Extract from The Whimpering of the State: Policy After MMP, p.131-132.
Keywords Governance; Health
However, the CCMAU report underestimated the size of the financial problem, as became clear when the CHE accounts for the year to June 1997 were published. …
Chapter 10 of The Whimpering of the State
Keywords: Governance; Health;
An indicator of the poor functioning of democracy in recent years is the gap of perceptions between officials making policy and the concerned public. This is nicely illustrated by contrasting the Coalition Agreement on health policy, drafted by politicians, and the post-election briefings of the three administering agencies, which the politicians did not have access to during their negotiations.[1] While this chapter provides a background for the next on health policy , its primary purpose is to illustrate the gap.
Speech to the 1998 Planning Hui of the Adult Reading and Learning Assistance (ARLA) Federation of Aotearoa New Zealand: Waipapa Marae, University of Auckland, Saturday 20 June. Published in Nga Kete Koreo, the Journal of Literacy Aotearoa, July, 1999.
Keywords: Education;
During his second voyage of discovery, James Cook had two boats which arranged to meet in Queen Charlotte Sound. They did not. After waiting around, the Discovery had left a week or so before the Adventure arrived in late 1773. The arriving crew found a tree stump, which told them there was a message below. They dug it up, to be told – in a rather curt note – that Cook had sailed on. The Polynesians were amazed, for here were two men communicating, without being in each other’s presence, and without a human intermediary.
Listener 19 June, 1999
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money;
The OECD report on the Irish economy, released this month, is unusually fulsome about their economy, describing its performance as “stunning” and “the envy of countries around the world.” They were referring to the last three years, but they could have been referring to the last fifteen. The accompanying table shows an annual GDP growth rate of 6 percent, high employment and productivity growth, low inflation, a balance of payments surplus, and the almost halving of unemployment.The feat is all the more extraordinary because their economic performance before 1985 was worse than New Zealand’s. Between 1978 and 1985 Irish employment actually fell, consumer inflation was marginally higher than ours, and at 8 percent of GDP the current account deficit was even larger than New Zealand’s is today.
Presentation to Information Workshop on Disease Moderating Agents, sponsored by the Multiple Sclerosis Society of New Zealand: Thursday 17 June 1999.
Keywords Health
The Public Policy Context
Public policy is about problem solving. The specific problem I shall look at today is who with multiple sclerosis should be able to obtain access to Interferon-beta therapy? But public policy answers to such questions have to take place from a wider perspective. Resolving the public spending problem on multiple sclerosis has to take place mindful of the tradeoffs with other public spending (including on other diseases) and the raising of the revenue (typically via taxation) to fund them. There has to be a consistency between the specific answers, for otherwise the various decisions – the resolutions to the problems – becomes a matter of arbitrariness, creating ongoing tensions (and further problems) because of inconsistencies.
Listener 5 June 1999
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
The Cook Islands lost 13 percent of its population in the last two years, about the same as New Zealand losing Christchurch. The economy suffered some severe external shocks – mainly from New Zealand – which contracted the economy. The government tried to spend its way out of the crisis, ran out of foreign currency, and the consequential cuts plunged the economy into depression and unemployment.
Listener 22 May, 1999
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
Even a good scientific theory experiences anomalies which it cannot explain. Resolving those aberrations eventually leads to a better theory. However ideologists prefer certainty to complexity and ignore inconsistencies. An article in the April 10 London Economist – the world’s top economics weekly and prominent upholder of “more market” – nicely illustrates the phenomenon.
Listener 8 May 1999
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
Michael Cullen and Helen Clark are fiscal conservatives. They think there is a practical constraint to the size of the government’s budget deficit: they may well prefer it to be in a surplus. While they may think, as sophisticate Keynesians, the size of the deficit should vary over the business cycle as a part of demand management, in the long run they see the internal deficit as constrained. However much of their Labour Party are not fiscal conservatives. In government, already evidently in opposition, Labour will face tensions because much of their caucus – even the cabinet – are not so committed to fiscal austerity.
Listener 24 April 1999.
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
If it were possible to predict the precise timing of a financial crisis, everyone would take precautions, and precipitate an earlier one. However the footnote has three lists of indicators. My scorecard for New Zealand gives 5 out 8 for macroeconomic performance factors and 5 out of 7 for macroeconomic policy factors (although some of our policy changes were more than a decade ago). But for microeconomic conditions (which the conventional wisdom says is the more important), I reckon it is 0 out of 8 (assuming reasonably competent bank management – who can tell until after the event?). Moreover, with one small exception all New Zealand banks are owned overseas. Megabank International will quickly and quietly bail out Megabank New Zealand if gets it into trouble, to protect its reputation elsewhere.
Paper for the New Zealand & Australian Studies section of the Conference of the Western Social Sciences Association, April 21-24 1999, Fort Worth, Texas.
Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;
Brent McClintock’s “Gordon Coates and the Nation-Building State: 1920-1935”, which precedes this paper, also sets its stage. [1] In the interwar period there arose a group of New Zealanders who were committed to use the instruments of the state to build a New Zealand nation distinctive and independent (as much as it could be). Coates may have been the earliest, but numerous other New Zealanders in politics, the public service, corporations, and cultural life also participated. Most are recognized in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography and many have full biographies published or in the process of being written: politicians Peter Fraser, Apirana Ngata, and Walter Nash (as well as Coates); public servants Clarence Beeby, Joe Heenan, Alistair McIntosh, Douglas Robb, and Bill Sutch; businessmen James Fletcher and James Wattie; writer Rex Fairburn and Frank Sargeson (with prominent artists coming a little later). Even so, acknowledging such great totara trees but locates the bush over which they towered: that bush below was dense with others equally committed to the nation building state. Curiously, there are no obvious women for the list. The tallest was Te Puea, but her vision was to build the Tainui nation.
