GOOD LUCK OR GOOD POLICY? A RECENT MACROECONOMIC HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND

Abstract

The Great Moderation was a global phenomenon marked by stable economic growth and inflation. However, how much monetary policy contributed to its success remained a popular debate in the literature. Answering this question became imperative after the global financial crisis since global conditions became relatively more important than past. I examined the recent macroeconomic history of New Zealand through the lens of a regime-switching structural vector-autoregression model to understand the contributions of domestic monetary policy and global conditions to its macroeconomic stabilization. A small open economy structure is essential to facilitate the identification of structural shocks that spillover from the globe.