Listener: 21 July, 1984.
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;
The publication of the June 1984 quarter Consumer Price Index increase will revive the issue of whether the freeze was successful. While the issue will not be settled in any scientific manner for several years, the research economist needs to provide some framework for the present public debate.
Listener: 18 February, 1984 Keywords: Regulation & Taxation; The current debate about controls and the market is not merely a question of ideology. Underlying it are analytic propositions about how markets work. Consider an uncontrolled market which settles on a price of $1 a unit at which suppliers sell 1000 units weekly and buyers purchase…
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Listener: 3 December, 1983.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money;
The view that there is excessive intervention in the New Zealand economy is widely accepted. Even the 1983 Budget expresses sentiments along these lines in a number of places when it reports changing the form and level of protection, the review of export assistance, decision “to move toward less disparate rates of assistance” within the agriculture and fishing sector, the decision to free up internal transport, the extension of foreign exchange licences, and the tendering of government stock, for instance.
This is an introduction to a symposium on Unemployment in New Zealand. “New Zealand Journal of Industrial relations”, Vol 7, No @, August 1982, p.101-106.* Keywords: Labour Studies; Research on unemployment in New Zealand is not as widespread as in most affluent economies, no doubt partly reflecting that for the post-war period up…
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Listener: 23 January, 1982 Keywords: Political Economy & History; In his valedictory speech, the outgoing director of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, Kerry McDonald, argued that our economists should be more mvolved in the public debate on economic policy. While such sentiments are eminently appropriate in a democracy there are practical problems. For…
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Listener 7 November, 1981. Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; With the examination season in full swing, there must be a few younger readers – plus their concerned parents and other relatives – who are contemplating a career in economics. No certification is needed to become a professional economist, but most economists…
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Listener 10 October, 1981, republished in Listener Bedside Book, (1997) p.313-314.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
“People should be made to see this,” the passenger exclaimed. He and a group of Europeans and Australasians had been stranded half way between West Germany and Australia, when an engine of our 747 ingested a vulture in Bombay. Now we were travelling by bus from the Bombay airfield to the hotel where we were to be put up while the engine was repaired.
Listener: 18 July, 1981.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
The islands to our north present New Zealand with a number of economic social and political problems – the problems of how to treat neighbours who are small in numbers and materially poor, but significant to us in human terms (and perhaps of strategic importance). It would be so easy to neglect them or to use them for our convenience. However, in 1976 we took a more positive Islands Industrial Development Scheme (PIIDS).
Listener: 23 May, 1981.
Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;Macroeconomics & Money;
I once asked Dr W.B. Sutch how much Keynes had influenced the thinking of the first Labour Government. John Maynard Keynes’s book The General Theory of Employment and Money has been the most influential piece or economics writing this century in terms or its impact on both economic theory and economic policy. It explained how a government could practice deficit financing to increase employment.
Sutch, who was a government adviser in the 1930s, replied that Keynes had little influence. Rather, the government observed that housing materials were not being used, house builders were unemployed, and families desired houses, so that the Government ensured there was the finance to bring the builders and materials together to construct the houses that were needed.
Listener 23 May 1981.
Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;
This book may well become a bible for advocates or the political right in New Zealand. Expressions from it (or from the television series on which it is based) are already gaining currency here. Yet such a fate would. be unfair to the Friedmans, and to New Zealand.
Listener: 25 April, 1981.
Keywords: Social Policy;
One of the curiosities of the 1970s is that although it was a period of economic stagnation, a number of important innovations were made in the income maintenance area.
The most radical was the introduction of the Accident Compensation Scheme. but others were National Superannuation, the Statutory Domestic Purposes Benefit, income tax rebates for families, and changes removing some of the discrimination against women, Even curiouser, most of these changes occurred under a National Government, which is not normally thought to be especially concerned with social security.
Listener: 28 February, 1981.
Keywords: Business & Finance;
With today’s fashion for advocating ‘more market”. it may be useful to consider the structure of New Zealand markets. A market may have one of many structures, and government intervention in each ought to reflect that.
If the market is highly competitive. with a large number of buyers and sellers, then much of the economic regulation may be left to it. With a single seller and many buyers, the government may have to limit the monopoly’s ability to abuse its own power There are many other market structures, including few sellers, many buyers and sole seller sole buyer.
Listener: 13 January, 1981.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
Many economists are developing a cautious optimism about the New Zealand economy. It is it view which has only the most tenuous links with the strident claims of faith in our future which we shall be hearing from the politicians this year, and the economist’s optimism may well survive the election.
The view is based on the assessment that after more than a decade of stagnation the processes, particularly in the farm sector, which drove the New Zealand economy on a growth path for d hundred years up to 1967 are beginning to reassert themselves.
Address to the Electrical Supply Authorities Association conference in Christchurch on 22 September; published in the ‘New Zealand Monthly Review, November 1980. It was also published in “Straight Furrow”. While there can be little dispute that the structure of the New Zealand economy will be very different in 1990 from what it is today, there…
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Listener 8 March, 1980.
Keywords: Health; Social Policy;
Legislation passed in 1979 made it illegal to buy or sell human blood, except with the consent of the Minister of Health. Is this not another example of the government over-regulating life? Did not Gerald Ford, ex-president of the United States, part-pay his way through university by selling his blood? Given the miserable level of student bursaries, is the prohibition on selling human blood yet a further attempt to ensure that future New Zealand prime ministers will not have a university education?
Listener: 26 January 1980 Keywords: Social Policy; What is your reaction when you see a truck with a couple of children in the cab next to the driver? Concern for their safety? Anger at their mother for working? Or does it please you that here are a couple of kids with the good fortune to…
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New Zealand and the World: Essays in Honour of Wolf Rosenberg ed W.E. Wilmott, (1980) p.72-87.
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Political Economy & History;
The graphs which illustrated the tables are not included
By 1979 it was evident to even the conventional wisdom that New Zealand was in its greatest economic crisis since the 1930s. It is natural to ask whether there are similarities between this crisis and the earlier ones in the 1880s and the 19305, and if so, whether we can learn from our history.
Listener 24 November, 1979, republished in The Listener Bedside Book, No 3 (1999) p.182-183.
Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Maori;
Raymond Firth’s study of the pre-European Maori economy, The Economics of the New Zealand Maori, is half a century old. In 1929 Firth, a young New Zealand economics graduate, decided to pursue economic anthropology, and undertook a doctorate, supervised by Bronislaw Malinkowski, at the University of London. Today, at 80, Firth is one of the grand old men of anthropology , with honorary doctorates from seven prestigious universities.
Conference of Users of Official Statistics 11-12 November, Wellington, 1979? Keywords: Statistics; I suspect I was invited to give this paper as one of the research workers in New Zealand most dependent upon official statistics. From one point of view then, I am experienced over a very wide range of official statistics and…
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In Warwick Neville and James O’Neill (1979) The Population of New Zealand: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, pages 259-280. Keywords: Environment & Resources; Growth & Innovation; Introduction Population studies and economic studies are each vast subject areas, and there is not space to discuss all the issues. This chapter attempts to survey some of the…
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