The state Advances Corporation of New Zealand: the evolution of two policies

Abstract

First of all I must express my own sense of the inadequacy of this study; I am very conscious of the thinness of the treatment given to many aspects of the two policies covered. The scope of an M.A. thesis must, however, be limited. Even if many of the points covered raise far more questions than they answer, I hope that some contribution has been made to the study of New Zealand government institutions. The thesis was originally intended to be a study of a governmental organisation, whose status is halfway between that of an ordinary government department and of independent government owned corporations such as the National Airways Corporation. The study quickly transformed itself, however, into an examination of the development of two contrasting sets of policies administered by the State Advances Corporation. Preliminary work led to an impression that state housing policy was considerably less effective than rural lending policy. Because of this, this thesis examines the two questions: (1) Is the Corporation's rural lending policy more effective than its state rental housing policy? (2) If so, why?