With the IMF, World Bank, OECD, and other right-wing think institutions on

the list of organisations that support neoliberalism, New Zealand briefly held
the top spot.

New Zealand's economic growth, however, has been quite modest. It has
succeeded, according to a number of economic indicators. Despite having
implemented reforms for 15 years and practically achieving all of the criteria
made by economists, New Zealand has just lately stopped falling short of
the OECD average in terms of GDP per capita PPPs. There was a
protracted period of stagnation between the late 1980s and the early 1990s.
It has also been fortunate in that the times of considerable economic
expansion in the middle of the 1990s and the early 2000s coincided with
high prices for the agricultural export commodities that still account for the
majority of its export revenues today, just as they did before 1984.

New Zealand has done quite poorly in terms of economic growth when
compared to its close neighbour Australia, whose economy was liberalised
more gradually and less dogmatically, and whose people was informed and
involved in the reforms. Other nations, including Ireland and the
Netherlands, have performed significantly better than New Zealand despite
not necessarily adhering to the assumptions of neoclassical economics. A
number of policy settings have received minor alterations as a result of the
Labour-Alliance government's reservations with various aspects of the
reforms, which were voiced after the 1999 election. The reforms have
resulted in a number of societal changes, including the rise in income
disparities, the formation of an individualism similar to that in the US, and
the degradation of egalitarian principles.