Author Archives: Brian Easton

Manure and the Modern Economy: Has Economic Policy Hardly Changed?

This entry was posted in Macroeconomics & Money on by .

Listener 7 September, 2002.

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;

Don Brash recently claimed that ‘almost none of the big changes of the late 1980s and early 1990s have been reversed’ and described those who denigrate the economic policies of the 1990s as talking ‘cattle manure’. This may be inappropriate language for the National Party’s front bench economic spokesperson, but the greater worry is that he seems to be keener to repeat the past, than to learn from its mistakes.

Future Directions for the Ministry for the Environment

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

On August 27 I was invited to a breakfast which was one of a series of consultations by the Ministry for the Environment on the issues which faced it. After a lively session we were invited to make submissions. I wrote to the new chief executive, Barry Carbon. Subsequently the MfE published my letter in its report back to participants. Here is what I wrote – a little tidied up.

Keywords: Environment; Regulation & Taxation;

Dear Barry Carbon,

Thankyou for breakfast this morning, and the interesting (and entertaining) session that went with it.

The Economy and Other Issues: What the Election Campaign Didn’t Tell Us.

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

Listener 24 August, 2002

Keywords History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History; Regulation & Taxation

The economic debate was noticeably missing from the election campaign, as the public turned its attention to other concerns. This suggests an economic consensus (almost) arising from the economic prosperity over the last three years, plus an increasingly widespread agreement that economic policy is going in the right direction.

Why Economists Dont Understand Education … but Still Try to Run It

This entry was posted in Education, Governance, Growth & Innovation on by .

Presentation to the NZARE conference ‘The Politics of Teacher’s Work in Aotearoa/New Zealand’, 24 August, 2002..

Keywords: Education, Governance, Growth and Innovation

Of course all economists know something anecdotally about education, insofar as they, their children and their friends went through an education system. My concern in this presentation is the deep tension between the paradigm economists practise and the paradigm educationalists practise. Indeed, an alternative title for today’s lecture might be that educationalists dont understand economics either. But being an economist I am not competent to give an account from an educationalist’s perspective. That I leave to the audience.

Economics and Violence

This entry was posted in Social Policy on by .

Chapter in Overcoming Violence in Aotearoa New Zealand (Phillip Garside Publishing Ltd, 2002) p. 37-43.

Keywords: Social Policy

Economics has such a pervasive role in public discussion, that it is useful to remember that on some matters it has little to offer, which is the spirit in which this offering is made.

It is true that sometimes economic considerations can lead to considerable violence. Just over half a century ago the powerful economies of Germany and Japan, finding their access to resources restricted, tried to extend their territories to encompass their resource bases. Their military ambitions were settled with defeat in the Second World War, but the resolution to their limited access to resources took longer. The answer was increasing international trade, for today both countries – and many others – obtain the resources they require by international exchange. It is a solution which may not be ideal, but it certainly less imperfect than conquest. In a similar spirit the European Union was founded to tie up the coal and steel industries of Germany and France to make warfare between then again impossible.

Productivity and Employment: NZ’s Post-war Economic Growth Performance

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation, Labour Studies on by .

Note: This paper has been replaced by a more recent version based on a more comprensive data base. Go here for the most recent version

Keywords: Growth & Innovation, Labour Studies

Introduction

It is not always wise to promise an empirically based paper before the research has been done. When preparing New Zealand’s Post-War Growth Performance: Comparison with the OECD[1], I observed that the Maddison data base on which the OECD data derived also had some statistics of employment and hours worked, which allowed it to provide some estimates of productivity.[2] New Zealand was not included, but since there was comparable data for New Zealand, I thought, it would be straight forward to include New Zealand in the data base. Hence the promise to produce this paper.

Rewarding Service: a History Of the Government Superannuation Fund.

This entry was posted in Social Policy on by .

Review in the E-Journal Making History (http://www.mch.govt.nz/History/making-history/govt-super.html)

Keywords: Social Policy;

There is a line entry in the 2002 Budget’s Economic and Fiscal Update for ‘GSF pension expenses’ of $671 million, an amount sufficient to more than double the total vote on arts, culture and heritage, the community and voluntary sector, conservation, national archives, the national library, and sport and recreation. Rewarding Service is a history of how that entry came about.

The Comparison with Australia: NZ’s Post-war Economic Growth Performance

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on by .

This is the second of a series of papers. The first has a secondary title of ‘Comparison with the OECD’ and the third is Productivity and Employment

Keywords: Growth & Innovation

The most obvious country to compare New Zealand with is Australia. How did they do in the relative GDP per capita stakes? This report does not go through the details of data preparation, which are exactly the same as reported in the Comparison with OECD paper.(1) The Australian series is that reported in Maddison, adjusted to a March year basis. (2) The accompanying table and graph show the ratios of New Zealand GDP per capita to that of Australia, and for Australia to the OECD, and New Zealand to the OECD.

Books & Monographs

This entry was posted in Index on by .

