Category Archives: Macroeconomics & Money

Sequences

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Listener, Macroeconomics & Money on by .

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.

All the Keynes Men

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

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.

Three New Zealand Depressions

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

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.

1966 and All That

This entry was posted in Literature and Culture, Macroeconomics & Money on by .

Listener 12 May, 1979

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;

The terms of trade measure the value of our exports. In the 1950s and the early 1960s they were high, which meant that we were able to buy a lot of imports for each tonne of wool, meat or butterfat. It may well be that for those 18 years we experienced the longest period of high terms of trade in our entire history .As a result New Zealand had one of its most sustained periods of prosperity. Not the least of the achievements were moderate economic growth, low inflation and negligible unemployment.

The Third Great Depression

This entry was posted in Listener, Macroeconomics & Money, Political Economy & History on by .

Listener 10 December, 1977. This is the first of my Listener columns

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Political Economy & History;

New Zealand is in the middle of its third great depression. Our first, the long depression, commenced in the late 1860s and finished in the 1890s. Our second, the inter-war depression, was from 1921 to 1939. The third comrnenced in the mid-1960s; its end is not in sight.