Author Archives: Brian Easton

The Globalisation Of Time

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Political Economy & History on by .

Paper for the Symposium “Institutions and Economic Development”, University of Otago, 18-19 March (Also draft of chapter for “Distance Looks Our Way”.)

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History;

Introduction

The Royal Society of New Zealand has awarded me a Marsden Grant to study globalisation. The ultimate output will be a book. This paper presents a draft of one of its chapters. Because it is a conference paper, it is necessary to say something about the context in which the chapter takes place. The study is based on five primary principles.

Yankee Dollar Blues: How Will the Us Correct Its External Deficit?

This entry was posted in Listener, Macroeconomics & Money on by .

Listener: 12 March, 2005.

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;

Underneath much of economics is the notion of “homeostasis”, the tendency to respond to an external shock by adjusting internally to maintain equilibrium. So a surge in demand for a product results in its price rising, reducing the amount demanded and increasing the amount supplied.

Medical Misadventures: Should Patients Be Compensated for Managerial Failure?

This entry was posted in Health, Listener, Social Policy on by .

Listener: 26 February, 2005.

Keywords: Health; Social Policy;

An earlier column Accidents Will Happen (April 17, 2004) commended the proposed change in the ACC compensation criteria from medical error (which involves fault) and medical mishap (with a rare and severe outcome) to the situation where unexpected treatment injury occurs. The column worried that the opportunities the new scheme promises for prevention might be overlooked. I gather the ACC is instituting a programme to improve the medical safety cultures of health professionals. Great. As the column concluded, the biggest gains from the reform may be that there will be less medical misadventure.

Serendipity in Museums

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation, Literature and Culture on by .

Fulbright New Zealand Quarterly Vol 11, no 1, February 2005, p. 3.

Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Literature and Culture;

A Fullbrighter cannot spend all his or her time reading, writing, attending lectures and formal occasions, and visiting people. My indulgence was to visit the museums and galleries which enrich such cities as Washington and Boston. Entirely for myself you understand, for there was no mention of them in my application to spend time in the US studying its economy in the context of globalisation. (Maybe the visiting is a compensation for childhood deprivation, when they closed the Canterbury Museum for what seemed an eternity.)

Taxing Alcoholic Beverages in New Zealand

This entry was posted in Health on by .

Revised Version of Paper for “Thinking Drinking: Achieving Cultural Change by 2020″, Melbourne, 21-23 February, 2005.

Keywords: Health; Regulation & Taxation;

I thought a useful contribution would be to describe the recent history of alcohol taxation in New Zealand, explaining the principles underlying the changes and discussing some unresolved issues.

Some Things We Know About Economic Globalisation

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Growth & Innovation on by .

Notes prepared for a meeting (February 2005).

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation;

My research is concerned with understanding the underlying process of globalisation., providing a foundation for policy and evaluation. But it is not policy focussed, nor does it aim to come to some simple conclusion about whether globalisation is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. To worry at this stage about such issues would be to damage the development of the understanding of the foundations.

Testing Economics:

This entry was posted in Education, History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Listener on by .

A Professional Economist Tackles the Controversial Seventh Form Economics Examination

Listener: 12 February, 2005.

Keywords: Education; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;

Intrigued by a row over some questions in the 2004 Level 3 (Seventh Form) NCEA economics exam, I obtained the paper. It is in four sections. The first two, “Understanding marginal analysis and the behaviour of firms” and “Understanding the market and allocative efficiency”, required the student’s mastery of some standard economic concepts.

Payback Time

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Listener on by .

The suggestion that rich nations should freeze debt repayments for hard-pressed countries has focussed attention on the ethics of international money lending.

Listener 5 February, 2004

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

As the world seeks to give a hand-up to the countries devastated by the Asian tsunami, and the finance ministers of the world’s seven most powerful economies (the G7) come together in London this week, debt is firmly back on the political agenda.

A Taxing Year: the Election Rhetoric Is Likely to Be About Taxation.

