Listener 19 October 2002.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History;
It is easy to argue that US policy on Iraq is driven by its oil interests, especially since its president is from a Texan oil family who has surrounded himself with Texan oilmen. Thus the clever email about how the ‘Seven Sisters’ – the world’s great oil companies – are determining US policy which accompanies this column. If only it were so simple.
In Stormy Seas sets out the theory and context (November 1997)
How New Zealand Grows: Some Propositions VERSION 3: Updated 9 December. Original 17 October. The following propositions largely reflect my research program on the New Zealand economy. It is summarised in my In Stormy Seas. Page numbers in square brackets refer to that book. There is additional material in the areas of globalisation, innovation, intra-industry…
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The base references is the book In Stormy Seas. (1997) An extract is Capital and Technological Change: Some International Comparisons.
In early 2004 I updated much of In Stormy Seas in a long paper The Development of the New Zealand Economy. There is also a short version of the paper.
A summary of the policies which flow on from the paper is Tractatus Developmentalis Economica. (October 2002)
Review of The Ends and Means of Welfare: Coping with Economic and Social Change in Australia by Peter Saunders (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Listener 12 October, 2002.
Keywords: Social Policy;
The dispute over the economic reforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s involved two distinct questions. The first was whether they would work. As it happened our reforms were so incompetently managed that their economics failed miserably. But second, had they succeeded, would New Zealanders have liked their outcomes? Similar reforms in Australia, implemented with less ideological fervour and more common sense, resulted in their economy growing slightly faster than the OECD. Had the New Zealand economy succeeded from 1987 like Australian one, it would have grown 1.3 percent a year faster, and it would be in the top 10 of OECD economies.
This is not complete. Use the search facility. The list has only major references to the individuals named.
A Listener Sequence
This note prepared in the first week of October 2002. Since then I have published the following columns on the state of the world economy:
The Bubble Bursts: A “Millennium Depression”? (2 November 2002)
Deflating News: Just How Sick is the World Economy? (28 June 2003)
Recovery and Deficit: Where is the US Economy Going? (February 2004)
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
Towards the end of the 1990s I became increasingly concerned that the US boom was not only unsustainable, but the reversal would lead to a severe recession or even a depression. In the early 2000, I wrote in a column Self -interest Rates (27 May 2000) which said
With hindsight it reads as a bon mot, but it was almost certainly a careful – if gloomy – judgement following a trip overseas. The following is a commentary on the Listener columns which addressed the world economy since then. It was written in preparation for my planned column of 2 November 2002, probably entitled Will There Be Another World Depression?.
Listener 5 October, 2002.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
Thirty odd years ago a Banks Peninsular farmer noticed a ewe who produced 33 lambs in 11 years. Subsequently A281, as she became inelegantly called, was handed over to the Invermay branch of what is now AgResearch, one of the Crown Research Institutes. Painstaking research by a team of New Zealand scientists determined A281 had a gene on her X chromosome which caused high fertility. But it was not until the late 1990s (with help of a Finnish scientist) they identified BMP15, usually called the ‘Inverdale’ gene, which differs from the standard gene by one neutral protein sequence being replaced by an acid protein in the DNA.