01. First RLG meeting, 14 June 2022
Attendees
Philip Stevens; Phil Mellor (MFAT); Gillian Thornton (MBIE); Patrick Nolan (Treasury); Andrew Webber (SWA)
Apologies: Peter Nunns (NZIC); Vij Kooyela (TPK)
Agenda
| What |
| Who |
|---|---|---|---|
1. | Welcome and introductions |
| All |
2. | What are we doing? |  | Philip |
3. | Where to next? What would something like a resuscitated Productivity Hub look like to be useful. What would it be called? Are there different elements?
|
 | All |
4. | LBD Confluence | Philip |
Meeting minutes
The general consensus was that this was a useful exercise and that it is something we would benefit from more regularly.
We mentioned a number of people who would also be useful to have on board. The RBNZ, MSD, SNZ.
We discussed what we are working on, and agreed that given my note-taking is illegible that we would each send out a summary of work we are doing.
From an ProdCom perspective. We are just about to release some papers on: migration and productivity, migrant pathways, the impact of Covid on the RSE scheme, income inequality, and firm exporting. Our next set of work will be looking at the sorting of migrants to firms, entrepreneurship (its relation to recessions and to changes in the structure of who owns houses and thus have collateral), persistence of broad measures of disadvantage, and decomposition of productivity growth (ie entering and exiting firm, reallocation and growth etc). We are also working with TPK on productivity in the Māori economy.
Andrew spoke about the SWA Hub (https://thehub.swa.govt.nz/), which they are looking to breathe new life into.
In a sense, what we have been talking about is the ‘economic’ partner to the more ‘social’ focus of that. Of course there are overlaps, but I think it is useful to think about where they are substitutes and where they are compliments.
I’ll talk about the LBD Confluence site we are creating next time.
Treasury are running ‘muffin seminars’, that are fairly technical, ie coding and modelling rather than results and implications. There is probably space for something like the artist previously known as muffin seminars where researchers present results to other researchers and to policy types. I’m happy to kick this off, and we might also ‘cobrand’ it with the Government Economic Network, to get wider reach. Any suggests of work from you agencies you would like to present gratefully appreciated.
We talked about building and developing researchers, and more broadly about economics. I mentioned that the GEN has just set up a subcommittee on “professionalisation” that co-chair with Tamara Linnhoff. This will look a lot of aspects from job descriptions that people can use through to whether a bells-and-whistles approach like the UK Government Economic Services is useful and/or practical.
Next steps.
Philip: I’ll set up a monthly meeting for us manager types. If we run out of things to say, we can reduce the frequency.
Philip: I’ll set up a research seminar, once I have thought of some baked product now that muffins have been taken…
All: Please send ideas for papers your staff could present.
Treasury: send out details of their muffin seminar series (done!)
All: suggest names for managers of other team who might value being part of our merry crew
All: provide a short summary of the work your teams are currently working on
All: keep doing awesome research to inform better policy and make NZ a better place…