N.Z. “SOCIAL LABORATORY”

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29067, 2 December 1959, Page 8

N.Z. “SOCIAL LABORATORY”

Full Employment Maintained (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, December 1. New Zealand, ogee more in its short history, has become the “social laboratory of the Western world,” according to Mr W. Rosenberg, senior lecturer in economics at the University of Canterbury. In a paper read today to the second annual conference of the New Zealand Association of Economists, he said that New Zealand was the only country with a “private enterprise structure which has been able to maintain without interruption real full employment for well on 20 years. “In this field we are showing the world a way. And we have done it not by super-armaments, not by give-away programmes but simply by maintaining effective demand stable at full employment levels.” One would expect that such a country was the paradise of the economics profession, yet professional economists were rare in New Zealand and. with few exceptions, unipfluential. “The importance of the profession in New Zealand is bound to increase. In the immediate postwar period the macro-economics of full employment were facilitated by the fact that full employment was well-nigh universal. This meant stable markets and rising price levels. “The recent, change in economic climate overseas which puts an increasing emphasis on price and exchange stability has led to difficulties op the part of primary producing countries. In these conditions our economic policy will have to be administered with growing skill, and the advice of trained professional economists will become more and more valuable,” Mr Rosenberg said.