Introduction to Telling Stories: Janice Gill Keywords: Literature and Culture; A good way into seeing Janice Gill’s paintings is to begin with Real, Real Unreal (101). Superficially it is about an art opening (at, as it happens, Galerie Legarde – later the Brooker Gallery – in Kelburn). Across the back of the galley are identifiable…
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This paper was prepared in October 2009 for the Law Commission when it was reviewing alcohol policy. It is released under the Official Information Act. Keywords: Health; Regulation & Taxation Terms of Reference The Law Commission has asked for a report describing how a minimum price regime for alcoholic beverages might be implemented, and what…
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Paper to the ‘Funding in the Health Sector Conference’: 28 September, 2009 Keywords: Health; Why is health funding a problem? The easy answer – the answer popular in the public policy debate – is to talk about the size of the health services sector, the proportion which is publically funded, especially in a…
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Paper to the Skeptics Society – 26 September, 2009 Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Today I want to reflect on the extent to which economics is a science and the extent to which it is not. In doing this I come from the approach of someone who was trained a scientist, who…
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Spending on health care is rising rapidly – but there’s one thing we could do. Listener: 26 September, 2009. Keywords: Health; We are told that the health-care sector is a drag on the economy. It is growing faster than the economy as a whole and is chewing up a fifth of core…
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Notes for Seminar 22 September, 2009. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation; While there is much talk about New Zealand catching up with Australia in per capita GDP terms there is not a lot of careful economic analysis. The accompanying graph shows the record over the last forty odd years. In 1967…
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If nothing is done, our credit rating will be downgraded and interest rates will rise. Listener: 12 September, 2009. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; When the economy plunged in 1975 as a result of the first international oil shock, the Labour Government increased public borrowing. But when the world economy recovered, the New…
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Letter to National Business Review, 11 September, 2009 Keywords: Health; Dear Editor, In his profile of me (4 September 2009), John Bishop compares my estimate of the cost of alcohol misuse ($16.1b) with that of the BERL estimate ($5.3b). Aside that they are for different years, and in different prices, they are not comparable because…
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This is the draft of a paper for 2009 Conference of the New Zealand Statistical Association, 3 September 2009. The presentation was a PowerPoint based on it. It is part of a study of the impact of drinking by associates undertaken by the Centre for Social and Health Outcomes, Research and Evaluation (SHORE), Massey University….
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This is the draft of a paper for 2009 Conference of the New Zealand Statistical Association, 3 September 2009. The presentation was a PowerPoint based on it. It is part of a study of the impact of drinking by associates undertaken by the Centre for Social and Health Outcomes, Research and Evaluation (SHORE), Massey University….
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3 September, 2009 at the NZIER AGM Citation Keywords: Miscellaneous; I am deeply touched and honoured to be awarded this generous prize, and embarrassed by the even greater generosity of the accompanying citation. Normally it would be a time to mention all those who have mentored and supported me over the…
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Citation of Award made on 3 September, 2009 at the NZIER AGM Keywords: Miscellaneous; The NZIER Economic Award’s Operating Guidelines enjoin the Awarding Panel to “look for outstanding contributions to the advancement of economics and its applications in New Zealand”. To qualify for the Award, a contribution “must advance economic matters of direct…
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Societies with great inequality are more prone to poor health, social hostility and crime. Listener: 29 August, 2009. Keywords: Distributional Economics; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; When I was working on the problems of inequality and poverty in the 1970s, my colleagues joked I was a social economist, even if they spent more time…
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Unfortunately, there’s no magic bus to accelerate us to Australian levels of income. Listener: 15 August, 2009. Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Sometime in the 1960s, New Zealand economic growth went through a “climacteric”, a point when the growth rate started slowing down. Think of it like driving your car up a hill. Once it starts…
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Political Review July /August 1996. An earlier version was published as ‘Of Dogma and Dealers’. Electronic Journal of Organisational Theory
Keywords: Business & Finance; Political Economy & History;
It is sometimes hard to recognise the New Zealand which the enthusiasts for the recent reforms portray.
Speech to Launch the Report “New Insights into the Experienced Generation” for the Hope Foundation, 30 July 2009 Keywords: Social Policy; Statistics; This report represents a further step to our understanding of ourselves as a society. Only a few decades ago we treated all New Zealanders as the same, with the implicit assumption…
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There are at least three good reasons that the restructuring of our largest city will fail. Listener: 25 July, 2009. Keywords: Governance; Growth & Innovation; Author Bruce Jesson once said New Zealand was a “hollow society”. He meant that although we had a central government and individuals, the social institutions between them…
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Sea of Faith Conference: 18 July, 2009. Auckland Paul, Timothy Money and the Economy discusses the same biblical text, but in terms as to what it reveals about Paul’s views of the economy. Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; I thought good context for today’s paper would be a biblical text…
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Tax, Saving Welfare and Retirement: Have We Lost our Way? Symposium, Retirement Policy and Research Centre, University of Auckland, 16 July, 2009 Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Maynard Keynes Keywords: Distributional Economics; History of Ideas, Methodology &…
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Paper for Towards a Value Driven Public Sector Summit, 15 July, 2009. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy; Before talking about the fiscal imperatives in the narrow sense, I want to make a couple of general remarks about the rhetoric of policy. . The first is that the need…
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