Author Archives: Brian Easton

Competitive Advantage

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on 3rd June 2003 by Brian Easton.

Third draft of Chapter 6 of Transforming New Zealand. Comments welcome. (Second Draft).

Keywords: Growth & Innovation;

What determines a successful exporter? (Observe the question is in the Porter approach that ‘firms, not nations, compete in international markets’, although we shall see that national economic policy has a role.) The list is long and includes the right product, advanced and advancing technologies, a capable work force, effective marketing and distribution, entrepreneurial initiative, good fortune … However, the single most important requirement is medium term profitability. If the business is not getting enough revenue to pays for its inputs and its debt servicing, it will eventually go bankrupt.

Exporting and Growth

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on 3rd June 2003 by Brian Easton.

Third draft of Chapter 5 of Transforminng New Zealand. Comments welcome. (Second Draft).

Keywords: Growth & Innovation;

As a general rule, but not exclusively, the sectors which can grow fast in New Zealand – faster than the rest of the economy – are exporting. Indeed world trade – exports and imports – grows about as twice as fast as the world economy (we mention below why this should be so). The export sectors have a key role in the growth of small open multi-sectoral economies, drag the domestic economy along with them, accelerating its growth rate, while largely funding the imports which also tend to grow faster than the rest of the economy. However not all exports can be accelerated.

The Sectoral Approach to Economic Growth

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on 3rd June 2003 by Brian Easton.

Third draft of Chapter 4 of Transforminng New Zealand. Comments welcome. (Second Draft).

Keywords: Growth & Innovation;

It is unwise to focus – as the last chapter had to – on the aggregate economy. Being excessively aggregate means that some of the most important features of the economic transformation are ignored. The growth and change occurs in businesses, and so we need to think about how businesses grow. Economists have a theory of how businesses behave, which informs their thinking. But at the policy level they need to avoid detailed intervention at the firm level.

What Drives Economic Growth?

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on 3rd June 2003 by Brian Easton.

Third draft of Chapter 3 of Transforming New Zealand. Comments welcome. (Second Draft).

Keywords: Growth & Innovation;

Once upon a time – not so many years ago actually – economic growth was thought to be the result of increasing combinations of labour and capital. Because of ‘diminishing returns’ – that is that each additional dollop of labour and capital was less productive, it was generally assumed that at some time – perhaps in the time of today’s children – economic growth would come to an end and there would be economic stagnation. This was before the days about the worry of exhausting the available resources, and issue returned to briefly later. The stagnation was seen as solely due to diminishing returns in capital and labour.

Output Since the War: New Zealand’s GDP Performance

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on 3rd June 2003 by Brian Easton.

Third draft of Chapter 2 of Transforming New Zealand. Comments welcome. (Second Draft).

Keywords: Growth & Innovation;

This chapter looks at the level of New Zealand’s production since the war. It uses GDP as an indicator of that level. In doing so it is mindful of the weaknesses of the GDP measure discussed in the previous chapter and its appendix. But GDP remains the best measure we have, and as the book argues later, it seems likely that were a different production objective to be adopted (so products are valued differently form the way they are in GDP) the overall result would not be too different from using GDP as an indicator.

Where Should the New Zealand Economy Be Going?

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on 3rd June 2003 by Brian Easton.

Third draft of Chapter 1 of Transforming New Zealand. Comments welcome. (Second Draft).

Keywords: Growth & Innovation;

In recent years the focus of economic policy has been on increasing GDP, which is a measure of the material production of the economy. The shrillest cries were that New Zealand should accelerate its GDP growth rate to rejoin the top half of the OECD on a per capita basis. As one business journalist, more noted for her rhetoric than her insight asked ‘what could be simpler than that?’ And she was absolutely right for the simple minded who had little conception of what constituted GDP or of how it might be accelerated.

Prologue

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on 3rd June 2003 by Brian Easton.

Prologue of Transforming New Zealand. Comments welcome.

