A book about two psychologists who have altered the way we think about the way we think. For many people, Michael Lewis is best known for his 2010 book The Big Short and the follow-up film, which describes the carryings-on of the financial sector in the American housing market which underlay the Global Financial Crisis. In fact…
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Your In-tray is piled high. Dear Bill, I recall when you first entered Parliament 26 years ago, it was widely thought you were prime-ministerial material. You’ve made it. Congratulations. National was going through the extremist phase of Ruthanasia and Jennicide at the time. You were marked as someone who came from the great National progressive…
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Could the alienated grumpies have a greater effect on New Zealand political life? This was written before John Key announced his resignation. Other than perhaps the tense I think there is no need for revision. Unfortunately most analysis on the American elections focuses on who voted but, as Bob Chapman pointed out, the Non-Vote Party…
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A new book leads to ponderings on our technology strategy. Technology is an ambiguous notion. Its most common use in economics arises in the following way. The laws of thermodynamics mean that there exist production functions which relate inputs to outputs. The most familiar ones have a single output generated by inputs of labour and…
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Can Trump wreck the world trading system? New Zealand is such a small country that it is very easy to be internationally bullied. Much of our diplomatic effort aims to minimise such bullying, but fear of it lurks behind concerns about what a Trump administration might do, not only to us but the rest of…
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The times are a’changing, as recent macroeconomic fashions are being abandoned and old verities are being restated. Alan Blinder, an American economist, described as ‘one of the great economic minds of his generation,’ was an economic adviser to President Clinton and was a Vice Chair of the American Federal Reserve (central bank). He is known…
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The alienated Angries who supported Brexit and Trump are not going to go away. If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied. Arch-imperialist Rudyard Kipling’s bitter couplet, written shortly after the death of his son at Loos in September 1915, is an alternative view…
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While overall income inequality may have been relatively stable over the last two decades, it appears to be increasing in Auckland (and perhaps in our other big urban centres). This column honours Bob Chapman (1922-2004), professor of Political Studies at the University of Auckland, remembered for his mentoring of many students including Helen Clark. He…
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A novel about an historical event reminds us of the health redisorganisation of the 1990s, raising issues remaining relevant to today. I puzzle at how politicians and advisers can make giant mistakes but are never held accountable. The notion of accountability became fashionable in the neoliberal changes of the 1980s and many people further down…
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Pretending it can, or that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand can function independently from the rest of the world, could generate a financial crash. The very joining of monetary policy and fiscal policy into a single phrase is a criticism of the neoliberal macroeconomics. The reconfiguration under Rogernomics assumed that the two could be…
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What does the latest Economics Prize in honour of Alfred Nobel tell us about economics as a science? Alfred Nobel did not endow a prize in economics. In 1968 the Swedish National (i.e. central) Bank founded a ‘Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel’. The award’s announcement is coordinated with the annual Nobel…
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No, but we need to address poverty. Focusing on poverty targets which are not to be achieved in the time of the government which sets them is wasting energy and opportunity. Despite being frequently ignored, Gilling’s Law is one of the most powerful social laws I know. Formulated by Don Gilling, a retired professor of…
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A report explains why: small but accumulating biases together on top of adverse early-life social and environmental conditions. To be frank, this column on criminology is not in an area of my expertise. But in the course of my reading to place economics in a social context – I do that a lot – I…
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We don’t need to refresh trade policy; we need to rethink how best to engage with the world in the context of increasing globalisation. The Government is ‘refreshing’ its international trade strategy. Refresh is a euphemism. It ought to overhaul it. Here are some guidelines; I begin with the overarching framework. The context is globalisation…
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Last week’s report on wellbeing and the household income distribution told us some new things. Are we listening? Sadly, the latest MSD report The Material Wellbeing of NZ Households, by Bryan Perry, released last week, passed by quickly. It said, broadly, that there is no obviously significant shift in the level of inequality in recent years….
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Is it possible to have sensible discussions in public? Last June there was a kerfuffle in the online magazine Spinoff over attitudes to intellectual activity in New Zealand. It was precipitated by an extract from Auckland retired academic Roger Horrocks’s recently published collection of essays, Re-inventing New Zealand.. The excerpt came from ‘A Short History of “The New Zealand Intellectual”’…
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What are the possibilities for the future housing prices? What can we do? Two eminent but retired Reserve Bankers, Don Brash and Arthur Grimes, have argued that house prices should halve. I am not sure whether they actually mean it or are just vividly pointing out that house prices are about double the sustainable level….
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As the proposed Ministry of Vulnerable Children shows, we do not take prevention seriously. In 1920, someone wrote in the Maoriland Worker, ‘The politician is like the person who would build an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, instead of constructing a good fence at the top.’ The image seems to have been coined in a…
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A Professor of Education challenges universities about their purpose. What are universities really for? was the topic of a recent lecture by Hugh Lauder, professor of Education and Political Economy at the University of Bath (previously on the Canterbury and VUW faculties). His answer may not be what you think; this is an economist’s response. New Zealand…
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Free movement of labour is often described as one of the four fundamental economic freedoms. Putting it into practice is somewhat more difficult. To make the intentions of this column clear, I am generally in favour of migration. I am a descendant of immigrants and live in a country in which virtually everyone admits to…
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