The Principal Economics team collaborated with a large team of frontier researchers and practitioners and developed a transport appraisal methodology that is grounded in an accessibility framework and integrates travel behaviour, environmental impacts and economic principles.

The project sought to address limitations in the current appraisal methodology, which although well-established, has notable limitations. To address these, the research considered the pros and cons of six potential appraisal methodologies, drawing on the identified advantages of each to establish an access-based synthesised accessibility appraisal methodology as an alternative.

The synthesised methodology will improve land-use and transport policy integration. It:

Our team has applied the synthesised accessibility appraisal methodology to three case studies. A comparison of the outcomes produced by the synthesised accessibility appraisal methodology with those generated from a status quo appraisal highlighted the importance and usefulness of the new approach. The new methodology was shown to cohesively combine various components of land-use and transport policy, and provide transparent information for decision-makers, and demonstrated it could lead to significantly higher benefit–cost ratios if the potential benefits of transport projects and programmes are accommodated by permissive land-use policies.

This article identifies and evaluates possible methodologies for estimating the capital value of New Zealand’s local road network. Local councils and central government agencies could use the findings to address the current inconsistencies in valuation approaches and enable better-informed decision-making for local road investment, maintenance, and user charges. The outputs will improve our understanding of the socio-economic and financial costs of providing and using the New Zealand transport system. The article discusses that the commonly used accounting-based valuation methods underestimate roads’ (economic) value. Suppose the purpose of a valuation is to prioritise investment. In that case, an accounting-based approach prioritises costlier road linkages instead of those with the highest economic value.

Accreditation is a crucial part of New Zealand’s quality infrastructure. The accreditation services provided by International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) increase the confidence of New Zealand and overseas consumers to purchase products that are produced or tested by accredited organisations. In this report we provide an independent assessment of the economic impact of IANZ.

Accreditation services create an 8 percent price premium for exporters through reduced transaction costs, which leads to improved productivity and profitability. We used our extensive Computational General Equilibrium (CGE) model of the New Zealand economy and identified that IANZ’s accreditation services lead to:

• a total increase in exports by $3.4b, consisting of an $8.2b increase in exports of industries using accreditation offset by a decrease in exports of industries not using accreditation,
• 1.6 per cent higher real wages, which increases consumption by $3.3b,
• $2.4 billion increase in annual GDP of New Zealand.

Despite being one of the national priorities, there are still large gaps and no consensus from the literature on what drives house price growth and the interaction between major drivers that underpin house price growth. In our housing affordability knowledge hub, we provide:

• an independent review of the factors of house price growth (HPG) in New Zealand
• a range of descriptive statistics of the HPG and its drivers over the last fifty years.

Our review includes both the academic and grey literature. We provide a list of suggested future studies to improve our understanding of the factors of HPG in New Zealand.

Cite this article.

Principal Economics. (2021). Drivers of House Price Growth Knowledge Hub. Retrieved from Drivers of House Price Growth – Principal Economics.

Transportation decisions can have large and varied impacts on travellers and their communities. It’s important to measure these effects and consider their impact on various groups when planning projects.

Waka Kotahi uses a framework to decide which transport projects and programmes to pursue. The economic business case must contain a cost–benefit analysis (CBA). CBAs assess the economics of a proposal by valuing (monetising) the costs and benefits to all members of society. However, CBAs sum across a wide range of people and don’t calculate inequities between groups or individuals, or who ultimately benefits from the project.

Transport equity discussions focus on social justice. Equity impact analysis helps policymakers to make good decisions for a wide range of people. Distributional impact analysis needs to be complemented with wider investment and planning considerations. This includes any comprehensive policy framework that accounts for the overlapping effects of transport, housing and taxing policies.

Cite this article

Torshizian, E., Byett, A., Isack, E., Fehling, A., & Maralani M. (2022). Incorporating distributional impacts in the cost–benefit appraisal framework (Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency research report 700).