The Government’s plans to remove the wellbeing provisions in the Public Finance Act represents a reversal of the way society is travelling. I welcomed the Ardern-Robertson’s Government decision to focus on wellbeing in its budgets. It went on to amend the Public Finance Act to require the government to state the wellbeing objectives that will…
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ACT ‘s neoliberals are still trying to sneak in a change to the constitution. When ACT – the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers – was formed, its then party leader, Roger Douglas, with an optimistic exaggeration which marked his time as Minister of Finance, announced that he was sure it would get more than 50%…
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Monopsonies – dominant purchasers – need to be restrained as much as monopolies – dominant sellers. That is what pay equity is about. This column is not about you-know-who. There are many other political bullies offshore; sometimes there are local ones, as when a politician attacks a group which cannot defend itself or a cabinet…
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Perhaps the state of the economy is not as sound as we are being told. There was an odd little story over the 2025 Budget, hardly worth relating except that it tells something about budget politics. The original invitations to the lockdown, the meeting which gives a preview of the budget to the media so…
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While many of the world’s Christian religions seem preoccupied with personal issues that Jesus, their founder, barely touched upon, they must engage with economic issues too. Robert Prevost, chose the name Leo on becoming the 267th Bishop of Rome – the Pope – in homage to Leo XIII (in office 1878-1903) who issued the 1891…
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Should we pursue a ‘Golden Rule’ where any public borrowing for consumption is temporary? This columnist is a fiscal conservative who is cautious about government borrowing for public consumption. I was not originally. The Keynesian model I first studied said borrow as much as is necessary to sustain demand. But the model was of a…
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A major American study suggests they are not This column is about the white working class. In the US 2024 elections they mainly voted for Donald Trump. Had they voted with the white middle class, Trump would have lost the election with only 42 percent of voters instead of the 50 percent he actually won….
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The budget runup is far from easy. Budget 2025 day is Thursday 22 May. About a month earlier in a normal year, the macroeconomic forecasts would be completed (the fiscal ones would still be tidying up) and the main policy decisions would have been made (but there would still be a lot of policy detail…
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Four eighty-year-old books which are still vitally relevant today. Between 1942 and 1945, four refugees from Vienna each published a ground-breaking – seminal – book.* They left their country after Austria was taken over by fascists in 1934 and by Nazi Germany in 1938. Previously they had lived in ‘Red Vienna’; ruled by Social Democratic…
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A modest attempt to analyse Donald Trump’s tariff policies. Alfred Marshall, whose textbook was still in use 40 years after he died wrote ‘every short statement about economics is misleading with the possible exception of my present one.’ (The text book is 719 pages.) It’s a timely reminder that any short analysis of Trump’s tariff…
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While there have been decades of complaints – from all sides – about the workings of the Resource Management Act (RMA), replacing is proving difficult. The Coalition Government is making another attempt. To help answer the question, I am going to use the economic lens of the Coase Theorem, set out by Ronald Coase who…
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New Zealand’s economic development has always been a partnership between the public and private sectors. Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) have become fashionable again, partly because of the government’s ambitions to accelerate infrastructural development. There is, of course, an ideological element too, while some of the opposition to them is also ideological. PPPs come in so many different…
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It is said that economists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. That may be an exaggeration, but an even better response is to point out economists do know the difference. They did not at first. Classical economics thought that the price of something reflected the objective cost of producing it –…
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By international standards the New Zealand healthcare system appears satisfactory – certainly no worse generally than average. Yet it is undergoing another redisorganisation. While doing some unrelated work, I came across some international data on the healthcare sector which seemed to contradict my – and the conventional wisdom’s – view of the healthcare sector. Broadly,…
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Peter Frankopan’s The Earth Transformed: An Untold History is a compelling account of the interaction between humans and the environment. We would be unwise to ignore it. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Oxford professor of history Peter Frankopan was initially widely admired. But critics point out that the book exaggerated…
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As Lady Bracknell almost said, ‘to lose one may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.’ And so a second Government Statistician has made a hasty exit, The official reason in each case was the management of the population census but the cult of generic management is the underlying failure Generic…
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A Bully in a China Shop? It is a mystery what Donald Trump learned when he did his BA in economics at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-1960s. The Ivy League college has a good economics reputation, but even had Trump been a top student – unlikely or he would trumpet it – his…
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Severe geological and financial earthquakes are inevitable. We just don’t know how soon and how they will play out. Are we putting enough effort into preparing for them? Every decade or so the international economy has a major financial crisis. We cannot predict exactly when or exactly how it will happen. (For what its worth,…
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The Yes Prime Minister This transcript of a recent conversation between the Prime Minister and his chief economic adviser has not been verified. We’ve announced we are the ‘Yes Government’. Do you like it? Yes, Prime Minister. Dreamed up by the PR team. It’s about being committed to growth. Not that the PR team know…
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Do its Property Right Provisions Make Sense? Last week I pointed out that it is uninformed to argue that the New Zealand’s apparently poor economic performance can be traced only to poor regulations. Even were there evidence they had some impact, there are other factors. Of course, we should seek to administer effectively a system…
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