Author Archives: Brian Easton

Thinking About Housing Policy

Presentation to U3A Southland series on Housing in NZ, via ZOOM, 17 February, 2023. Throughout my life as a professional economist, I have been challenged by the question of whether goods and services should be provided privately or publicly. I recall in the 1960s, when there were strong calls for nationalisation of many things, the…
Continue reading this entry »

SOME BACKGROUND TO BRIAN EASTON.

Headlines Born March 1943 in Christchurch to Harry and Thelma Easton. Eldest of three. Keith (1944-2015), Jean (1950-) Married Jenny in 1966. We went our separate ways from 1996. Anita (1971-); Tama (1974-) Education 1947: Selwyn St Kindergarten 1948-1953: Somerfield Primary School 1954-5: Christchurch South Intermediate 1956-1960: Christchurch Boy’s High School 1961-63: University of Canterbury…
Continue reading this entry »

Brian’s BOOKS & MONOGRAPHS

Books The Future of New Zealand Medicine: A Progressive View (Peryer, 1974) 150pp – joint editor, with D.W. BEAVEN, and contributor. Social Policy and the Welfare State in New Zealand (Allen & Unwin, 1980) 182pp. (Japanese Edition, 1987) Pragmatism and Progress: Social Security in the Seventies (University of Canterbury, 1981) 128pp. Economics for New Zealand…
Continue reading this entry »

Brian’s Honorary Positions and Distinctions

Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (1967-) Honorary Research Fellow, Research Project on Planning, Victoria University of Wellington: 1986-2000 Downing Professorial Fellow in Social Economics at the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne: 1987 Social Science Research Fund Committee Hodge Fellow at Massey University: 1989- Associate, Institute of Executive Development, Massey University: 1993-2000…
Continue reading this entry »

IN OPEN SEAS: PART III: Paddling (1986- )

Brian Easton (Journalist) Interviews Brian Easton (Economist) Part I is IN OPEN SEAS: PART I: On the Seashore: (1943-1970);  Part II is IN OPEN SEAS: Part II: Launched (1970-1986). Part II and Part III were  going to be published as a companion pieces in Asymmetric Information but there have been no issues since August 2021 Why did…
Continue reading this entry »

IN OPEN SEAS: Part II: Launched (1970-1986)

Brian Easton (Journalist) Interviews Brian Easton (Economist) Part I is IN OPEN SEAS: PART I: On the Seashore: (1943-1970) This was going to be published as a companion piece in Asymmetric Information but there have been no issues since August 2021 From Sussex University to Canterbury University? It was very different economics department in 1970…
Continue reading this entry »

Presentation for New Zealand Productivity Commission Launch of Inquiry on Economic Resilience

Thursday 24 November The Commission’s report on the seminar is here. It includes the my overheads which accompanied the presentation. Introduction I have been commissioned to prepare a report for the New Zealand Productivity Commission’s inquiry into economic resilience. The purpose of the report is threefold: 1.         to describe how New Zealand has attempted to…
Continue reading this entry »

What does the Budget mean for the health sector in the long term?

Kaitiaki Nursing New Zealand May 25, 2022 It was surprising that Finance Minister Grant Robertson, in a pre-Budget speech, said that he thought the current health system was “incredibly inefficient”. Of course there are some inefficiencies in health-care delivery, just as there are in private enterprise: mistakes happen, some treatments could have been managed better…
Continue reading this entry »

David Ian Pool: The Father of Aotearoa New Zealand Demography: (22 November 1936 – 28 April 2022)

Waikato Times May 21 2022 The University of Waikato made an inspired choice when it appointed Ian Pool to a chair in sociology in 1978. Strictly, he was not a sociologist. His masters degree had been in geography at the Auckland University College; his 1964 PhD in Demography was at the Australian National University under…
Continue reading this entry »

McCarthy, Woodhouse and The Proposed Redundancy Social Insurance Scheme

This is adapted from a section of book, ‘In Open Seas’, which I am writing. I have published this extract because there has been some ahistoric claims about the characteristics of New Zealand’s public income support system. The 1972 Royal Commission on Social Security (the ‘McCarthy Commission’) pointed out that there was a case for…
Continue reading this entry »

Reviews of Autobiographies by Politicians

Jim Bolger Fridays with Jim (September 2021) Simon Bridges The Ambiguity of Labels (April 2020) Michael Cullen In Defence of Social Democracy (July 2021) Michael Cullen’s Policy Achievements (July 2021) Review of Michael Cullen’s Autobiography (November 2021) Chris Finlayson Liberal-Conservatives And Social Democrats: The Future Of Māori (September 2021)

Review of Michael Cullen’s Autobiography

New Zealand International Review November/December 2021 Vol 46, No 6 p.26-7. LABOUR SAVING: A Memoir by Michael Cullen (Allen and Unwin, Auckland, 432pp, $50) In the 40 years since Muldoon’s reign, the predominant form of national political leadership has been a dual premiership in which, broadly, the prime minister manages the politics and the co-premier…
Continue reading this entry »

FRIDAYS WITH JIM

Conversations about our country with Jim Bolger: David Cohen (Massey University Press, Auckland, 287pp, $45.) NZ International Review (September/October 2021) p.29-31 James Brendan Bolger presents a paradox. When he became prime minister, a Tom Scott cartoon presented him as a kind of Forrest Gump; in 2017 he outshone his other three panellists: Helen Clark, Geoffrey…
Continue reading this entry »

IN OPEN SEAS: Part I: On the Seashore: (1943-1970)

Brian Easton (Journalist) Interviews Brian Easton (Economist) Published in Asymmetric Information, Issue 71 August 2021. You grew up in Christchurch? In Somerfield, in the south of the city, in a state house the family bought. Dad was an electrician who in the middle of his life became a psychopaedic nurse. Mum was a clerical worker…
Continue reading this entry »

IN PRAISE OF THE VIENNESE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas: Janek Wasserman (Yale University Press; 2019) Asymmetric Information, Issue No. 70 / April 2021 p.7-8. Mentioning to colleagues that I was reading a book on Austrian economists almost invariably led to strong responses – sometimes positive, more often negative. But, typically, their responses were…
Continue reading this entry »

Some Published Articles on Behavioural Economics by Brian Easton

In the Abstract: Will Most Of Us Have an Impoverished Retirement? (June 6, 1998) Richard Thaler’s Savings Principles (7 January 1999) Two Styles Of Management (1 July 1999)             This reviews             Thaler, R.H. (1992) The Winner’s Curse: Paradoxes and Anomolies of Economic Life, Princeton University Press;             Thaler, R.H. (1994) Quasi Rational Economics, Russell…
Continue reading this entry »