Regional business cycles in New Zealand: Do they exist? What might drive them?

We establish classical business cycles, for New Zealand's 14 regions and aggregate national activity. Regional cycles rarely die of old age but are terminated by particular events. Concordance statistic measures show significant contemporaneous associations between the New Zealand cycle and 11 of the regional cycles. Over half the bi-regional co-movements are not significant. Geographical proximity influences co-movement between regions, as do unusually dry climatic conditions. Neither real national house price movements, nor net migration movements co-move significantly with regional cycle phases. For key regions, movements in New Zealand's terms of trade, milksolids' prices, dairy land prices and total rural land prices are significant. Rural business cycle activity has therefore remained a remarkably dominant factor. Copyright (c) 2007 the author(s). Journal compilation (c) 2007 RSAI.