RACE RELATIONS AND THE ECONOMY

The 2008 Michael King Memorial Lecture, University of Otago, 9 October 2008. [1]
  
Keywords: Maori; Political Economy & History;
 
Michael King and I were students together. It would not be true to say we were close friends afterwards – for we lived in different parts of New Zealand and worked in different areas. But it was [...]

9th October 2008 | Comments Closed

DR SUTCH’S SECURITY FILES

What does his biographer think?
An elaborated version of the article published in “The New Zealand Herald”, 7 June 2008.  

Keywords: Political Economy & History;  
I had already seen the just-released security file Dr Sutch. Preparing the entry for William Ball Sutch in The New Zealand Dictionary of Biography I approached the NZ Security Intelligence Service. [...]

7th June 2008 | Comments Closed

WILLIAM BALL SUTCH (1907-1975)

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;
     
Biographical Essays 
(October 2000) Entry in The New Zealand Dictionary of Biography
(November 2001) Entry in   Chapter 7 – early life to 1950 and  Chapter 10 – later life from 1951 of The Nationbuilders  (September 1998) Trying to Understand Dr Sutch
(December 2001) Sutch and UNICEF
  The analysis which Sutch [...]

3rd June 2008 | Comments Closed

A NEW ECONOMIC HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND: SOME ISSUES

The author has been awarded a 2007 Claude McCarthy Fellowship to develop a new economic history of New Zealand. This paper raises some issues.
 
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
 
General Histories of New Zealand
 
New Zealand general histories tend to ignore the economy and its implications for the evolution of New Zealand. One example will illustrate the point.
 
Keith [...]

12th February 2007 | Comments Closed

NOBEL ENTERPRISE

Tiny Loans Are Making A Huge Difference for Some of the World’s Poorest Peoples

Listener: 6 January, 2007.

Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Macroeconomics & Money;

The Nobel Memorial Prize in economics was founded by the Bank of Sweden in 1979. Economists have only been tangentially involved in Alfred Nobel’s much older awards for achievements which [...]

6th January 2007 | Comments Closed

LAND OF GIANTS

New Zealand’s nationbuilders aren’t just figures from the distant past. 
 
Listener: 16 December, 2006. 
 
Keywords: Political Economy & History; 
 
Many myths portray one’s ancestors as giants, titans beside whom their descendants, including the myth-tellers, are tiny. Did I fall into that trap in my book The Nationbuilders, about New Zealanders who shaped modern New Zealand from 1932 to [...]

16th December 2006 | Comments Closed

WHAT MIGHT NEW ZEALAND’S ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION MEAN?

Speech to the Auckland University of Technology Residential Course on Regional Development, Tatum Park, Levin, May 30. The author is an adjunct professor of the Institute for Public Policy at AUT.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation;

Tonight I am going to talk about what New Zealand’s Economic Transformation might look like, and some of the things which need to happen in order to accomplish it. However, I need to begin with two caveats.

30th May 2006 | Comments Closed

SOME NATIONBUILDING ECONOMISTS

Paper to The History of New Zealand Economics Session at the June 2005 conference of the New Zealand Economist’s Association.

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;

In the course of describing the evolution of the New Zealand political economy between 1932 and 1984, my book, The Nationbuilders, highlighted four economists: Bernard Ashwin, Bill Sutch, Bryan Philpott and Henry Lang. This paper looks at those economists from the earlier phase of the period, thereby leaving Philpott and Lang and others for a later assessment. By focussing on the period in which economics first became important in the New Zealand policy process, it adds to the first two a number of other economists: particularly Horace Belshaw, Dick Campbell, Douglas Copland, and James Hight.

30th June 2005 | Comments Closed

PARADIGMS OF NEW ZEALAND ECONOMIC GROWTH: A MEMOIR (PART I)

This paper was written in august 2004, for no particular purpose other than to clarify my own ideas.
Part II

Keywords: Growth & Innovation; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;

Either this kind of aggregate economics appeals or it doesn’t. Personally I belong to both schools. Robert Solow (1957)

To 1974: The Aggregate Supply-side Paradigm
The Crucial Experiment of 1974
1975 to 1981
1981 to 1986
The Grand Policy Break and Economic Modelling
The Intervention and Allocation Debate
Leaving the Institute
1986 to 1997
International Comparisons
Bryan Philpott
The Economy After 1985
Looking for the Recovery

Paradigms of New Zealand Economic Growth: A Memoir II
The Double Step Chart
After 1997
Back to Econometric Estimation
Characterising Economic Growth
Standard Growth
Turbo-growth
The Effect of Shocks
Paradigm Conflict

26th August 2004 | Comments Closed

LEADERSHIP AND NATIONBUILDING

Revised version of a paper presented at a conference, July 2004.
Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Introduction

The Nationbuilders described a particular phase in New Zealand’s economic and political history, between 1932 when Gordon Coates became Minister of Finance and the election of the Labour Government in 1984. It follows a group of (mainly) men embarking upon a strategy of developing an independent nation with its own economy and culture but engaging with the rest of the world. The story is told through their biographies, but it could have been told through historical sequence or policy themes, or with more biographies had there been the space.

15th July 2004 | Comments Closed
« Older Entries