The websites contains brief summaries of the following books, plus their contents. Links from chapters are to associated website items. The Commercialisation of New Zealand. In Stormy Seas: The Post-war New Zealand Economy The Whimpering of the State: Policy after MMP The Nationbuilders Globalisation and a Welfare State. (This was never published. Only about three…
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Imbalance Of Power:

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

Are Double Dipping US Corporations Symptoms of a Double-dipper World Recession?

Listener 10 August, 2002.

Keywords: Business & Finance; Macroeconomics & Money

Almost all recent New Zealand forecasts have accepted the international conventional wisdom that the US economy was in recovery. However, some forecasters have private reservations that a ‘double-dipper may be on’.

New Zealand’s Post-war Economic Growth Performance: Comparison with the OECD

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on by .

Note: This is the first of a series of papers. The next two planned have secondary titles of ‘Comparison with Australia’ and ‘Productivity and Employment’

Keywords: Growth & Innovation

In Stormy Seas: The Post-War New Zealand Economy still contains the most extensive account of New Zealand’s post-war economic performance, despite being published some five years ago.(1) Since then the OECD has published a new data base. This note updates In Stormy Seas using that data base. It does not identify any new insights, confirming that the book’s analysis is reasonably robust to the data base, although it suggests the possibility of a slightly different account of the early 1970s. The paper concludes with some assessment of New Zealand’s economic prospects.

The Political Economy Of Robert Chapman

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

Revised version of a paper presented to the 1996 conference of the New Zealand Political Studies Association, Auckland.

Keywords Political Economy & History

Robert McDonald Chapman began his work on the New Zealand electoral system in an era where there were no opinion polls, no computers, and little readily available social data. It was a pioneering if, by today’s standards, primitive research program. which made him the father of psephology in New Zealand.(1) Yet his was not a mechanical manipulation of the available electoral data. Behind it all was an account of the political economy of New Zealand. It is this aspect that this paper recalls an updates.

Corporate Chaos: Is the Collapse Of Enron and Worldcom the Beginning Of an End?

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

Listener 27 July, 2002.

Keywords Business & Finance, Macroeconomics & Money

Because there is no coincidence of wants, money acts as an intermediatory in the conversion of something we have (including our labour) into something we want (perhaps the groceries). This role can be summarised as C→M→C* where a commodity (C) is converted (sold) into money (M), which is used to purchase a different commodity (C*). In this way money facilitates the specialisation of production upon which modern standards of living depend, because it enables each to concentrate on producing one thing well, and convert it into all the other things they want to consume.

The Historical Context Of the Woodhouse Commission

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

Revised version of paper for Looking Back at Accident Compensation: Finding Lessons for the Future. Victoria University of Wellington Law School: 2-3 August: 2002. [1]

Keywords Political Economy & History, Social Policy

Although it is rarely presented this way, policy making is a problem solving exercise. At the heart of the success of any solution is how well the problem is addressed.[2] This approach, analogous to Karl Popper’s approach to the development of science requires us to be ‘as clear as you can one can about the problem, and watch the way it changes’.[3] A task then, of an historian, is to identify the problem or problems which drove a solution.

The Debt Burden on Students

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

Revised version of paper to NZUSA Student Debt Summit, July 23, Auckland.

Keywords Education, Regulation & Taxation

Substantial tax reductions for the rich, if they are not to be fiscally irresponsible, require cuts in government spending and the raising taxation on those who are not rich. Thus the generous lowering of income tax on top incomes of the late 1980s required others to take a larger burden – including directly: social security beneficiaries, wage earners, many public servants and government employed professionals, and tertiary students, and indirectly the social wage and those who benefit from it.

Marshall and Sutch

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

Letter in New Zealand International Review, July/August 2002, Vol XXVII, No 4, p.33.

KeywordsPolitical Economy & History

In his review of Keith Eunson’s Mirrors on the Hill, Bruce Brown asks ‘who reads [Jack] Marshall’s autobiography?’, and answers ‘the two volumes are an excellent source of much recent political history (for example on Bill Sutch).’ (NZIR May/June 2002) They may be source of political history but the coverage of Sutch is inaccurate, imbalanced, and unsatisfactory. Many of the errors are addressed by Sutch’s widow, Shirley Smith, in a letter deposited at the Alexander Turnbull Library. My concern here is the balance.

A Beautiful Theory: But It Is Only a Game

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

Listener 13 July, 2002.

Keywords History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy

The film A Beautiful Mind was another version of Love Story. Instead of the lovers having to overcome health, race, other obligations, or location, this time the obstacle was mental illness. Ultimately John and Alicia Nash triumph, with a Nobel Prize in economics to boot. The true story is far more complicated, and in some key places different. More disappointing, the film made only the feeblest attempt to explain what Nash actually did. Hollywood must have thought the concept too difficult for the average film-goer. Let me accept the challenge.

The New Zealand Health Reforms in Context

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

Published in Applied Health Economics and Health Policy. Final version of the article.

Keywords: Governance; Health; Political Economy and History

Abstract: The New Zealand health sector reforms of the 1990s have to be seen in the context of the long term development of the New Zealand health system. The evolutionary change between 1938 and 1990 was abruptly replaced by the revolutionary policy of commercialisation from 1991 to 1993. …