Author Archives: Brian Easton

Public Policy and the Maori

This entry was posted in Maori, Social Policy on by .

The following is a transcript of an interview by Carol Archie for Mana News broadcast on “Radio New Zealand”, 6.25am Tuesday 10 February 2004. It has been lightly edited.(“Hansard” rules – for presentation, syntax, and sense – but not for content).

Keywords: Maori; Social Policy;

Presenter (Dale Husband): This morning our focus is economics and how the National Party’s new policy around Maori services stacks up in the world of finance. One economist, Brian Easton, disagrees with Don Brash’s contention that resources should be based purely on need and never targeted specifically for Maori as a race. Brian Easton told Carol Archie that targeting particular groups often makes good economic sense.

Closing the Credibility Gap

This entry was posted in Maori, Statistics on by .

Why Act’s race-based welfare statistics are worthless

Listener: 7 February, 2004.

Keywords: Maori; Statistics;

Early in January the Act Party released a paper that calculated the tax collected from Maori was $2.3 billion a year, while government spending on Maori was $7.3 billion a year. Whatever the factual situation –– below I suggest that the figures are misleading –– different political flavours will draw different conclusions.

1999 and All That

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

Strange as it seems, Helen Clark and Michael Cullen may be revolutionaries.
Listener: 24 January, 2004.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

The standard New Zealand histories cite 1890, with the election of the first Liberal government, and 1935, with the first Labour government, as years of “revolution” –– albeit constitutional and evolving ones –– when the economy and society took on a new direction. So much so that the Reform government came to power in 1912 and the National government in 1949 primarily as consolidators rather than reversers.

Will You Look at That

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

Fact: New Zealand has a national portrait gallery. Not many people know that.
Listener: 17 January, 2004.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

You would hardly know that New Zealand has a national portrait gallery, hidden on the busy corner of Wellington’s Bowen St and Lambton Quay in the debating chamber used when Parliament House was being refurbished. The local bookseller tells me that he constantly has to point the way.

A Blooming Future: Are We Up to a Good Flower Show?

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

Listener 10 January, 2004.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation;

The Netherlands produces annually about $9 billion of flowers and related products, of which it exports almost $8 billion (and imports and exports another billion). In contrast, New Zealand exports a paltry $70m. The difference is all the more astonishing because Michael Porter in The Competitive Advantage of Nations argues that the Dutch have no comparative advantage in the growing of flowers. Rather, they have built up a technological excellence and maintain a quality edge at the forefront of world production and distribution.

Towards an Analytic Framework for Globalisation

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on by .

The Political Economy of the Diminishing Tyranny of Distance.

Accepted for publication by The Journal of Economic and Social Policy (January 2004: the original version was submitted in September 2002).

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

Abstract Globalisation can be treated as a consequence of the falling costs of distance, and its problems as arising from different sorts of distances reducing at different rates. The paper is written from the perspective of Australasia, which has suffered more and benefited more from the ‘tyranny of distance’, and will be ultimately impacted more by its falling costs.[1]

Oxytoxic Times: Emotions Are Getting in the Way Of Economic Theory.

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

Listener 27 December, 2003.

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;

There was much laughter over the economist who presented a paper that assumed people made optimal calculations when deciding on higher education. The paper plodded on for pages, but came to a grinding halt with a mathematical equation that the presenter could not solve –– without the wit to conclude that the study demonstrated that one needed a degree in mathematics in order to decide whether to go to university.

Three Short Book Reviews: for the 2003 listener Books Of the Year.

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

Listener: 20 December 2003.

Keywords: Environment & Resources; Governance; Macroeconomics & Money;

TREASURY: The New Zealand Treasury 1840-2000, by Malcolm McKinnon (AUP, $50).

THE GREAT UNRAVELLING: Losing our way in the new century, by Paul Krugman (Viking, $35).

THE LOST WORLD OF THE MOA: Prehistoric life of New Zealand, by Trevor Worthy and Richard Holdaway (Canterbury University Press, $169.50).

Notes Towards the New Zealand Centre for Globalisation Studies

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on by .

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

Introduction

The conditions for a Marsden Grant require some technology transfer above the publication of articles and teaching. My successful application for a contribution to my research program on globalisation proposed that I would establish a virtual New Zealand Centre for Globalisation Studies (NZCGS), since I am not in a position to supervise research students directly.

Stressful Fiscal Sums: Should the Government Spend More and Tax Less?

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

Listener: 13 December, 2003.

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;

The history of the modern Treasury –– described in Malcolm McKinnon’s landmark Treasury –– is one of fiscal stress, extreme fiscal stress or intolerable fiscal stress. You might think from the government accounts that is not currently true, for the Treasury reported a “surplus” of $5.6 billion for the year ending June 2003 and promises another comparable one this year. (This surplus’s exact name is “operating balance excluding revaluations and accounting changes” or OBERAC.) For a detailed description of the OBERAC.

