Examines the reasons why TQM has had relatively little impact in the hospitality sector and recognizes the greater risks involved in implementing TQM as opposed to a more “technique‐based” implementation. Identifies two requirements for successful implementation – the right initial conditions (which reduce the perceived risk) and the need for an appropriate environment within which TQM can flourish. In the latter context, four key concepts are identified: “external awareness”, “change potential”, “motivation”, and “manoeuvrability”. Comparisons are drawn with manufacturing organizations which identify some of the reasons for the greater impact in that sector. Concludes by identifying some ways in which the hospitality sector could start to close the gap.

The welfare cost of taxation of labour income is the economic loss to employees over and above the taxation revenue acquired by the government. This article estimates total welfare cost in 1986 and 1988 in New Zealand, and also estimates marginal welfare cost and related measures of marginal excess burden for a hypothetical marginal tax reform prior to and following the major discrete reforms of 1986. Estimated welfare costs are generally higher in the post-reform period despite a significant reduction in the progressivity of the statutory personal income tax schedule, the effect of the uniform goods and services tax introduced at that time serving to raise the weighted average effective marginal tax rate. As with recent estimates for the U.S., estimated welfare costs for New Zealand are sensitive to labour supply elasticity parameters, and are higher than for the U.S. Part of this difference, however, is shown to depend on our use of disaggregated income data.

Edward Fiske and Helen Ladd's review of market-based educational reforms in New Zealand are assessed in light of recent developments. We agree that predicted benefits were overstated, that there were both losers and winners, and that educational nirvana did not result. In our view, however, the main impact was to make schools' problems more transparent, creating discomforting pressures and attempts to undermine this transparency. We examine responses to changes in zoning laws, the effects of socioeconomic status on observed outcomes, signalling and value-added behavior, and school accountability. We find that educational reforms produce substantial short-term changes, largely on the demand-side.

Reference pricing pharmaceuticals in New Zealand involves reimbursing drugs at the lowest price ruling in a given therapeutic subgroup, and has been argued to promote competition leading to equalised prices among similar drugs. Disappointment at the inability to contain public drug expenditures sufficiently has led to the augmentation of reference pricing with cross-product strategic agreements. These require firms seeking subsidisation of new drugs to significantly reduce their prices in unrelated markets, typically for relatively unpopular drugs. An examination of the markets for statins and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors in New Zealand shows that in neither case has price matching voluntarily accompanied these agreements. Although imperfect drug substitutability appears to be an important factor in explaining some of these results, particularly for statins, intrafirm cross-subsidisation induced by agreements and industry concern about international benchmarking of drug prices are proposed as major likely sources of influence.

No abstract