Pets are an important part of many peoples’ lives, and provide mental, physical and emotional benefits. However, the costs of pet ownership have received little attention. Overall, we find that pet ownership decreases wage income for some and that these negative effects are larger for groups where mobility effects are likely higher (renters).

In this paper, we develop a simple model of water consumption which depends on the perceptions of water scarcity and the perceptions of whether water scarcity is an issue. Using geographic information systems (GIS) viewshed analysis, we model whether properties in Tauranga, New Zealand, have views of lakes and the coast. We then use these variables in an SA1 unit fixed effects model of water consumption. We find that views of lakes are associated with higher water consumption and views of the coast are associated with lower water consumption.

In this article, we review where, and how, researchers tend to incorporate natural resources and natural capital into growth theory. We then outline areas and questions that remain unanswered, including how novel impact investing and the eroding trade-off between GDP and the environment affect growth theory.

Operating profit margin (OPM) is a well-supported and easily interpretable parameter from the DuPont framework for understanding firm performance. It has not been widely applied in the dairy industry, despite its role in driving profitability, resilience and debt serviceability in low subsidy export-oriented farming systems. We analyse the drivers of OPM in depth for the first time on New Zealand dairy farms.