Are we too focused on material consumption at the expense of wellbeing? GDP is a measure of market activity. It was originally developed to understand what was happening to the market economy, especially about the rise in unemployment during the Great Depression. It was never intended to summarise all human economic activity. For more than…
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Presentation to Auckland U3A Meadowbank, 21 August I have been asked to talk about New Zealand’s economic history and what we might learn from it which sheds light on the future of the economy. I shall have to be selective. Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand is 250,000 words. In…
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In too many areas we are avoiding thinking about or preparing for oncoming changes. About a decade ago I had a ‘Lambton Quay’ conversation with an environment policy advisor. For those who do not live in Wellington, LQ is the main shopping street which starts at Parliament buildings; it also has cafes and government offices….
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It is more than a four-letter word exercise. In 1986, the government commissioned a review of science policy chaired by ex-Governor General David Beattie. Among the agencies it interviewed was the Treasury, in the course of which Beattie asked whether it had a science plan. The Assistant Secretary of the Treasury spluttered; he was clearly…
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This column is a response to the complaint that we have poor economic performance because we have summer holidays. It praises them. Summertime, and the living is easy. We used to take our kids to Coes Ford on the Selwyn River near Christchurch for mucking around in the water. Great memories. Apparently, you can’t nowadays….
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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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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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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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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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Evaluating the impact of social policies will be very difficult but the government does not seem to be doing much real evaluation. A couple of terms that have recently become fashionable are ‘cost-benefit analysis’ (CBA) and ‘social-investment analysis’ (SIA), typically proposed by people who have never done either. They sound good but have their limitations….
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The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am going to explore the Bill from the perspective of its proponents with their focus on short-term material output…
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It is too easy to react to a problem rather than to tackle it thoughtfully. It’s Friday night. You plan to have a couple of drinks with friends. Saturday morning you can’t remember how many you had – was it seven? – but you wish you hadn’t. What you are showing in economic terms is…
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The Chatham Islands may offer insights on to how to govern New Zealand better. It is said that our first minister of regional development – in the early 1970s – claimed that he wanted all our regions to have above average incomes. Duh! You would expect that there would be some variation in regional incomes….
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The Climate Change Commission should immediately publish the details of its economic models and enable the public to access them. There is something strange going on with the Climate Change Commission. In its draft report the CCC said ‘We have looked at the impacts which our budgets could have on the economy and society…
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Presentation on 26 August, 2019. The full submission is here. Summary 1. Climate change and sea level rising is one of the greatest challenges the world faces. 2. New Zealand should play its part in the world’s effort to restrain greenhouse gas emissions. 3. I broadly endorse the intention of the Climate Change Response (Zero…
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Submission to Select Committee reviewing the bill July 2019 Fundamental Recommendation That the 2050 target in the legislation be defined in terms of ‘net’ methane emissions rather than ‘gross’ methane emissions. Proposed Amendment That all references to biogenic methane emissions in Clause 5O be deleted. In particular the current proposed clause 5O 5O Target…
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Written for a farm journal but not published
Summary:. Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas. Some methane comes from atmospheric carbon-dioxide which is fixed in grass, eaten by livestock, belched into the atmosphere and eventually returns to atmospheric carbon-dioxide. Before it breaks down, the methane molecules form a ‘cloud’ in the atmosphere which adds to global warming at a much higher rate per…
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The following is a ‘pundit column’, which was never published because the 2017 election swept it aside. Our carbon emissions regime is costing us a fortune; why are we not doing something about it? Suppose an item of government spending blew out from virtually nothing a few years back to more than $400m a year…
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The growth of farm output may be slowing. Specialty cheeses show an alternative strategy of further post-farmgate processing. Land for farming ran out in the 1950s. Farm production intensified. We shifted from more dollars of farm output by using more land to getting more dollars per unit of land. Among the challenges we had was…
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