Amy Cruickshank

Government Policy Toward Giving in New Zealand

Supervisors: Associate Professor Peer Skov (AUT) & Professor John Creedy

Profile

Amy Cruickshank is a PhD student in Taxation with the School of Accounting and Commercial Law. Her research assesses government financial support for the charitable sector.

Governments over the years have promoted the philanthropic sector as a way of leveraging private funding to support social objectives. In the New Zealand case, the sum total of government financial support for the charitable sector is in the billions of dollars each year, through tax incentives and direct funding. Assessing the efficiency of this financial support therefore raises important public policy questions.

These questions have generated significant interest in the international economics literature, but many remain unanswered, and they have also received limited attention from economic researchers in New Zealand. Amy’s research aims to fill this gap and inform the design of public policy in this field. Amy’s research is by distance learning and supervised by Dr Peer Skov (AUT) and Professor John Creedy (VUW).

Amy has 15+ years’ experience as an economist working on public policy. She is currently Manager – Economic Advisory at the Abu Dhabi Department of Finance in the UAE and was previously a Senior Economist with the New Zealand Treasury.

Qualifications:

Master of Commerce in Economics, University of Auckland

Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Women’s Studies, Victoria University of Wellington

Bachelor of Commerce and Administration in Economics, Victoria University of Wellington

Selected Previous Research:

Cruickshank, A. (2023) “Survey of Charitable Giving in New Zealand", Chair in Public Finance Working Paper 03/2023, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, September 2023.

Cruickshank, A. (2022) “Elasticity of reported donations: Bunching evidence from New Zealand”, Chair in Public Finance Working Paper 21/2022, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, December 2022.