This is just some notes. The point of the trip was to study India and write five ‘Listener’ columns. They are drafted and will be published from January to May 2011. Keywords: Political Economy & History; Saturday 6 – Monday 8: Flew into Chennai (Madras) from Singapore. You cant fly direct from New Zealand, bother…
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With the economy more sluggish than predicted, could we be in a long recession? Listener: 30 October, 2010. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; That another long recession started in 2007 can’t be ruled out. In more than a third of the past 150 years, our economy – measured as gross domestic product per person – has…
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The country is weighed down by a mountain of foreign debt and ownership. Listener: 16 October, 2010. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; In the decade to March 2009, about $340 billion was invested in New Zealand. Of that, about $205 billion was spent on replacing old assets, leaving $135 billion for new ones. Whether this was…
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Annual Conference of the Fair Trade Movement; 9 October 2010. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Economists have spent over two hundred years thinking about how markets work. They have concluded they are not fair but in general they are effective. You get a sense of this by looking at the growth of the world economy over…
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This series of “Listener” columns were an occasional series that arose out of a trip funded by the 2009 NZIER-NBR Economist of the Year Award. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History; Engaging China: http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1220 (26 June 2010) Will China Rule the World? http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1247 (24 July, 2010) China or Bust: http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1257 (7 August, 2010)…
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Lessons in how to use an economic surplus. Listener: 2 October, 2010. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History; More than one tourist has asked how much it cost to build Beijing’s Forbidden City, a complex of 980 surviving buildings covering three-quarters of a hectare. Better to ignore the monetary cost and think about…
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