Speech to the Tribal Economies Forum of the First Nations Futures Program, Christchurch: 23 February 2008 (Revised) Keywords: Governance; Maori; Tena kotou, katoa. Thankyou for the invitation to speak to you on tribal economies. It would not, however, be appropriate for me to tell this audience how to run their tribes. What…
Continue reading this entry »
Now is your chance to choose strong local governance. Listener: 6 October, 2007. Keywords: Governance; Political Economy & History; Why are you voting in this month’s local body elections? I’m voting because I believe in the principle of “subsidiarity”, that decisions should be taken at the lowest effective level. That is why I often support…
Continue reading this entry »
This is a note I prepared for some colleagues. written on October 1, 2007. Keywords: Environment & Resources; Governance; Seeking sustainability is like transforming the economy. It is always going on and there is no once in a lifetime policy, although (as for the economic transformation) there are periods of acceleration. …
Continue reading this entry »
The 11th Annual Public Sector Finance Forum. 11 September, 2007 Keywords: Governance; Regulation & Taxation; Statistics; In my paper yesterday, I argued that we too frequently misuse data for rhetorical and political purposes. Today’s paper is an extension of that theme, but it focuses on a less conscious process, while providing an…
Continue reading this entry »
Keywords: Education; Governance; Growth & Innovation; The judges of a singing contest, dissatisfied with the first diva, awarded the prize to the second without having heard her. The favouring of commercialisation in the late 1980s and early 1990s had a similar empirical base. We have now heard the second diva, and while she has…
Continue reading this entry »
Paper for “Corporate Governance in the Public Sector 2007 Conference”, Wednesday 19 February, Wellington. [1] Keywords: Governance; By the 1980s the traditional regulation of New Zealand’s private and public sectors had become increasingly obsolete. The story of the shift to ‘more-market’ and the privatisation of some of the public sector is well known….
Continue reading this entry »
MMP has reduced policy extremism, but more consensus politics are needed to solve our big economic questions Listener: 21 October, 2006. Keywords: Environment & Resources; Governance; The rise in personality politics is an unexpected consequence of MMP. Certainly there are other factors, including a change in the US political debate (recall the attacks…
Continue reading this entry »
Presentation to a Leadership New Zealand seminar, 18 May 2006.
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Governance;
I am working on a book, The Globalisation of Nations, sponsored by the Marsden Fund. As the title suggests I am concerned with both the process of globalisation and how that affects the nation-state. Today I begin by giving a brief overview of the economics of globalisation, but my main focus will be about its impact on the nation-state.
This is a submission to the select committee considering the Electoral (Reduction in Number of Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
1. I wish to make a submission on the Electoral (Reduction in Number of Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill. I do so because my book The Whimpering of the State: Policy After MMP, raised some matters which are pertinent to the deliberations of the committee.
Discussions on the effectiveness of the health system need to separate out the funding from the provision. The Labour Government has poured a lot of money into the public health system in recent years (the boost actually began earlier under the National-NZF coalition government in 1996), and it has been disappointed by the results. It has concluded that there is something wrong on the providing side.
Small countries like New Zealand have a comparative advantage in good government.
Listener: 25 March, 2006.
Keywords: Governance;
At the end of the 1970s, we had to decide whether to have a high or low dam on the Clutha River. The Labour Opposition took a firm position. On the same day, its environment spokesperson said the party favoured the low dam, while the energy spokesperson said the party’s policy was for the high one. Mike Moore impishly explained that the plan was to make the dam high on one side and low on the other.
This was prepared as a Listener economics column on the assumption that National would propose fiscally prudent tax cuts, based on their cutting ‘waste’ (they mean ‘programs’). However, when National announced the size of its cuts, I canned the column for another. It wont be used, because its ‘news’ significance will have gone after the election, although no doubt I shall cannibalise some of it. I am putting it on the website for the record.
Keywords: Governance; Regulation & Taxation;
Other articles on the 2005 Election Tax Debate
Politicians “are talking as though it will be easy to cut enough fat from the state to pay for tax cuts – it won’t be. Believe me I’ve been there and I have done that. The combination of the State Enterprises Act, the Public Finance Act and the State Sector Act, which I helped to design and implement, brought remarkable improvements in the effectiveness of public organisations and lower costs. I wrote a textbook about it. But those systems have not been used vigorously for a while and some slack has got into the system. We can get better value for money but it has to be done with a scalpel not an axe. … Designing tax cuts is child’s play. It is on the expenditure side where all the problems are and where skill and experience are needed.” (Graham Scott)
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).