Listener: 10 April, 1999.
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
The worldwide trend of financial liberalisation since the early 1980s seems to have resulted in more financial crises. These include currency crises, where the foreign exchange market is disrupted, forcing the government to change its exchange rate regime (frequently either changing the peg of the fixed exchange rate, or shifting to some sort of floating regime). New Zealand had a currency crisis in July 1984 when there was a fixed exchange rate, and so much conversion of New Zealand into foreign denominated financial assets that the Reserve Bank (which funded the conversion) became short of foreign currency.
Letter in New Zealand Journal of History@ 33, 1 (1999), p.134-135. Keywords: Political Economy & History; Michael Bassett’s review of my In Stormy Seas: The Post-War New Zealand Economy, opens with “[t]his book has had a bad press from economists and a business newspaper.” (NZJH Vol 32, No 2:222). I do not know…
Continue reading this entry »
Listener 27 March 1999.
Keywords Business & Finance; Regulation & Taxation
Just suppose there was no government agency concerned with accurate weights and measures. How would you know that the `kilogram’ of the bananas you were buying weighed a thousand true grams? You could carry you own scales. Not trusting the draper when you want to buy two metres of cloth, better carry your own ruler. A few percent difference – the butcher’s thumb on the scales – may be the difference between profit and loss, between whether the customer gets a fair deal or is ripped off.
Listener 13 March, 1999
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
Sometimes public comment on forecasts focuses on the statistics, and ignores that there ought to be an underlying account of the state of the economy. With the March quarter round of forecasts underway, it may be useful to set down the some of the questions that top forecasters are pondering.
Invited Presentation to the Jubilee Conference of the New Zealand Statistical Society, 5-7 March, 1999, Wellington.
Keywords Political Economy & History; Statistics;
Fabian ‘… unless you do redeem it by some laudable attempt either of valour or policy.’
Sir Andrew Auguecheek ‘An’t be any way, it must be with valour; for policy I hate; …”
Twelfth Night
Introduction
Thankyou for the honour of being invited to speak to the Jubilee Conference of the New Zealand Statistical Association. My associations go back only two-thirds of its history, but they are experiences and friendships I greatly value. Indeed, had there been an academic career path in social statistics, I may well have ended up pri
How to Get Manufacturing and the Rest of the Tradeable Sector to Grow
Listener 27 February, 1999
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
“Deindustrialization” describes the process whereby the manufacturing sector grows more slowly than the rest of the economy. Almost all rich OECD countries have experienced deindustrialization in the last three decades. Including New Zealand, whose manufacturing sector’s contribution to production decreased from 24 percent of GDP in 1974 to 18 percent in 1993. (The employment share fell from 27 percent of the labour force in the 1960s to 17 percent in 1993. The sharper employment fall, here and in rest of the OECD, reflects the faster rise in manufacturing productivity.)
Listener: 13 February 1999.
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
It was perhaps inevitable that Bruce Jesson, growing up in the Canterbury of the 1950s with a freezing worker father, would study Marx. Christchurch is often said to be our most class conscious city. Actually, all our big cities have acute class differences. In Wellington it matters whether you are a political insider or an outsider; in Auckland the measure is money. Because Christchurch does not have the politics or the easy money, its differences are more evidently social status.
Listener 30 January, 1999.
Keywords: Business & Finance; Governance;
One of the great upheavals of the 1980s was the `corporatisation’ of the state owned enterprises (SOEs). Following widespread concerns in the late 1970s, the 1984 Labour Government reorganized the government’s businesses into private corporations in every aspect except that the shareholders were a couple of government ministers. As many as seven major studies have been published on corporatisation. What can we learn from them?
The Endangered Open Society Propels an Urgent Plea For World Financial Reform
Listener 16 January, 1999.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;
One of the more bizarre events of the late 1980s was the right wing think tank, the Mont Pelerin Society, holding a conference in Christchurch in honour of philosopher Karl Popper. The approach – one would hardly call it a philosophy – of the majority of attenders was an anathema to Popper. Especially Roger Douglas, whose paper reported his infamous blitzkrieg policy implementation principles, in which democracy is over-ridden, in the total certainty that his policies were correct. Popper would have been interested in the extent that the policies worked – they have not – but Douglas’s unwavering certainty in the truth of his vision would be totally unacceptable. For Popper knowledge is fallible. One constantly reviewed one’s hypotheses to judge their truth. Scepticism is at the heart of his approach, not ideological belief. Douglas’s paper was the equivalent of devil worship in the Popperian church.
From The Whimpering of the State: Policy after MMP p.75
Keywords History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy
People do not behave with the rationalism of the economic theory on which commercialisation was based, especially over their savings. The standard economic theory of individual behaviour is contradicted by the evidence of irrationality (or ‘quasi-rationality’).(1) In practice, as has been attested by numerous studies, the major predictions of economic rationalism fail.(2)