Perhaps the state of the economy is not as sound as we are being told. There was an odd little story over the 2025 Budget, hardly worth relating except that it tells something about budget politics. The original invitations to the lockdown, the meeting which gives a preview of the budget to the media so…
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While many of the world’s Christian religions seem preoccupied with personal issues that Jesus, their founder, barely touched upon, they must engage with economic issues too. Robert Prevost, chose the name Leo on becoming the 267th Bishop of Rome – the Pope – in homage to Leo XIII (in office 1878-1903) who issued the 1891…
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A note prepared for some colleagues As its subtitle says, the Treasury’s 2025 Long-term Insights Briefing: Sustainable and resilient fiscal policy through economic shocks and cycles focuses on economic shocks and cycles. This commentary takes a slightly different point of view because it includes all shocks to the economy, not just economic ones. Among the…
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Should we pursue a ‘Golden Rule’ where any public borrowing for consumption is temporary? This columnist is a fiscal conservative who is cautious about government borrowing for public consumption. I was not originally. The Keynesian model I first studied said borrow as much as is necessary to sustain demand. But the model was of a…
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Post 8 May 2025 Dr Alan Gray’s achievements were never officially recognised by any royal honour or honorary doctorate. Extraordinary really, given the length and weight of his list of achievements. They include being central to the establishment and administration of two palliative care units: Mary Potter Hospice in Wellington and the King Faisal Specialist…
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This note is work in progress which I circulated to some colleagues. This paper is about the importance of culture in the healthcare system. It argues that the changes to it should focus on enhancing a patient-centred approach by paying more attention to the culture of the medical professions. Without doing so, the changes in…
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A major American study suggests they are not This column is about the white working class. In the US 2024 elections they mainly voted for Donald Trump. Had they voted with the white middle class, Trump would have lost the election with only 42 percent of voters instead of the 50 percent he actually won….
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This note is work in progress which I circulated to some colleagues. One of the management learnings from the 1970s and 1980s is that if managers were given multiple objectives they pursued none of them well. They are likely to prioritise some objectives over others even though they may not be the most important to…
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The budget runup is far from easy. Budget 2025 day is Thursday 22 May. About a month earlier in a normal year, the macroeconomic forecasts would be completed (the fiscal ones would still be tidying up) and the main policy decisions would have been made (but there would still be a lot of policy detail…
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Four eighty-year-old books which are still vitally relevant today. Between 1942 and 1945, four refugees from Vienna each published a ground-breaking – seminal – book.* They left their country after Austria was taken over by fascists in 1934 and by Nazi Germany in 1938. Previously they had lived in ‘Red Vienna’; ruled by Social Democratic…
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A distinguished economist on the tensions of centralisation Newsroom. 16 April, 2025. It was not originally envisaged that the government of New Zealand would be highly centralised. The Colonial Secretary’s instructions to Hobson are about a minimalist state. That explains the provisions in Te Tiriti o Waitangi which allocate ‘kawantanga’ to the Crown and ‘rangatiratanga’…
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Neville Gibson ‘Will Labour’s failure condemn the future, book questions’, NBR, 29 Sep 2024.
A modest attempt to analyse Donald Trump’s tariff policies. Alfred Marshall, whose textbook was still in use 40 years after he died wrote ‘every short statement about economics is misleading with the possible exception of my present one.’ (The text book is 719 pages.) It’s a timely reminder that any short analysis of Trump’s tariff…
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This was offered to a media outlet but they chose another piece. Based on the Epilogue of ‘In Open Seas’. Because New Zealand is very centralised, its central government has considerable influence over the public discussion. Thus, a change of government, as happened in 2023, may change greatly the tone and even direction of cultural…
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While there have been decades of complaints – from all sides – about the workings of the Resource Management Act (RMA), replacing is proving difficult. The Coalition Government is making another attempt. To help answer the question, I am going to use the economic lens of the Coase Theorem, set out by Ronald Coase who…
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New Zealand’s economic development has always been a partnership between the public and private sectors. Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) have become fashionable again, partly because of the government’s ambitions to accelerate infrastructural development. There is, of course, an ideological element too, while some of the opposition to them is also ideological. PPPs come in so many different…
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It is said that economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. That may be an exaggeration, but an even better response is to point out economists do know the difference. They did not at first. Classical economics thought that the price of something reflected the objective cost of producing it –…
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Published by AHAA (Apologies for the tabulation presentations.) Introduction By way of background, doing some unrelated work I came across some international data on the healthcare sector which seemed to contradict my, and the conventional wisdom’s, view of the healthcare sector. Broadly, it is that the sector has been underfunded. That is not what the…
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By international standards the New Zealand healthcare system appears satisfactory – certainly no worse generally than average. Yet it is undergoing another redisorganisation. While doing some unrelated work, I came across some international data on the healthcare sector which seemed to contradict my – and the conventional wisdom’s – view of the healthcare sector. Broadly,…
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Peter Frankopan’s The Earth Transformed: An Untold History is a compelling account of the interaction between humans and the environment. We would be unwise to ignore it. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Oxford professor of history Peter Frankopan was initially widely admired. But critics point out that the book exaggerated…
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