Accidents Will Happen

This entry was posted in Social Policy on 17th April 2004 by Brian Easton.

The ACC reforms for treatment injury should replace a culture of blame with a culture of safety.

Listener: 17 April, 2004.

Keywords: Social Policy;

A friend recovering from a serious operation was on two occasions offered medicine that was not prescribed and, once, a scan that was unnecessary. Suppose she had been unconscious, or lacked the character to know what was going on and say “no”. Whether the mistakes could have led to medical injury, I cannot tell. But they would have consumed scarce resources.

Currency Appreciation

This entry was posted in Listener, Macroeconomics & Money on 3rd April 2004 by Brian Easton.

Trying to make sense of a rising exchange rate.
Listener: 3 April, 2004.

Keywords: Macroeconomics and Money.

The conventional wisdom, like generals, fights the last war. Its complaints about the high exchange rate are from the perspective of the late 1980s. You may recall a few intrepid souls then arguing that the hike in the real exchange rate undermined the profitability of the tradeable sector, which generates foreign exchange by exporting or conserves it by import substitution. The weakened sector would slow overall economic growth, as happened. Meanwhile, the generals, fighting the earlier Muldoon war, ignored the exchange rate, completely failing to predict the poor economic performance.