Commentary: issues in ‘economic transformation’

Abstract

‘Economic transformation’ implies a desire to effect significant change in the form or character of the economy. I have lived through several economic transformations, and policies designed to transform the economy, in New Zealand. The most significant transformation was probably the large-scale transfer of manpower and other resources after 1939 from peacetime production to military purposes and the provision of food for armed forces in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific, and then the return to a very regulated, insulated and corporatised economy, highly dependent on resuming the sale of pastoral commodities to what remained for some years a reasonably assured and profitable market in the United Kingdom. This facilitated the pursuit of policies giving priority to full employment, import substitution, the maintenance of ‘fair shares’ among the dominant interest groups and the improvement of health, education and welfare.