The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy. We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. The re-election of Donald Trump is…
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Does the Autumn 2024 British budget point to a change in fiscal strategies? Many countries found their fiscal position was unsustainable, following the 2008 Global Financial Crash. Their public spending was well in excess of their public revenue and they had to borrow more heavily than lenders thought prudent. Almost unanimously, such countries tried to…
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Last week’s column mentioned the three 2024 Nobel laureates in economics. The column focused only on the 2012 book Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson with little reference to Simon Johnson, although the three have worked closely together for about 30 years. Johnson published last year, with Acemoglu, a 599-page book: Power and Politics: Our…
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This year’s Nobel awards in economics raise critical issues about the future of the world. I was not alone with high hopes when the Soviet Union collapsed. It has been good to see various nations leave the yoke of the Soviet Empire and move towards liberal democracies with thriving economies although sometimes it has been…
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Healthcare sector management needs to break away from its obsession with financial information and focus on funding for access. Health New Zealand recently ‘proactively released’ 454 pages about its financial performance to July 2024. Here is a letter it did not release. Hon Dr Shane Reti, Minister of Health. Dear Minister. We have been deluging…
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What might the public’s increasing demands for safety and security tell the economist? Criminology and economics are quite different disciplines. Someone from one discipline trespasses on the other with the greatest of caution, something which, I’m afraid, not all economists have. There is a foolish economics literature about the ‘optimal level of crime’. Before it…
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Today’s mañana strategy will lead to a crisis for the oldest elderly. It is said that the only certainties are death and taxes, but a lack of each causes uncertainties. As longevity increases, the pressures on state spending increase. A reluctance to increase taxation means the pressures on the elderly increase. The dilemma is usually…
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Stagnation and Contraction In this column I use the less familiar measure of GDP per capita instead of the GDP measure favoured by the commentariat. I became familiar with it when I began doing international comparisons because of the population differences between countries, while I depended upon the measure while working on New Zealand’s economic…
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Congestion pricing is easier said than done. The first seminar I attended in Britain – around sixty years ago – explained a scheme for road usage pricing which would eliminate traffic congestion and direct roading investment. It was impressive and elegant (as many such seminar propositions are) but proved impractical and costly to implement (ditto)….
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The background to In Open Seas: How the New Zealand Labour Government Went Wrong:2017-2023 Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand, published in 2020, proved more successful than either I or the publisher (VUP, now Te Herenga Waka University Press) expected. I had expected that it would be a sleeper, a steady…
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Comment to Fabian Society at the National Theatre Alive Film of ‘NYE’: 13 September, 2024 You will hear I have some voice limitations. It is the result of successful surgery on my larynx. When I reflect on what happened, I am struck at the quality and the expertise of the healthcare professionals who treated me…
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An Infrastructure Commission report says we are keeping up with infrastructure better than we might have thought from the grumbling. But the challenge of providing for the future remains. I was astonished to learn that the quantity of our infrastructure has been keeping up with economic growth. Your paper almost certainly has daily reports of…
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Hardly anyone says what are ‘the principles of the treaty’. The courts’ interpretation restrain the New Zealand Government. While they about protecting a particular community, those restraints apply equally to all community in a liberal democracy – including a single person. Treaty principles were introduced into the governance of New Zealand by the Treaty of Waitangi Act…
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.AUKUS is a backward-looking policy. The World needs to move forward. Economists think that the more interconnected countries are by trade and investment, the less likely warfare will occur between them. On many occasions countries have consciously intensified those interconnections as an alternative to war. Examples include the federation of the American states into the…
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The underlying economics of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill rests on intellectual property rights. I have written elsewhere about the tension between information as a public good which economic efficiency requires to be freely available and yet, because it is costly to produce, may require payment to those who create the information. Any practical resolution of…
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The claim that there are currently 14 layers of management at Health New Zealand, raises wider issues of how we organise systems. I want to write a column about current proposals to redisorganise Health New Zealand but, frustratingly, the Coalition Government has not released evidence of its claim that the successor to the District Health…
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David Seymour describing himself as an ‘old-fashioned lefty’ caused a flurry in the commentariat. The responses were not always informed. One thought he was saying he was a Marxist. In fact it is relatively recent when Marxism became an important strain on New Zealand’s left. Our Communist Party formed only in 1921, after the rise…
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New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. Britain, then the international hegemon,…
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The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment. Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the announced strategy is going…
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Whether Britain leaving the European Union was right or wrong, good or bad is for the Brits to decide. But there are lessons about international trade to be learned from Brexit, especially as it is very unusual for an economy to break so completely from its major training partner. In Econ101 we are taught Ricardo’s…
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