What are the possibilities for the future housing prices? What can we do? Two eminent but retired Reserve Bankers, Don Brash and Arthur Grimes, have argued that house prices should halve. I am not sure whether they actually mean it or are just vividly pointing out that house prices are about double the sustainable level….
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For launch at Ekor Bookshop and Café, Wellington; 25 August 2016. I have just received the following email. It is from William Henry Hayes. The email address is ‘underworld’. I tried to reply but the lines are clogged by politicians getting advice. It reads Another buccaneer by the name of Voltaire – I…
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As the proposed Ministry of Vulnerable Children shows, we do not take prevention seriously. In 1920, someone wrote in the Maoriland Worker, ‘The politician is like the person who would build an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, instead of constructing a good fence at the top.’ The image seems to have been coined in a…
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A Professor of Education challenges universities about their purpose. What are universities really for? was the topic of a recent lecture by Hugh Lauder, professor of Education and Political Economy at the University of Bath (previously on the Canterbury and VUW faculties). His answer may not be what you think; this is an economist’s response. New Zealand…
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N Z Med J . 2016 Aug 19;129(1440):72-83. A detailed version of paper. With, Larry Burd, Jürgen Rehm, Svetlana Popova Abstract Aim: To estimate the productivity losses due to morbidity and premature mortality of individuals with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) in New Zealand (NZ). Methods: A demographic approach with a counterfactual scenario in which nobody in NZ…
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AUT Briefing Papers August 18, 2016 While housing obviously fills a need – people need somewhere to live – it also has an investment aspect. How this investment is treated by the tax system influences the housing market, and the investment available for other purposes, such as business ventures. There is an implicit tax-subsidy to…
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Brian Easton, Larry Burd, Jürgen Rehm, and Svetlana Popova Abstract Aim To estimate the productivity losses due to morbidity and premature mortality of individuals with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) in New Zealand (NZ). Methods A demographic approach with a counterfactual scenario in which nobody in NZ is born with FASD was used. Estimates were…
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A Professor of Education challenges universities about their purpose. What are universities really for? was the topic of a recent lecture by Hugh Lauder, professor of Education and Political Economy at the University of Bath (previously on the Canterbury and VUW faculties). His answer may not be what you think; this is an economist’s response. New Zealand…
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Free movement of labour is often described as one of the four fundamental economic freedoms. Putting it into practice is somewhat more difficult. To make the intentions of this column clear, I am generally in favour of migration. I am a descendant of immigrants and live in a country in which virtually everyone admits to…
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Our nearest neighbour, New Caledonia, has a very different political economy. Will it vote for full independence from France in 2018 – also leaving the European Union? New Zealand shares a continent with the European Union. Admittedly 93 percent of Zealandia is submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean but at its most north-western are the islands…
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In too many areas the government is avoiding taking policy decisions. When it has to its panic measures are knee-jerk and quick-fix. Just nine years ago, John Key, then leader of the opposition, spoke to the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Contractors Federation about housing affordability which he described then as a ‘crisis reached…
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The Reserve Bank cannot deliver affordable housing by itself. Its actions have to be coordinated with the government’s. Unfortunately the monetarist framework of the Reserve Bank Act obscures this. The tensions between the Reserve Bank and the Government over housing policy go back to the mistaken economic thinking in the 1989 Reserve Bank Act. Monetarism…
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Too much of pop-economics is misleading to the point close to being lying. No wonder there is a widespread rejection of it by the populace. Journalists and other populisers get away with an economics which does not quite lie, but is often very misleading. This applies to Brexit, but let’s start off with the TPPA…
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Punitive public policy too often ignores its impact on the children involved. My last column described how the punitive measures we had for dealing with debtors were only abolished in 1989. Yet others continue to suffer from oppressive legislation – if they are low enough in social ranking. I was reminded of this by a…
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The economics of information shows that whatever happens, the solution our ailing newspapers to the digital revolution will not be a perfect one. An important notion in economic analysis is of a ‘public good’ (which may be a service). Not THE public good (a.k.a. the ‘common good’), which is shared and beneficial for all or…
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Nineteenth-century migrants may have come here to escape oppressive laws, but the laws migrated too. It was late in the twentieth century that we abolished one of the most oppressive ones. Our origins are less humane than we like to pretend. Wilkens Micawber was incarcerated in a debtors’ prison. It is said that he is…
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It is unclear why anyone is voting for Britain leaving the EU nor, in many cases, why they are voting for remain. What are the possible alternatives? How is Britain or New Zealand to function in an increasingly globalised world. As I put up this column, the Brits are about to vote on Brexit –…
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AUT Briefing Papers May 30, 2016 Despite the public’s desire for more government spending there has been little increase in the aggregate level of government spending relative to GDP over the last 20 years. There was a slight rise immediately after the GFC, because GDP stagnated. Government spending as a percent of GDP is now lower that…
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A major preoccupation of the budget was preparing for the next major financial crisis. To do so it is reducing government spending relative to GDP. Where do tax cuts fit in? Our politics reminds me those weekly serial movies where each week the heroine ends in an impossible situation but next week she miraculously escapes…
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The government has let the housing market deteriorate with measures which are insufficient, late and ineffective. As a first step we need to identify the underlying problems. The Prime Minister’s announcement that there is nothing new about homelessness is both an example of his strengths in reassuring the public that there is never really a…
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