Keywords: Growth & Innovation;

After this book had gone through its first draft, the Growth and Innovation Advisory Board, which provides a private sector policy perspective to the government’s economic strategy (and of which I am a member), released its ‘Growth Culture’ study which described the public’s attitudes to economic growth. The report is rich in detail but its main findings were the public was not enamoured with the notion of growth as a key policy objective, and was tired of being told that they had to make sacrifices to increase the economic growth rate.

Transforming New Zealand

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Growth & Innovation on 3rd June 2003 by Brian Easton.

Draft chapters for a book. Readers are invited to comment on these drafts. Not all chapters are complete. A summary of the main economic themes is in Tractatus Developmentalis Economica.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation;

Prologue Not written

These draft chapters are on the web
1. The Point of it All.
2. New Zealand’s Post-war Economic Performance
3. Theories of Economic Growth.
4. The Sectoral Approach to Economic Growth
5. Exporting and Growth
6. Competitive Advantage
7. Infrastructure
8. Intervention and Innovation
9. Working with Technological Innovation

These chapters are in preliminary development and may change dramatically.
10. Is Small Beautiful?
10. It’s Not Easy Being Small
12. Taxation and Spending
13. Distributing the Gains
14. The Quality of Life

Appendices On website
A.1. The GDP Target.
A.2. The Maddison-OECD Data Base.

Competitive Advantage

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on 3rd June 2003 by Brian Easton.

Chapter of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

Michael Porter’s theory of competitive advantage emphasises that ‘firms, not nations, compete in international markets’ even though it recognises that nations have a role in fostering successful businesses (p.33). Thus the focus on exporting has to be on the businesses involved.

Exporting and Growth

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Growth & Innovation on 3rd June 2003 by Brian Easton.

Chapter of TRANSFORMING NEW ZEALAND. This is a draft. Comments welcome.

Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Globalisation & Trade;

The export sectors have a key role in the growth of a small open multi-sectoral economy. They can expand faster than the world economy as a whole, and drag the domestic economy along with them, accelerating its growth rate. However there are different sorts of exports, not all of which can be accelerated.

Power Games: the Electricity Crisis Is the Result Of Bad Economics

This entry was posted in Listener, Regulation & Taxation on 31st May 2003 by Brian Easton.

Listener 31 May, 2003.

Keywords: Regulation & Taxation;

The enthusiasts who reformed the electricity system in the 1990s gave little indication of the possibility of the power shortages the nation now faces. Their premise was that the introduction of market forces would generating efficiency improvements without generating problems. Faced with repeated failures, they have been conspicuously silent, although their reforms were not quite concluded because they favoured privatisation. Almost 60 percent of electricity production is still generated by three government owned companies (Meridian, Genesis, and Might River Power).

A Research Proposal: Globalisation

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on 26th May 2003 by Brian Easton.

The following is extracts from a research proposal: May 2003. It was awarded a Marsden award and will be the focus of my public interest research over the next three years.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

SUMMARY
Describe in up to 200 words the nature of your proposed research in plain English for a general audience. This summary should be able to be used for publicity purposes if the proposal is offered funding.

Globalisation has shaped the world economy for the last two centuries. It also has shaped New Zealand, as for instance when refrigeration, together with steam ships and telegraph, led to a New Zealand economy based on pastoral farming selling to Britain. While there was a period of stagnation in the globalisation process in the middle of the twentieth century, innovations such as containerisation and mass air travel revitalised the globalisation pressures after the Second World War. More recently, the information and communication technology revolution has transformed access to information and simplified international contacts. Among the consequences of these changes have been an acceleration of globalisation with less restricted trade in more goods and services, foreign investment and capital flows, the potentiality for substantial human migration (as well as the huge tourist industry), a revolution in information access, and the growth of institutions such as the IMF and the WTO which attempt to regulate international economic activity. Local cultures and the nation state are being transformed. This project will trace these impacts on New Zealand in the past, and today, looking forward to the way globalisation will impact on the future, while contributing to international scholarship on the economics of globalisation.

The Cost Of Getting Drunk

This entry was posted in Health, Regulation & Taxation on 22nd May 2003 by Brian Easton.

