Reserve Bank Email Service

For your information the following release went out a few moments ago:

Reserve Bank of New Zealand Press Release

08 September 2006

September 2006 Reserve Bank Bulletin released

The Reserve Bank today released the September 2006 issue of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin (www.rbnz.govt.nz/research/bulletin/).

To mark the opening of the Reserve Bank museum, the first article in the Bulletin looks at the events leading to the establishment of the Reserve Bank in August 1934. The article looks at the forces that culminated in the establishment of the Bank, which included the specific pressures created by the Great Depression, as well as a push by Britain to see its Dominions establish their own central banks.

The second article discusses some recent changes to the specification of the inflation process in the Bank's main policy model (known as the Forecasting and Policy System or FPS). The article explains how recent findings have been used to guide the redesign of the inflation system within FPS.

The final article compares the Bank's projections for key economic variables with forecasts made by other forecasters over the past three years. The article finds that the Bank's forecast performance over this period has been broadly comparable to that of other forecasters. However, in the case of inflation and short-term interest rates, the Bank's forecasts were slightly better than the average of other forecasts.

ENDS

© Scoop Media