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.
Prepared for some members of the councils of Tertiary Educational Institutions. (The choice of the VUW accounts to illustrate the general issues is fortuitous, and is not intended to reflect in any way – positively or negatively – on the university.)
Keywords: Education: Governance;
Statement of Financial Performance
Debates about student fees usually focus on the ‘Statement of Financial Performance’ which describes the revenue and expenditure of the Tertiary Educational Institution (TEI). However we shall see that other accounts are also important in order to understand this one. Table 1 shows the 2002 Statement of Financial Performance for the Victoria University of Wellington (VUW).[1] Its website is where you can find the details. (Attached to most line items is a ‘note’ which it is always wise to check when if you are interested in that line.)
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).
Listener 8 March, 2003.
Keywords: Business & Finance; Governance;
Underneath the world economy’s financial crisis is one of corporate governance. A decade or so ago there was considerable confidence that the best way to run the great businesses of the world (and just about everything else) was the way in which they were run.
Keywords: Governance;
Note, this index only covers direct governance issues. Indexes which cover some issues indirectly are Education; Globalisation; Health Reforms; Maori.
Chapter for the New Zealand Government and Politics 2ed, edited by Raymond Miller (OUP). First Edition Chapter
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Governance; Political Economy & History;
In recent years there has been increasing concern that the phenomenon of supranational economic integration, popularly known as economic ‘globalisation’, is undermining the sovereignty of the nation state. In New Zealand, this has been symbolised by international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organisation (WTO). This chapter will explore the economic context of the debate.
History
Sequencing (December 1983)
Freeze and Thaw
(July 1984)
Ssh …It’s the Big ‘‘D’’ (August 1984)
Confidentially Yours (August 1984)
Devaluation!: Five Turbulent Days in 1984 and Then … (July 1985)
Economic Liberalisation: Where Do People Fit In?
(May 1987)
From Run to Float: the Making of the Rogernomics Exchange Rate Policy (September 1989)
Liberalization Sequencing: The New Zealand Case (December 1989)
Towards A Political Economy of New Zealand: the Tectonics of History (October 1994)
The Wild Bunch?: An Inquiry is Needed to Restore Treasury’s Integrity (August 1996)
The Great Diversification: Ch 9 of Globalization and a Welfare State (December 1997)
The State Steps In: Michael Bassett Makes A Case for Intervention. (August 1999)
Remaking New Zealand and Australian Economic Policy by Shaun Goldfinch (August 2001)
The Treasury and the Nationbuilding State (December 2001)
Evaluation
New Zealand’s Economic Performance This is an Index
Economic and Other Ideas Behind the New Zealand Reforms
(October 1994)
For Whom the Deal Tolls (Of Dogma and Dealers) (August 1996)
The Economic Impact of the Employment Contracts Act (October 1997)
Microeconomic Reform: The New Zealand Experience (February 1998)
Some Macroeconomics of the Employment Contracts Act (November 1998)
View From Abroad: What Do We Know about Economic Growth? (May 1999)
The Model Economist: Bryan Philpott (1921-2000) (August 2000)
Comparison with Australia: New Zealand’s Post-war Economic Growth Performance (August 2002)
The Debate
Waist Deep in the Big Muddy? (February 1991)
Friends in High Places: Rogernomic Policies Have Powerful Allies in Australia (April 1994)
Systemic Failure (December 1995)
Ignoring the Critics (February 1997)
A Permanent Revolution? (March 1997)
In the Dark: The State of Research Into the Economy is An Embarrassment (June 1997)
The New Zealand Experiment: A Model for World Structural Adjustment? (Review) (July 1997)
Out of Tune: Even the Officials Admit the Health Reforms Were Fatally Flawed. (December 1997)
Money for Jams: the Government Response to Roading Reforms is Commercialisation. (January 1998)
Reforms, Risks, and Rogernomics (March 1999)
The London Economist and the New Zealand Economy (December 2000)
Locked Out: of Free Press and Free Economics (May 2001)
A Surplus of Imitation (June 2001)
Government Spending and Growth Rates: A Methodological Debate (January-May 2002)
From Pavlova Paradise Revisited by Austin Mitchell (July 2002)
Manure and the Modern Economy: Has Economic Policy Hardly Changed? (September 2002)
From is This As Good As it Gets? (December 2002)
1999 and All That (January 2004)
Books
The Commercialisation of New Zealand (1997)
In Stormy Seas: the Post-war New Zealand Economy (Chapters 15-16) (1997)
The Whimpering of the State: Policy After MMP (1999)