Monthly Archives: January 2004

1999 and All That

This entry was posted in Listener, Political Economy & History on by .

Strange as it seems, Helen Clark and Michael Cullen may be revolutionaries.
Listener: 24 January, 2004.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

The standard New Zealand histories cite 1890, with the election of the first Liberal government, and 1935, with the first Labour government, as years of “revolution” –– albeit constitutional and evolving ones –– when the economy and society took on a new direction. So much so that the Reform government came to power in 1912 and the National government in 1949 primarily as consolidators rather than reversers.

Will You Look at That

This entry was posted in Listener, Political Economy & History, Portraits on by .

Fact: New Zealand has a national portrait gallery. Not many people know that.
Listener: 17 January, 2004.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

You would hardly know that New Zealand has a national portrait gallery, hidden on the busy corner of Wellington’s Bowen St and Lambton Quay in the debating chamber used when Parliament House was being refurbished. The local bookseller tells me that he constantly has to point the way.

A Blooming Future: Are We Up to a Good Flower Show?

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Growth & Innovation on by .

Listener 10 January, 2004.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation;

The Netherlands produces annually about $9 billion of flowers and related products, of which it exports almost $8 billion (and imports and exports another billion). In contrast, New Zealand exports a paltry $70m. The difference is all the more astonishing because Michael Porter in The Competitive Advantage of Nations argues that the Dutch have no comparative advantage in the growing of flowers. Rather, they have built up a technological excellence and maintain a quality edge at the forefront of world production and distribution.

Towards an Analytic Framework for Globalisation

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on by .

The Political Economy of the Diminishing Tyranny of Distance.

Accepted for publication by The Journal of Economic and Social Policy (January 2004: the original version was submitted in September 2002).

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

Abstract Globalisation can be treated as a consequence of the falling costs of distance, and its problems as arising from different sorts of distances reducing at different rates. The paper is written from the perspective of Australasia, which has suffered more and benefited more from the ‘tyranny of distance’, and will be ultimately impacted more by its falling costs.[1]