Listener: 20 November, 2004.
Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;
About this time each year I am asked about the merits of the various university economics departments. Typically, someone’s daughter or nephew is thinking about studying economics. This year, the questioner frequently adds, “Isn’t there some official ranking of economics departments?”
Submission to the Select Committee on Health In Regard to the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Amendment Bill (2004, No 3) by Brian Easton and Alan Gray.
Keywords: Health; Social Policy;
Summary of Submission
We support the general approach of the Bill to remove the notion of fault in medical misadventure and to extend rehabilitation and compensation to all those who suffer treatment injury. However, we do not believe there should be any exemption for treatment injury as a result of resource shortages. This is inconsistent with the Bill’s general principles.<
Imbalanced tax cutting is like pouring petrol on a blazing barbecue
Listener 6 November, 2004.
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
With the general election just a year ahead, I have, as usual, reviewed my approach. My strategy is always to help readers try to understand economic issues, rather than tell them which way to vote. Next year I may have to modify it.
The Trekka Dynasty, by Todd Niall (Iconic Publishing, $29.95)
Listener 6 November, 2004.
Keywords: Business & Finance; Political Economy & History;
Making the boxy Trekka the centre of New Zealand’s contribution to the 2003 Venice Biennale bemused New Zealanders, as well as those who visited. Apparently artist Michael Stevenson saw it as a story about a small nation building an industrial economy, to be swept away by 1984. An easy image perhaps, but a superficial one.
The retirement debate depends on a disagreement between economists.
Listener : 23 October, 2004.
Keywords: Social Policy;
About 30 years ago economics sharpened its theory of behaviour with the assumption that everyone took economic decisions that gave them the best outcome. We might call this the “neoclassical paradigm”. It simplifies analysis enormously, and was used in policy extensively in the 1980s and 90s. In practice, the paradigm recognises that individuals don’t actually maximise, but it assumes that people are always taking actions that move them closer to the optimum, so the assumption of best outcomes is near enough to be true.
Paper to the Wayne University Law School, October 21, 2004. (Revised)
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
The Economist’s Meaning of Globalisation
Globalisation (or globalization) is much discussed today, although popular sentiment is, by the standards of scholarly discourse, opinionated, uniformed, and confused. The growing consensus among economic scholars may be summarised as follows:
Listener: 9 October, 2004.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
From “Sunset Beach” near the village of Falealupo, the most western part of the Samoan island of Savaii, one looks across the international dateline to tomorrow. Beyond it is New Zealand, where around 120,000 Samoans live – half of all our Pacific Islanders. Auckland is the largest Samoan city – should one say “congregation”? – in the world. Are we Samoa’s future?
The following is a letter sent to a number of politicians in the health sector by Alan Gray and Brian Easton
Keywords: Health;
The current amendments to the ACC legislation, which were introduced to the House on 2 August 2004, are a real improvement, & seem widely supported.
There is an accompanying letter A Strategy for Dealing with Excessive Waiting Times.
Keywords: Health;
This note has a simple purpose: to demonstrate the gains from reducing waiting times are somewhat larger than they might at first seem: an economic evaluation of the benefits reducing waiting times is likely to suggest there are very high returns. Essentially this arises because while a shortening of waiting times may appear superficially to benefit just a few people – the numbers in the backlog which are treated – all the subsequent patients are benefited by the shortening of the waiting times. Thus there is a spectacular multiplier from reducing waiting times which makes the gains for the outlay to reduce the backlog far larger than they at first seem.
Listener: 25 September, 2005. This economics column was designed to be set out in three parallel columns. That is not possible in this format. Instead final two columns are interleaved, to give a sense of the intended juxtaposition. The italics is used to indicate the different scenarios.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money;
It seems possible that the New Zealand economy could eventually have a three percent boost as a result of the Doha Round’s elimination of dumping agricultural products into key New Zealand export markets. About a third will come from higher export prices, and two-thirds from the additional production – on and off the farm.
These are being offered to various conferences and seminars. In due course the completed papers will be put up on this website.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History;
The Koran prohibits interest, so how do Muslims borrow and lend
Listener: 11 September 2004.
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
Launching his Christianity Without God, Lloyd Geering asked me when I would write a book about the economy without money. I said that anthropologist Raymond Firth had already done so (The Economics of the New Zealand Maori), but I would one day write a column about an economy without interest. Lloyd’s eyes twinkled. “Islam?” The Koran states, “Have fear of Allah and give up what remains of what is due to you of usury.”
Notes for an informal economic discussion
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
While pursuing my primary research interest of globalisation, a recently read paper reminded me of the ‘fundamental’ dilemma of monetary policy of an open economy, also called the ‘trilemma’ or the ‘irreconcilable trinity’.[1]
The market will generate a good environmental outcome if all the property rights are allocated, providing transaction costs are zero.
Listener: 28 August, 2004.
Keywords: Environment & Resources;
As George Soros remarked, policy regimes are like marriage: whichever one you’re in, you wonder if another might be better. Thus it is with the Resource Management Act. We seem to have forgotten the shambolic arrangements that the Act swept away. But the RMA can be improved.
This paper was written in august 2004, for no particular purpose other than to clarify my own ideas.
Part II
Keywords: Growth & Innovation; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;
Either this kind of aggregate economics appeals or it doesn’t. Personally I belong to both schools. Robert Solow (1957)
To 1974: The Aggregate Supply-side Paradigm
The Crucial Experiment of 1974
1975 to 1981
1981 to 1986
The Grand Policy Break and Economic Modelling
The Intervention and Allocation Debate
Leaving the Institute
1986 to 1997
International Comparisons
Bryan Philpott
The Economy After 1985
Looking for the Recovery
Paradigms of New Zealand Economic Growth: A Memoir II
The Double Step Chart
After 1997
Back to Econometric Estimation
Characterising Economic Growth
Standard Growth
Turbo-growth
The Effect of Shocks
Paradigm Conflict
This paper was written in August 2004, for no particular purpose other than to clarify my own ideas.
Part I
Keywords: Growth & Innovation; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;
The Economic Prognosis is Not Good for the Latest Russian Revolution
Listener: 27 January, 1996
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
Recently economist Rufus Dawe described himself, in the National Business Review, as the Trotsky of the rogernomics revolution. Who he had in mind as the Lenin and the Stalin of rogernomics is unclear. Trotsky said of Stalin that his rise to power was evidence of the mediocrity of the system.
Comparing the US and New Zealand tax systems is comparing rotten apples with quality kiwifruit.
Listener: 14 August, 2004.
Keywords: Regulation & Taxation;
Far too much of the New Zealand economic debate is overwhelmed by the colonial cringe, an obsequious respect to overseas economics, with a failure to recognise that New Zealand circumstances are frequently different. Each May, a Business Roundtable press release, dutifully reported in the business pages, announces “Tax Freedom Day”, the day up to which – so it says – everyone is paying taxes to the government and after which all one earns is tax-free. The idea comes from the US right-wing think tank, the Tax Foundation, and is strongly contested in the US as misleading, because it ignores the fact that one also gets benefits from paying those taxes.
When the international price of cotton and sugar is raised, why should we be pleased?
Listener: 31 July 2004.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
As unlikely as it may seem, cotton and sugar are playing a vital role in New Zealand’s economic prospects. A World Trade Organisation panel has just found in favour of a Brazilian – and others – complaint that the US is subsidising or “dumping” its exports of cotton. The panel concluded that the US action depresses international cotton prices, so other cotton exporters are getting lower than free – or fair – market prices. It rules that the dumping must stop.