour market...
By Rodney Dickens*Two of the main factors used to justify the five OCR cuts Governor Wheeler has delivered over the last year will not have the impact on the economy assumed by the Reserve Bank and the...
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Economist Rodney Dickens says the currency market is smarter than the Reserve...
By Rodney Dickens*Governor Wheeler has spent almost the last two years trying to talk the exchange rate down.His comments and actions may have played a part in it falling for a period.However, since...
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Economist Rodney Dickens accuses the RBNZ policy makers being out of touch...
By Rodney Dickens*This morning the Reserve Bank released a brief "economic update" that laid the groundwork for an OCR cut on 11 August.In that context, the critical comment in the statement was: "At...
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Rodney Dickens puts the boot into economic forecasters for getting it so...
By Rodney Dickens*What happened to those predictions of weak economic growth?!The Westpac and ASB economists were at the forefront of calls for lots of OCR cuts over the last year.Partly supporting...
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