Submitted as a feature to a national newspaper in May 2003, but it has not been used.

Keywords: Health; Regulation & Taxation;

Suppose you wanted to get drunk. How much would it cost? Perhaps six standard drinks would be more than enough – less if you were a woman. That is 90mls of absolute alcohol (ethanol). A bottle of the cheapest plonk provides 90mls of ethanol for about $6.50. You can get as drunk on beer for as little as $4.50. Some alcopops (Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages or Ready-to-Drinks) are as cheap. Spirits? Specials come at about $4.50 too.

Valuation Guidance for Cultural and Heritage Assets

This entry was posted in Governance, Literature and Culture on 5th May 2003 by Brian Easton.

Review of report prepared by the Treasury Accounting Policy Team, for The Treasury (November 2002) prepared for Archefacts.

Keywords: Governance; Literature and Culture;

In 1974, with the construction industry, straining under the demand to catchup on the backlog of housing, was running out of building sites, the government instructed its agencies to identify suitable land they had available, and release them onto the market. The policy failed because it transpired that most had no idea of what land they possessed (or, probably, any other of their government assets).

Socialists Of the Heart: Why Does the Left Avoid Rigorous Economic Argument

This entry was posted in History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Listener on 3rd May 2003 by Brian Easton.

Listener 3 May, 2002.

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;

The Left critique of society was born in the turmoil of nineteenth century European industrialisation, when communities were ripped apart and workers suffered terrible, and often short, lives. Economics was transformed too, with the analyses of Karl Marx and Alfred Marshall leaving behind the pleasant world of agriculture and commerce of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The Left engaged with the mainstream economists of the day. One can get an introduction to the neo-classical economics of the late nineteenth century by reading the British socialists of the times, who were not nearly as taken with Marx as the world was after the Russian revolution. Their roots are not in Marxists but in the Christian dissenters, such as Methodists.

Productivity and Employment (version 2): NZ’s Post-war Economic Performance

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation, Labour Studies on 1st May 2003 by Brian Easton.

Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Labour Studies;

New OECD data bases enables the revision updating and extension of an earlier version of Productivity and Employment: New Zealand’s Post-War Economic Growth Performance. It still belongs to a series, Comparison with the OECD and Comparison with Australia.

An earlier version of this paper [1] used the Maddison data base which had some statistics of employment and hours worked, and allowed it to provide some estimates of productivity.[2] Recently the OECD published a more comprehensive. albeit shorter, data base.[3] This paper revises the earlier paper, incorporating the new data.

Crisis: Collapse Of the National Bank Of Fiji

This entry was posted in Macroeconomics & Money on 26th April 2003 by Brian Easton.

By R. Grynberg, D. Munro & M. White
Listener 26 April, 2003

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;

Those involved – including Fijian coup leader and subsequently Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rambuka – were anxious not to have too public the story of the financial crisis of the National Bank of Fiji (NBF). Instead the authors – then academics at the University of Fiji although two have since left – pieced it together from the public record and the investigative reporting of a few courageous journalists. Their story goes like this.

Energy (Index)

This entry was posted in Index on 23rd April 2003 by Brian Easton.

General
In Stormy Seas: The Post-War New Zealand Economy Chapter 11: Industry and Energy (1997)
Capital and Technological Change: Some International Comparisons From In Stormy Seas Chapter 14 (1997)

Electricity
The Maori Geothermal Claim: A Pakeha Economist’s Perspective (September 1993)
Future Shocks (November 1996)
Risking Dialogue: Electricity Outages Show How Consumers are Powerless (August 1998)
Electric Rhetoric: Sneering Instead of Thinking (July 1999)
Air Force: An Answer to Our Power Needs May Be Blowing in the Wind (March 2003)
Power Games: The Electricity Crisis is the Result of Bad Economics (May 2003)

Oil
Postcard from Arabia (April 2000)
Rhetoric and Iraq: Arab Brothers and Oil Sisters (October 2002)
New World Disorder (April 2003)
A Note on Iraq, Oil and the US Dollar (April 2003)