Notes on Oberac. the Cash Surplus and Other Measures in the Government Accounts:

This entry was posted in Macroeconomics & Money on by .

This note was written to accompany Stressful Fiscal Sums: Should the Government Spend More and Tax Less? I am grateful for assistance from an economist who for various reasons cannot be named.

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;

OBERAC (the operating balance of government excluding revaluations and accounting policy changes) can be looked at as to how it is made up. and what happens to the quantum. The following focuses on the what happens to it. My comments in italics.

Ending Fault in Accident Compensation:

This entry was posted in Social Policy on by .

Issues and Lessons from Medical Misadventure
Paper to The Future of Accident Compensation: New Directions and Visions, Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington, 5-6 December, 2003.

Keywords: Social Policy;

Introduction: The Woodhouse Vision

There seems to be common agreement that the treatment of medical misadventure should conform to the Woodhouse Principles and therefore there should be no notion of fault in its coverage. I shall not to labour this point, but it is worthwhile to remind ourselves of the Principles and how the 1966 Commission rejected fault as relevant. Their primary principles were

The Marsden Globalisation Project

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on by .

Paper for ‘New Zealand’s Role in World Affairs’ Conference, VUW, 5 December, 2003.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

A few months ago I was awarded a three year Marden Grant to study globalisation and New Zealand’s role in it. It is a topic I have been long working upon, developing out of my earlier study of the New Zealand economy summarised in my book In Stormy Seas: The Post-War New Zealand Economy, whose theme can be summarised as ‘the fate of New Zealand will be largely a consequence of what happens overseas, together with our ability to seize the opportunities and manage the problems those events.’

Strange Benchmates

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

Why does the Left hang together and the Right hang separately?
Listener 29 November, 2003.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Despite it being 10 years since a referendum committed New Zealand to MMP, many commentators still think in terms of the old winner-takes-all (WTA) regime. They suggested that voters were illogical because in last year’s election Labour won more of the list vote in many National-won seats. But seats are still won on a WTA basis, so the shrewd elector –– apparently smarter than many commentators –– gave their electorate vote to the least objectionable front-runner. So those who were anti-Labour tended to vote National.

Treasury: the New Zealand Treasury 1840-2000, Malcolm Mckinnon

This entry was posted in Governance, History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Political Economy & History on by .

This is a much longer version of a review published in New Zealand Economic Papers, 37(1), December 2003 295-302.

Keywords: Governance; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;

Treasury Secretary from 1986 to 1993, Graham Scott, got it quite wrong when he said shortly after the 1987 election, ‘I’m interested in getting back to the old money-bags role, what Treasury did in the nineteenth century – the core of the finance ministry is its old functions. That’s our knitting.’ Historian Malcolm McKinnon is too polite to point out this is another example of an ahistorical economist misrepresenting the past. Except by his writing a history of the Treasury.

Old Money: if Life Expectancy Is Rising, Should the Age for the Pension Rise, to

This entry was posted in Listener, Retirement & Savings on by .

Listener 15 November, 2003.

Keywords: Social Policy;

In 1998 our life expectancy at 65 was 17.6 years, so over half those who go onto New Zealand superannuation pass their 80th birthday. In 1898, when the much less generous Old Age Pension was introduced, life expectancy at the 65-year-old age of eligibility was 13 years. Over the century the average life expectancy at 65 has increased by almost five years. Can the state pension be as relatively generous as longevity increases?

Competitive Edges: What the New Wave Of Trade Theory Can Teach New Zealand.

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

Listener: 1 November, 2003.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

Does it strike you as odd that we drink wine and eat cheeses from Europe and yet New Zealand exports them there? Or that Germans drive Renaults and the French drive Volkswagens? The phenomenon puzzled economists, too. Renaults and Volkswagens are different cars, but they are not that different. Neither the German nor French economies would collapse if they could not import cars: perhaps local manufacturers would make the foreign models, although substantial economies of scale keep the costs of this specialisation down (and diminishing costs of distance make the inter-regional trade possible). Consumers would be only marginally worse off.

Report on the Social Costs Of Alcohol Abuse Workshop:

This entry was posted in Health on by .

Université de Neuchâtel, Suisse, October 24-25th, 2003.

Keywords: Health;

The conference was centred around the launching of a study commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health to assess the costs in Switzerland of alcohol misuse, prepared by a team from the Economics Department of the Université de Neuchâtel, led by Professor Claude Jeanrenaud. Additionally, a number of international experts were invited to give papers on broader issues. The report International Guidelines for Estimating the Costs of Substance Abuse (2ed), written by some of these experts and just published by the World Health Organisation was, in effect, also launched. This report highlights and reflects upon some of the papers presented at the conference.