Carefully designed changes to the electricity-generation industry could make it work better. Listener: 25 May, 2013 Keywords: Business & Finance; Regulation & Taxation; Discussions on what to do about electricity have been so political and self-interested that almost all the public economic analysis has been puerile. So let’s begin with some basics….
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Draft for discussion; this version completed 24 May 2103. Keywords: Political Economy & History; Social Policy; Statistics; This note disinters a result I found in the 1970s and subsequently buried in Income Distribution in New Zealand. Years later it may have some relevance to some puzzles I am working on about the changing…
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Presentation to the Ephesus Group, Wellington; 19 May, 2013. Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; I want to start a conversation which I hope will not end tonight. Instead I hope that many of you will go home and read the books on which the conversation is founded and continue it from…
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Our national airline no longer stops over there but New Zealanders should. Listener: 11 May, 2013 Keywords: Political Economy & History; The fall of Singapore in February 1942 signalled the end of the British Empire. It was not just that an Asian power had conquered one of its key outposts. Japan’s success…
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In the unlikely event of a bank collapse, a proposed new measure would help safeguard our savings. Listener: 27 April, 2013 Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Banks can fail. That is not the same as a run on a bank, in which depositors withdraw funds faster than the bank can liquidate its investments, even though it…
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Driving the state asset share floats is a government that is happy to subsidise business. Listener: 13 April, 2013 Keywords: Business & Finance; Why has the Government not made a case for its partial privatisation programme? The failure is a contrast to the privatisations of the late 1980s and early 1990s, although…
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Managers don’t always do what their shareholders want, which may explain the SkyCity deal oddities. Listener: 30 March , 2013. Keywords: Business & Finance; Governance; Richina Pacific has hardly reported to its shareholders since 2008, according to NZ Herald business columnist Brian Gaynor. By ignoring them, Richina Pacific gave no information to…
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This paper was presented to the Curtin Sarawak Research Institute at Curtin University, Sarawak (Miri campus), 22 March, 2013. (And earlier version was presented to a politics class at Victoria University of Wellington). The Power Points are available on request. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade I am going to talk about globalisation. I am not using…
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New technologies and light-handed regulation are a recipe for disaster. Listener: 16 March , 2013. Keywords: Business & Finance; Regulation & Taxation; The leaky-building debacle involved homes and commercial and public buildings being built with new technologies that the builders were not competent to use, coupled with weak supervision and regulation. The…
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The confidential details you provide in next month’s census forms will prove valuable. Listener: 2 March , 2013. Keywords: Statistics; On Tuesday, March 5, millions of New Zealanders will fill in census forms on behalf of themselves, their children and their dwellings. They will do so out of a civic duty, although…
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It is said social scientists don’t live dangerously, but here’s one who did. Listener: 16 February, 2013. Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History; Miraculously, all four Jewish schoolboys in the picture (which accompanied the column) taken in Berlin in about 1930 escaped the Holocaust, which killed…
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Sarah Miles: The Christchurch Fiasco: The Insurance Aftershock and its Implications for New Zealand and Beyond. Dunmore Publishing, 2012 ($37.99) New Zealand Books: Volume 23, No1, Issue 101, Autumn 2013. Keywords: Business & Finance; Political Economy & History; Given New Zealand’s reputation as ‘The Shaky Isles’, together with its accompanying history of…
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This index, first compiled in January 2013 and subsequently updated, is a list of article on the website which have a substantial content about earthquakes and other natural calamities. They were not a focus until the Canterbury Earthquakes, which I began writing about as “Listener” columns to illustrate general issues. However, they are acquiring a…
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A Government surplus means little when private sector borrowing is rampant. Listener: 30 January, 2013. A little complacency seems to have crept into the latest Government economic forecasts. In its December outlook, the Government promised to get its books into surplus in the 2014-15 year, the first time in seven years. It might just make…
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This is an extract from the first chapter of the history book I am writing. In early 1855 there was an earthquake in the centre of Cook Strait, thought to be of a magnitude of about 8.1-8.2, the largest in human memory. [1] (Maori elders said there was no record in their traditions of an…
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Young Labour Summer School; January 26, 2013 Today I want to talk about social democracy, especially its economic aspects. There are many who have narrowed down their vision of social democracy to social justice, including in international affairs. That is not the comprehensive heritage of social democracy, nor do social democrats have any special claims…
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The available text of Shakespeare?s Timon of Athens is a bit of a mess. It was all the compilers of the 1623 Folio edition of Shakespeare?s plays had when it was published, but it is almost certainly an early draft by its two playwrights (Thomas Middleton wrote about half of it), replete with inconsistencies that would have been dealt with when the play was staged. This may justify more freedom than modern directors regularly take with Shakespeare; the British National Theatre seized the opportunity last year with a stage production (right), also on film, located in London after the global financial crisis.
Writings on the Long Recession from October 2010 to December 2012 This is the third entry which summarises the Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath. The first index (www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1351) covered the period from August 2007 to March 2009 The trigger was in the US sub-prime market crisis in August 2007, about a year before the…
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The following is a list of the 2012 publications on my website. Some consultancy work and most of my writing on the history of New Zealand is not there. The publications are grouped into research topics (which means there is some doubling up) and are itemised in the order of publication. There is a a…
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During Rugby World Cup 2011, historian and editor of online encyclopedia Te Ara Jock Phillips searched for the “real New Zealand”. He trotted around museums and other earnest alternative exhibits, often rugby-related, reporting on what the non-rugby elite thought was important.