We are pleased to announce award of the A.R. Bergstrom Prize in Econometrics for 2007 to Melanie Morten, Ph.D. student, Yale University, for her paper, “Healthy and Wealthy? Examining the Causality between Income and Life Expectancy.”

Extract We are pleased to announce two awards for the A.R. Bergstrom Prize in Econometrics for 2005.

We are pleased to announce award of the A.R. Bergstrom Prize in Econometrics for 2003. The award is to Dr. Chirok Han, School of Economics and Finance, Victoria University of Wellington, for his paper, “The Bias of Fixed Effects Estimators for Panel Binary Choice Models.”

We are pleased to announce the awarding of the A.R. Bergstrom Prize in Econometrics for 1996. The award is to Matthew Ryan, Department of Economics, the University Auckland, and a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, for his paper "Aggregation Effects in Consumption." The object of the Prize is to reward the achievement of excellence in econometrics, as shown by a research paper in any area of econometrics. , The Prize is open to New Zealand citizens or permanent residents of New Zealand who, on the closing date for applications, have current or recent (i.e., within 2 years) student status for a higher degree. The Prize is awarded once every 2 years, with a value of NZ $1,000.

By international standards, New Zealand's recent business cycle fluctuations have been exceptionally volatile. Fluctuations in central government and private fixed investment expenditure, the real net exports share, the terms of trade and interest rates have also been particularly volatile. Many bivariate relationships change markedly over time, but ‘real variable regularity’ is confirmed. Fluctuations in government purchases have been acyclical. The real net exports share has been countercyclical overall, but pro‐cyclical most recently. Domestic price fluctuations have been basically countercyclical. The scale of changes over the past decade continues to present difficulties for establishing credible financial and open economy regularities.

Estimated fuel price elasticities are consistent with reactions following the second major oil shock, having been significantly different from reactions to its predecessor. In turn, elasticities for both sub-periods are not well represented by those estimated for 1960-1982 as a whole.

A range of static and dynamic translog-based expenditure shares models are estimated for non-energy producing industrial sectors of the major seven countries of the OECD area. Sectoral energy volume and fuel efficiency bias variables are shown to be significant over and above individual prices in explaining individual fuel expenditure shares. Statistically significant own-price and cross-price elasticities of demand are presented for individual countries, with some magnitudes varying considerably across alternative model specifications.

Three data sets from two different quarterly surveys have been used in estimating six standard models of price change behaviour. Results for Total Manufacturing Industry, for all three data sets, show prices respond to both actual cost movements and commodity market excess demand conditions. For most ASIC two‐digit industries, prices respond rapidly to actual cost movements, and for many industries they also respond directly to excess demand conditions. No single excess demand measure is appropriate for all industries. The magnitude of orders and inventories influences is very small, but capacity utilization contributions seem far from trivial. Industry results are frequently sensitive to the survey used and/or to the method used to weight individual firm's responses.

Strict conditions for a two-stage translog expenditure shares model are violated. A single- stage homothetic symmetry/equality model is rejected in favour of a non-homothetic equality model. International own-price elasticities derived from the latter for oil, gas, coal and electricity are -0.26, -0.81, -0.97 and -0.02, little changed from -0.24, -0.71, -1.35 and -0.09 for the former.

This paper reports the theoretical development of a small aggregative model of output, employment, capital formation and inflation. The model (which we subsequently refer to as BHP) is designed to explain medium term cyclical growth in a small open economy. It allows explicitly for disequilibrium in the markets for goods and labour services and has a wage-price sector in which the movements in these variables are specified to allow for intended price setting behaviour by firms while, in addition, responding to realisations which may differ from these intentions as well as responding to the effects of disequilibrium in the real sector. The model is formulated in continuous time as a system of non-linear differential equations and has a particular solution which corresponds to plausible steady state growth behaviour for the variables of the model. The properties of this particular solution are analyzed directly, and solution trajectories for the variables corresponding to various initial values which deviate from the steady state growth paths are computed numerically and compared with the steady state growth paths. The model has been developed with a view to subsequent empirical application to a small open economy and, as a foundation for later work, some econometric methodology for the treatment of non-linear differential equations is developed in the paper.

Data from the quarterly ‘Survey of Industrial Trends in Australia’ have been used to evaluate whether various excess demad and expectations influences have significantly effected reported price changes in Australian manufacturing industry. For the manufacturing sector, as a whole. both expected and unexpected changes in average unit costs have been important, but no explicit excess demand influence has been additionally significant at the I per cent level. For a majority of the indrutry categories tested, however, certain excess dgmand variables (involving. for example, finished goods inventories, unfilled orders. and industry operating rates) and various cost and inventory expectations variables have been significant.