This entry was posted in Listener, Regulation & Taxation on by .

Listener: 30 January, 2005.

Keywords: Regulation & Taxation;

Some decades ago, the political Left retreated from its historic role of engaging with economics to provide a critique of the modern capitalist economy. Nowadays, insofar as it discusses the economy at all, other than in terms of nostalgia – things were better in the past – the focus is on redistribution: how the output of the economy should be shared. It is not an unimportant question, but it is not the whole of economics.

Free Beer Tomorrow

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation, Listener, Political Economy & History on by .

Yeah right. No wonder there is reform exhaustion.   Listener: 15 January, 2005.   Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Political Economy & History;    For 40-odd years, economic pundits have been telling us that our economic output is growing too slowly, and that we should adopt their policies to accelerate it. Sometimes we have, but before…
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in Defence Of Globalization: (review)

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on by .


by Jagdish Bhagwati (Oxford University Press, 308 pp. $72.95) ISBN 0-19-517024-3, reviewed in New Zealand International Review, January/February 2005, Vol XXX, No 1, p.31-32.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

The economics student struggling though the mind-numbing theory of international trade will eventually hit upon learned papers by Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati, whose contributions make him a candidate for an economics prize in honour of Alfred Nobel. They will soon learn that beyond his painstaking rigour he has a total commitment to free trade. So there was much glee among anti-globalisers when he rejected some aspects of globalisation. There may be less as a result of his latest book In Defence of Globalization.

Dull, Philistine and Conforming: How Have We Changed over the Years?

This entry was posted in Listener, Literature and Culture, Political Economy & History on by .

Listener: 1 January, 2005.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Returning after graduate studies at Oxford and war service in Europe, M K (Michael Kennedy) Joseph thought the New Zealand of the late 1940s and 1950s was dull, philistine and conforming. He famously expressed his reservations in “Secular Litany”, which begins:

The Right Stuff

This entry was posted in Listener, Political Economy & History on by .

Two books analysed the US presidential election outcome before it happened

Listener: 18 December

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Politically, Americans are not like the rest of us. Personally, they have been as courteous and hospitable to me visiting them as a Fulbright New Zealand scholar, as I expect New Zealanders to be to American visitors. But their re-election of George W Bush illustrates the underlying political differences, for, in some ways, challenger John Kerry was to the right of, say, our National Party, while the US Congress became dominated by the Right in 1994.

globalization in Historical Perspective, Review

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on by .

Globalization in Historical Perspective, a National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report, edited by M.D. Bordo, A.M. Taylor and J.G. Williamson. (The University of Chicago Press, 2003)

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

The public, which has firm, uninformed, and confused views on globalisation, would be astonished as to what the scholars think about the topic, although perhaps less surprised as to what they do not (yet) know.

After Neoliberalism: the Growth and Innovation Framework.

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation, Political Economy & History on by .

Paper for the “After Neoliberalism? New Forms of Governance in Aotearoa New Zealand” Symposium, Auckland University, December 13, 2004.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

The policy clash in the 1980s and the 1990s was more complex than a Left-Right divide. At the very least it was tripartite. One group we might call the ‘conservatives’, many of who were on the Left, who wanted to defend the existing economic and social policies whose beginnings go back to the 1930s – making minor modifications from those which we associate with Muldoon. The concerns of the nostalgic Left has been more about human rights, foreign affairs and redistribution, than about economic policy, the main concern of this paper.

Mum: Dorothy Thelma Easton (4-4-1919 to 6-11-2004)

This entry was posted in Miscellaneous on by .

My oration for Mum at her memorial gathering at the Thelma Easton Library, Hillmorten School, 11 December 2004.

Keywords: Miscellaneous;

Tena kotou katoa. Friends of my mother, and so friends of mine and of her family, welcome to this gathering to remember and honour Dorothy Thelma Easton. I’ll call her Mum, because that is what she was to me.