title: Did the post-1986 decline in the homeownership rate benefit the New Zealand labour market? A spatial-econometric exploration

authors: Cochrane, William

abstract: The proportion of New Zealand households living in owner-occupied dwellings has declined steadily since the early 1990s. The unemployment rate declined steadily as well, except for upward shifts due to the late 1990s Asian Financial Crisis and the Global Financial Crisis a decade later. Research initiated by Andrew Oswald in the 1990s posits that declining homeownership and declining unemployment are linked and that the causality runs from high homeownership leading to high unemployment. The international empirical evidence for this hypothesis is rather mixed. In this paper, we revisit the issue with New Zealand census data for commuting-defined labour market areas from 1986 until 2013. Allowing for spatial spillovers in our data, we apply a general nesting spatial-econometric model. We also consider the potentially different impacts of freehold and mortgaged homeownership. Generally, the evidence that a declining homeownership rate contributes to a lower unemployment rate is statistically fragile. When statistically significant, an increase of 1% in freehold ownership appears to increase a labour market area’s unemployment rate by between 0.07 and 0.2% points. The effect is relatively stronger in those labour market areas where freehold ownership is still relatively low.

text: Did the post-1986 decline in the homeownership rate benefit the New Zealand labour market? A spatial-econometric exploration The proportion of New Zealand households living in owner-occupied dwellings has declined steadily since the early 1990s. The unemployment rate declined steadily as well, except for upward shifts due to the late 1990s Asian Financial Crisis and the Global Financial Crisis a decade later. Research initiated by Andrew Oswald in the 1990s posits that declining homeownership and declining unemployment are linked and that the causality runs from high homeownership leading to high unemployment. The international empirical evidence for this hypothesis is rather mixed. In this paper, we revisit the issue with New Zealand census data for commuting-defined labour market areas from 1986 until 2013. Allowing for spatial spillovers in our data, we apply a general nesting spatial-econometric model. We also consider the potentially different impacts of freehold and mortgaged homeownership. Generally, the evidence that a declining homeownership rate contributes to a lower unemployment rate is statistically fragile. When statistically significant, an increase of 1% in freehold ownership appears to increase a labour market area’s unemployment rate by between 0.07 and 0.2% points. The effect is relatively stronger in those labour market areas where freehold ownership is still relatively low.

year: 2020

title: MaxGain: Regularisation of neural networks by constraining activation magnitudes

authors: Gouk, Henry

subjects: Machine learning

abstract: Effective regularisation of neural networks is essential to combat overfitting due to the large number of parameters involved. We present an empirical analogue to the Lipschitz constant of a feed-forward neural network, which we refer to as the maximum gain. We hypothesise that constraining the gain of a network will have a regularising effect, similar to how constraining the Lipschitz constant of a network has been shown to improve generalisation. A simple algorithm is provided that involves rescaling the weight matrix of each layer after each parameter update. We conduct a series of studies on common benchmark datasets, and also a novel dataset that we introduce to enable easier significance testing for experiments using convolutional networks. Performance on these datasets compares favourably with other common regularisation techniques. Data related to this paper is available at: https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/sins10/.

text: MaxGain: Regularisation of neural networks by constraining activation magnitudes Effective regularisation of neural networks is essential to combat overfitting due to the large number of parameters involved. We present an empirical analogue to the Lipschitz constant of a feed-forward neural network, which we refer to as the maximum gain. We hypothesise that constraining the gain of a network will have a regularising effect, similar to how constraining the Lipschitz constant of a network has been shown to improve generalisation. A simple algorithm is provided that involves rescaling the weight matrix of each layer after each parameter update. We conduct a series of studies on common benchmark datasets, and also a novel dataset that we introduce to enable easier significance testing for experiments using convolutional networks. Performance on these datasets compares favourably with other common regularisation techniques. Data related to this paper is available at: https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/sins10/.

year: 2019

title: A Māori and Pacific lens on infant and toddler provision in early childhood education

authors: Rameka, Lesley Kay

abstract: While New Zealand has made major advances in educational provision, Mäori and Pacific chil- dren continue to lag behind other groups, achieving disproportionately lower results on national averages (Marriot & Sim, 2014). Key to educational success for Mäori and Pasifika children is the acknowledgement that they are culturally located and the recognition that effective education must embrace culture. Early childhood education has an important role in building strong learn- ing foundations for young children; however, achieving this is a complex process, especially with regard to Mäori and Pacific children in early childhood education. This article outlines findings from a 2014 nationwide online survey conducted with Mäori and Pacific teachers working in Mäori and Pacific early childhood services and language nests. Respondents were asked about traditional and contemporary caregiving practices for infants and toddlers and what barriers and enablers were faced in implementing these caregiving practices within their services.

text: A Māori and Pacific lens on infant and toddler provision in early childhood education While New Zealand has made major advances in educational provision, Mäori and Pacific chil- dren continue to lag behind other groups, achieving disproportionately lower results on national averages (Marriot & Sim, 2014). Key to educational success for Mäori and Pasifika children is the acknowledgement that they are culturally located and the recognition that effective education must embrace culture. Early childhood education has an important role in building strong learn- ing foundations for young children; however, achieving this is a complex process, especially with regard to Mäori and Pacific children in early childhood education. This article outlines findings from a 2014 nationwide online survey conducted with Mäori and Pacific teachers working in Mäori and Pacific early childhood services and language nests. Respondents were asked about traditional and contemporary caregiving practices for infants and toddlers and what barriers and enablers were faced in implementing these caregiving practices within their services.

year: 2015