With his ‘I have the right to do anything I wanna do. I’m the president of the United States.’ Donald Trump is echoing Louis XIV who may have said ‘L’état, ce’est moi’ – ‘I am the state.’* The founding fathers of the American constitution were mindful of the authoritarian streak in English royalty; some had…
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What are the economic and political implications if the New Zealand economy stagnates for five and more years? Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Morning Report that ‘We’ve got the worst recession* we have had in 30 years’. (Observe, he could have said ‘since the Rogernomics Stagnation which finished 30 years ago’, but some things may…
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A physician’s memoir describing a successful research program leads to pondering about research funding strategies. A few years back, I was, in effect, commissioned to review the development possibilities of a local biotech industry, especially one for creating new pharmaceuticals. At the time, it was fashionable in every regional plan – anywhere in the world…
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What can Econ101 tell us about Trump’s tariffs? Before reviewing the economics of tariffs as indirect taxes, here is a brief account of their constitutional role. In particular, in some jurisdictions, including New Zealand, taxes and therefore tariffs are the preserve of Parliament, not that of the executive or kings. England’s civil war is complicated…
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This was submitted to The Guardian for a regular column they were running. They never replied. This is about many small kindnesses to the elderly, rather than a single big one. For the record I am 82, suffer joint stiffness, walk slowly, have trouble with steps and use a stick. I first noticed the kindnesses…
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The Government’s Growth Strategy Seems to Have Little Analytic Content. In 1990, the Prime Minister, Geoffrey Palmer, announced that he would halve unemployment – its rate was then more than 7 percent of the labour force. An OIA request turned up no technical papers. Apparently, the PM’s political advisers – jock wankers/politicos – thought the…
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This Review was submitted to NZIR but proved to be outside the criteria for reviews. The writing was completed in August 2025 and has not been update for the turmoil caused by the Iran war. The Size of Nations by Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore (2003: MIT Press) Economists tend to assume that the political…
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Angus Deaton’s Economics in America challenges the direction that economics has taken. In 2015 Angus Deaton was the sole awardee of the Bank of Sweden’s Prize in Honour of Alfred Nobel, for his contributions in the study of ‘consumption, poverty and welfare’. (It has been relatively rare for this Nobel to recognise poverty or welfare;…
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Winning office is not the same as achieving change. A recent Economist columnist divided politicians and their political advisers into either ‘jock wankers’ or ‘nerd wankers’. It’s a distinction which I use here, but with the less pejorative ‘politicos’ and ‘policy wonks’. In opposition, the politicos are primarily concerned with getting their party elected; in…
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Why is the British Labour Government penalising its poor? We have the spectacle of the Starmer-led British Labour Government taking measures which are making some of the most struggling Brits worse off. It has got to the point where Labour’s parliamentary backbench is revolting and the government has had to make partial concessions – the…
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We should not assume that all adopted innovations are progressive. Jonathon Haidt’s ‘The Anxious Generation’ illustrates that sometimes they require social measures to enhance well being. The Anxious Generation is a book which probably everyone engaging with adolescents should read. Haidt’s thesis is that smartphones replacing flip phones led to a marked deterioration in the…
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What can you do when you have hit your borrowing limit and still want to spend? One option is to cut back on maintenance of your capital – say, to delay repainting the house or keeping the car in tip-top condition. The government does the same. Hence our three water systems leaking, polluting and flooding;…
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Why Government borrowing is limited This column started out to explain how the proposed structural outsourcing of public surgery was partly a consequence of the peculiarities of our fiscal borrowing practices. In summary, the restriction on the government’s debt level means seeking indirect ways to provide the required capital. One way of doing this is…
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Trump may be accelerating the decline of US power. In the 2004 film Downfall (Der Untergang), which portrays Hitler’s last days in a Berlin bunker, he says that if the German people are weak they deserve death. It is a view from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that conflicts are won by those with the…
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Circulated to colleagues The Minister of Health has announced that he expects Health New Zealand to take out ten-year contracts with private health providers to deliver surgery. This is structural outsourcing; it is a form of privatisation (although, no doubt the minister would deny this claim). Whether such long-term outsourcing is efficient is a complicated…
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The Government’s plans to remove the wellbeing provisions in the Public Finance Act represents a reversal of the way society is travelling. I welcomed the Ardern-Robertson’s Government decision to focus on wellbeing in its budgets. It went on to amend the Public Finance Act to require the government to state the wellbeing objectives that will…
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ACT ‘s neoliberals are still trying to sneak in a change to the constitution. When ACT – the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers – was formed, its then party leader, Roger Douglas, with an optimistic exaggeration which marked his time as Minister of Finance, announced that he was sure it would get more than 50%…
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This is a note I circulated to some colleagues. I have pondered whether I should write a book on economic inequality in New Zealand following the research over the last six decades. The difficulty is that there is no market for such a book. Sure, there is a thriving market for popular books on inequality…
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Monopsonies – dominant purchasers – need to be restrained as much as monopolies – dominant sellers. That is what pay equity is about. This column is not about you-know-who. There are many other political bullies offshore; sometimes there are local ones, as when a politician attacks a group which cannot defend itself or a cabinet…
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This is work in progress. Hence the informal presentation. Secular Stagnation Sometime, 20-odd years back, Larry Summers alerted us to the possibility that the growth rate of affluent economies was slowing down – it was even possible it was zero for all practical purposes. Robert Gordon was another growth pessimist. Their analyses were interesting but…
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