This page includes a selection of project summaries and links to publications. It includes reports produced by Resource Economics and by Covec when Resource Economics was a group within it.
Value of prevented fatality: A nation-wide face-to-face survey and choice experiment was used to derive a values of statistical life (VoSL), reductions in travel time, congestion and other transport parameters. The results have been used to update the values used in transport and other cost benefit analyses via the monetised benefits and cost manual and CBAx.
Report: Denne et al (2023)
Emissions pricing design and analysis: numerous studies including those on market governance, price controls and emissions leakage.
Energy security: A series of studies addressed issues with security of gas and oil supply, including several times setting gas price during a critical contingency (most recently in 2017), and options for oil demand restraint.
Price projections, market modelling and tariff design: commodity price projections, market modelling for energy, emissions and waste markets, design of tariffs & charges for water and electricity transmission.
Projections have provided inputs to asset valuations, investment decisions and policy analysis.
Costs of air pollution: This study assesses the health effects and social costs of air pollution in New Zealand. The social costs are estimated using estimates of the value of a statistical life (VoSL) and value of a life year lost (VoLY), in addition to the costs of morbidities (including respiratory illnesses and restricted activity days).
Report: Kuschel et al (2022)
Pricing agricultural GHG emissions This report for He Waka Eke Noa summarises the impacts of emissions pricing options on dairy, sheep & beef farms and horticulture industries. It also includes the results of a national cost benefit analysis.
Resource Management system reforms: studies include a cost benefit analysis of reform options, analysis of resource allocation options. An earlier study examined the role of economics in the RM reforms (Chapter 10 of the EDS study).
Essential Freshwater package: cost benefit analysis. Two reports examine the costs and benefits of the essential freshwater package which included the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 and National Environmental Standards for Freshwater. An additional study examined ways to understand the potential implications of the NPS Freshwater Management on food security.
Urban issues including designing indicators of under-supply for the national policy statement on urban development, and cost benefit analysis of urban development. Studies have also included the impacts of congestion charging and of introducing low emission zones.