Listener: 17 Match, 2012. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; Eminent economist James Tobin in 1972 suggested a financial transaction tax on spot-market currency conversions. Many others have supported him. That includes people who don’t like money and think of a financial transaction tax as a sin tax. (Tobin certainly did not. He was…
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Listener: 3 March 2012. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; Forecasts for the New Zealand economy have been wound back since last year. Given the deteriorating state of the world economy, they will probably be wound back even further. And that’s going to make it even harder for the Government to meet its election…
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Global Alcohol Policy Conference: Thailand, 14-16 February as Honorary Research Fellow at SHORE, Massey University. Keywords: Health; Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy; The theme of this presentation is that alcohol is no ordinary commodity; economic policy has to think about it differently. The alcoholic beverages industry, of course, produces jobs and profits for investors, just like any…
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Chapter 3: “The Leaky buildings Crisis: Understanding the Issues Keywords: Regulation & Taxation; Introduction[1] The first commercial transaction in New Zealand involved Maori exchanging with the Endeavour’s seamen fish for tapa cloth. (Not nails; despite their iconic appearance in a host of images; the ship’s officers offered them, but the neolithic Maori did not yet…
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THE TOO HARD BASKET Listener: 19 January, 2012. Keywords: Environment & Resources; Distributional Economics; Macroeconomics & Money; Political Economy & History; Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy; Every government has issues it hopes will go away. They don’t. Here are some for our one. Our Emissions Trading Scheme is looking like a dog’s breakfast, and/or something…
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Listener: 14 October, 2011. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; I have been preoccupied by leaky building syndrome, which may have damaged up to 110,000 dwellings as well as costing considerable domestic stress and even lives. Commercial and public buildings have suffered, too. There were many causes of the disaster but it illustrates the…
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This article by John McCrone, features writer of “The Christchurch Press”, was published on 20 August in the Mainlander Section of “The Press”. It was also published by “The Dominion Post” on the same day under the title ‘Legacy of Rogernomics: Less Red Tape But More Heartache and Financial Disasters’. It is republished here because…
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Listener: 9 May, 2011 Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; John Key has shown considerable ability responding to the moods of the New Zealand public. That’s why I’m astonished by his rejection of an earthquake levy, involving a relatively small tax on income over 10 or more years to pay off the costs incurred…
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Keywords: Health; Regulation & Taxation;
The Social Costs of Alcohol Misuse
The Regulation of Alcohol
Paper for the launch of “Alcohol No Ordinary Commodity 2 ed”, 19 August, 2010. Keywords: Health; Regulation & Taxation; Executive Summary: This paper argues that the harm from the consumption of alcohol can be reduced by targeting the minimum of price of alcohol, but by using an excise drawback rather than setting a minimum price…
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Commissioned Report: April 2010 Keywords: Health; Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy; Executive Summary The following is not the usual executive summary. Rather it draws out the policy implications of the known costs and benefits of gambling, thereby summarising the main report, which consists of two parts. Appendix I is a general account about how economists…
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PSA Journal, March 2010. Keywords: Distributional Economics; Regulation & Taxation; In my Commercialisation of New Zealand there is a chapter on ‘the abandoning of equity’, of how under Rogernomics social fairness went steadily down in the policy priorities. The report on tax reform by the Victoria University of Wellington Tax Working Group (TWG) confirms the…
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We are paying a very high price for failing to regulate properly. Listener: 20 February, 2010. Keywords: Regulation & Taxation; The global financial crisis is estimated to have cost the US Government US$90 billion, or about 0.6% of its annual output. The equivalent cost in New Zealand would be NZ$1.1 billion. But take a look…
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Policy Quarterly, Vol 6, No 2, May 2010., based on a paper presented to a seminar on 16 February, 2010. Keywords: Regulation & Taxation; I begin this paper with a manufacturer’s warning: that I use the term ‘regulation’ slightly differently from the way it is used in some other papers presented in this symposium, coming…
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Sue Bradford’s departure leaves a huge gap in the Greens, and Parliament. Listener: 12 December, 2009. Keywords: Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy; To work properly, the market must be “complete” – that is, all possible transactions must be able to be carried out. For example, those who invested in finance firms such as Bridgecorp should…
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This paper was prepared in October 2009 for the Law Commission when it was reviewing alcohol policy. It is released under the Official Information Act. Keywords: Health; Regulation & Taxation Terms of Reference The Law Commission has asked for a report describing how a minimum price regime for alcoholic beverages might be implemented, and what…
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Tax, Saving Welfare and Retirement: Have We Lost our Way? Symposium, Retirement Policy and Research Centre, University of Auckland, 16 July, 2009 Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Maynard Keynes Keywords: Distributional Economics; History of Ideas, Methodology &…
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Paper for Towards a Value Driven Public Sector Summit, 15 July, 2009. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; Social Policy; Before talking about the fiscal imperatives in the narrow sense, I want to make a couple of general remarks about the rhetoric of policy. . The first is that the need…
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I was unable to address the housing paper in my end of my seminar commentary at the RBNZ Professorial Workshop on the Current Financial Crisis (17 June 2009). This covers some of the things I wanted to say. By way of background Luci Ellis, whose paper this note covers, is Head of Financial Stability at…
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Listener: 4 April, 2009. Keywords: Regulation & Taxation; At a recent conference sponsored by the Centre for Accounting, Governance and Taxation Research, the first two expert speakers each had 25 years’ experience in taxation reform, one in Australia, the other New Zealand. But if they haven’t got it right after a combined 50…
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