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Professor Norman Gemmell

Profile

Norman joined the School of Accounting and Commercial Law in November 2011, as the first incumbent of the new Chair in Public Finance. Established by Victoria University of Wellington, with sponsorship originally from three New Zealand government departments, (The Treasury, Inland Revenue and the Ministry of Social Development) and accountancy firm PwC, since 2016 the Chair has been supported by The Treasury, Inland Revenue, The Ministry of Education and The Productivity Commission.

The new Chair aims to bring together academic research on public finance with applications to tax policy in practice. Norman comes to the role having previously been Chief Economist and Principal Adviser (Tax) at The New Zealand Treasury (2007-11), an Assistant Director of the UK Inland Revenue’s Research Department (2003-06), and Professorial Research Fellow (1999-2007) and Professor of Development Economics (1996-99) at the University of Nottingham, UK. Norman also helped set up, and participated in, the recent VUW Tax Working Group which advised the Minister of Finance on the major tax reforms included in his 2010 Budget.

Norman’s research interests cover a range of topics across economics and political economy but mainly in the areas of public finance (taxation, public expenditure and public debt) and economic growth. He has authored several books and numerous journal articles in these areas including the recent Modelling Corporation Tax Revenue (with John Creedy; Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010) and articles in such peer-reviewed journals as the American Economic Review, Economic Journal, International Tax and Public Finance, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Public Economic Theory, National Tax Journal, and Journal of Development Economics.

In 2012, Norman was awarded the “Economist of the Year” by an independent panel of economists sponsored by the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research (NZIER), and was appointed to the New Zealand Treasury’s External Panel of independent experts advising Treasury on its 2013 Long-Term Fiscal Statement.

Selected and recent publications

  • ‘Is external research assessment associated with convergence or divergence of research quality across universities and disciplines?’. Applied Economics, Published online, February 2020 at doi:10.1080/00036846.2020.1725235. (With R.A. Buckle and J. Creedy).
  • ‘Illustrating income mobility: new measures’. Oxford Economic Papers, 71, 3, 2019, 733- 755. (With J. Creedy).
  • 'The effects of penalty information on tax compliance: evidence from a New Zealand field experiment’. National Tax Journal, 71, 3, 2018, 547-588. (With M. Ratto).
  • 'Quality adjusting education sector productivity'. Policy Quarterly, 14, 3, 2018, 46-51. (With P. Nolan and G. Scobie).
  • 'Income dynamics, pro-poor mobility and poverty persistence curves'. Economic Record, 94, 306, 2018, 316-328. (With J. Creedy).
  • ‘Do local property taxes affect new building development? Results from a quasi-natural experiment in New Zealand’. Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 58, 2, 2019, 310-333. (With A Grimes and M Skidmore).
  • ‘Corporate taxation and productivity catch-up: evidence from European firms’, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 120, 2, 2018, 372-399. (With R. Kneller, D. McGowan, I. Sanz and J. Sanz-Sanz).
  • ‘Effective tax rates and the user cost of capital when interest rates are low’. Economics Letters, 156, 2017, 82-87. (With J. Creedy).
  • ‘Taxation and the user cost of capital’, Journal of Economic Surveys, 31, 1, 2017, 201-225. (With J. Creedy).
  • The distribution of income and fiscal incidence by age and gender: some evidence from New Zealand. Review of Income and Wealth, 62, 3, 2016, 534-558. (With O. Aziz and A. Laws).
  • ‘Does the composition of government expenditure matter for long-run GDP levels?’ Oxford Bulletin of Economics & Statistics, 78, 4, 2016, 522-547. (With R. Kneller and I. Sanz).
  • ‘The growth effects of tax rates in the OECD’, Canadian Journal of Economics, 47, 4, 2015, 1-39. (With R. Kneller and I. Sanz).
  • ‘Estimating the elasticity of taxable income in New Zealand’, Economic Record, 91, 292, 2015, 54-78. (With S. Carey, J. Creedy and J. Teng).

Books and Book Chapters

  • 2012 Public spending and long-run growth in practice: concepts, tools, and evidence’, Chapter 2 in B. Moreno-Dodson (ed.) Is Fiscal Policy the Answer? A Developing Country Perspective, Washington, DC: World Bank. pp. 69-108. Available at scribd. (with Misch, F. and Moreno-Dodson, B.)
  • 2010 Modelling Corporation Tax Revenues. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, October 2010. pp. xiii + 267. (With J. Creedy)
  • 2010 Tax Reform in Open Economies. International and Country Perspectives. (Co-editor and contributor). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010. (With I. Claus, M. Harding and D. White)
  • 2006 Modelling Tax Revenue Growth, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, February 2006, pp. xiii + 225. (With J. Creedy)
  • 2000 Trade and Fiscal Adjustment in Africa. (Co-editor and contributor). London: Macmillan, March 2000. pp. xii + 285. (With D. Bevan, P. Collier and D. Greenaway)
  • 1997 Taxing and Spending Dilemmas. London: Social Market Foundation. pp. 71
  • 1993 Public Sector Growth: Theories and International Evidence. (Editor and Contributor). Aldershot: Edward Elgar, April 1993. pp. xii + 261
  • 1987 Surveys in Development Economics. (Editor and contributor). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. xvii + 376. (Paperback edition, 1989; translated into Indonesian, 1992)
  • 1986 Structural Change and Economic Development. The Role of the Service Sector. London: Macmillan. pp. xii + 216

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