Any investigation into a potential quantitative role for inflationary expectations can proceed in three steps. The first, to obtain or construct time series data which represent the expected rate of inflation; the second, to research how such inflationary expectations could have been formed; and the third, to examine the extent to which the expected rate of inflation can explain the actual rate.Early econometric research focused on the third step only, and in so doing had to make do with indirectly measured expected rate of inflation variables. That is, the expectational time series data were generated from some assumed hypothesis expressing expected prices in terms of previous actual prices. This approach clearly had the disadvantage of forcing on the generated expectations series a predetermined idea of how the decision-maker’s expectations were formed, meant that step two above was imposed by assumption rather than established by testing, and was the result of researchers failure to come up with an independent direct measure of inflationary expectations.

Economic RecordVolume 50, Issue 1 p. 57-76 A Preliminary Model of New Zealand's Post-war Inflation* V. B. Hall, V. B. Hall University of SydneySearch for more papers by this author V. B. Hall, V. B. Hall University of SydneySearch for more papers by this author First published: March 1974 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4932.1974.tb01970.x † *During the course of this research, stimulating criticism has been received from Professors Rex Bergstrom and Geoff Braae while at the University of Auckland, and from members (particularly Professors Michael Parkin and Gene Savin) of the University of Manchester SSRC Inflation Workshop. I would also like to thank the two referees for their most constructive comments. Financial support from a New Zealand UGC Post-graduate Scholarship and a Kelliher Economics Foundation Bursary at the University of Auckland, and from a Hallsworth Research Fellowship in the Department of Econometrics at the University of Manchester, is gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the European Meetings of the Econometric Society in Budapest during September 1972. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat References 1 Bergstrom, A. R. and A. D. Brownlie, ‘An Econometric Model of the New Zealand Economy’, Economic Record, Vol. 41, March 1965, pp. 125–6. 2 Brownlie, A. D. and P. Hampton, ‘An Econometric Study of Wage Determination in New Zealand’, International Economic Review, Vol. 8, October 1967, pp. 327–34. 3 Deane, R. S., ‘ Towards a Model of the New Zealand Economy’, Research Paper No. 1 (Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Wellington , 1971). 4 Hall, V. B., ‘Determinants of the Minimum Money Wage Rate in New Zealand, 1947–65’, New Zealand Economic Papers, Vol. 3, 1969, pp. 14–26. 5 Hall, V. B., ‘ A Model of New Zealand's Post-war Inflation’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of Auckland, 1971). 6 Hall, V. B., ‘Simultaneous Equation Wage Determination in New Zealand’, New Zealand Economic Papers, Vol. 6, 1972, pp. 29–51. 7 Hall, V. B., ‘Prices, Labour Demand, and Real Output in the New Zealand Economy: An Econometric Application’, New Zealand Economica Vol. 7, 1973. 8 Wymer, C. R., ‘ Econometric Estimation of Stochastic Differential Equation Systems with Applications to Adjustment Models of Financial Markets’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (University of London, 1970), Chapter 2, Appendix A. 9 Wymer, C. R., ‘ Resimul 2 Manual’ (London School of Economics, October 1972), mimeo. Volume50, Issue1March 1974Pages 57-76 ReferencesRelatedInformation

This paper presents the results of an investigation into one of the processes by which prices could have been set in New Zealand over about the last twenty years; it does not concern itself with any processes by which wages may have been determined, as the particular price process is for a representative firm which treats its wage rate as predetermined. The firm attempts to maximise its profits, and is able to choose simultaneously its product price, its demand for labour services, and the level of real output it wishes to produce.A structural model for this representative firm is developed within a static framework in Section one. In Section two are presented the results obtained from econometric estimation of a dynamic form of the model. Aggregate data have been used both for the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates of each of the price, labour demand, and real output equations, and for the two stage least squares (2SLS) estimates of the simultaneous equation system. Principal conclusions from the research are summarised in Section three.

The wage determination hypotheses presented and tested in this paper were developed as two equations within a simultaneous equation model designed to explain and forecast for post-war New Zealand, the actual money wage rate, the minimum money wage rate, the retail price level, the demand for labour, the supply of labour, and the level of real output. The model is linear in the logarithms of the variables. Work on equations explaining the latter four variables is proceeding. In section two the hypotheses are formulated; in section three they are tested. Tests were conducted with both annual and semi-annual data, and for the annual data some two stage least squares (2SLS) estimates are presented and compared with the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates.