Listener: 1 September 1, 2012 New Zealand ran out of farmland in the mid-1950s. Of course, it has always been limited, but the opportunities to create new farms ran out and the existing ones were getting bigger, so the job opportunities on them did not increase. Countries short of farmland used to acquire more by…
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Presentation for the Wellington Branch of the NZIIA, 15 May 2012 Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money; Next week, the government will present its annual budget to parliament. There will be a lot more media space given to it than – say – to this paper, but its significance is much less than is…
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Paper to NZIIA Seminar ‘Addressing the Global Agenda’, 20 October 2011 Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; My message today is both simple and troubling.[1] The simple version is that the unipolar world is coming to an end, and is being replaced by a multipolar one. The change reflects a new phase in the globalisation of the…
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The Reserve Bank’s cobbled measures got us through the 2008 crisis Listener: 23 July, 2011. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History; 1878: While Julius Vogel was on a ship to London, the City Bank of Glasgow crashed. The London money market – the financial centre of the world – plunged. Although we were…
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Some Preparatory Notes: ultimately not used. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money; I am not sure you have asked the right person to be on the panel, since the topic is policy; my interests are research. So I thought I would consult an old friend, Cassandra. Fortunately I dont have to channel her; she…
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Wairarapa Institute of International Affairs: 25 May, 2011. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; It is easy thinking about the future by projecting recent trends. But if the past is a foreign country, so is the future . Tonight I am going to paint a scenario of a world economy which will be very different from anything…
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I wrote this to set out my thinking. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; The economics of the world food system in the twenty-first century is likely to be dramatically different from that of the twentieth. In the past, food prices fell relative to manufacturing prices, as manufacturing concentrated in a few rich (mainly North Atlantic but…
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Annual Conference of the Fair Trade Movement; 9 October 2010. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Economists have spent over two hundred years thinking about how markets work. They have concluded they are not fair but in general they are effective. You get a sense of this by looking at the growth of the world economy over…
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This series of “Listener” columns were an occasional series that arose out of a trip funded by the 2009 NZIER-NBR Economist of the Year Award. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History; Engaging China: http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1220 (26 June 2010) Will China Rule the World? http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1247 (24 July, 2010) China or Bust: http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1257 (7 August, 2010)…
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Lessons in how to use an economic surplus. Listener: 2 October, 2010. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History; More than one tourist has asked how much it cost to build Beijing’s Forbidden City, a complex of 980 surviving buildings covering three-quarters of a hectare. Better to ignore the monetary cost and think about…
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For the 131st AGM of the New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association, 13 September, 2001 in Christchurch. (Revised) Keywords: Business & Finance; Globalisation and Trade; Growth & Innovation; This presentation takes place barely a week after the Great Canterbury Earthquake. It is a tribute to the fortitude of those who are here and their ancestors…
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Selling products around the world is much more complicated than it once seemed. Listener: 4 September, 2010 Keywords: Business & Finance; Globalisation & Trade; There is no problem understanding why Fonterra exports milk products to China. New Zealand is a very efficient producer of milk, and it sells its large surplus offshore. But why does…
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Spectacular Growth May Be Masking Unstable Foundations. Listener, 7 August, 2010. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History; The question was asked aggressively, and came from the Australian-Chinese businessman as we sat down for lunch: “Is there a bubble?” I avoided a direct answer; I had only briefly visited China, but I knew what…
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Listener: 24 July, 2010 Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; For most of the world’s history, economic activity was determined by population. Inequality between regions did not happen much, because any rise in incomes was checked by a Malthusian expansion of population. But the spectacular 19th-century industrialisation of Europe and North America concentrated economic activity there and…
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Paper to the Wairarapa Branch of the NZIIA, July 21 2010. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money; Introduction Future historians are likely to identify the topics of this evening’s presentation as the two major economic forces of our times: the rising importance of the Chinese economy and the Global Financial Crisis. My task tonight…
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Note to a foreign policy meeting under Chatham House rules, 21 June, 2010. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Political Economy & History; The central thesis of my paper is that the balance of world economic power is changing dramatically. The shift reflects the world economy shifting back to the pattern of the eighteenth century and earlier…
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Presentation to an EPMU seminar, 29 April, 2010 Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Labour Studies; Twenty years ago the Engineering Union commissioned me to think about the alternative to Rogernomics. According to the last prime minister, Helen Clark, my report Open Growth was influential on the last Labour Government’s economic strategy, although it was not totally…
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A fundamental change in the global economy bodes well for New Zealand. Listener: 20 March, 2010 Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Throughout most of the 20th century, the prices we got for our farm exports fell relative to what we paid for our imports. This drop in our terms of trade meant we had to export…
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Presentation for the Wellington Branch of the NZIIA AGM, 16 March 2010 Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Last year was a period of economic re-stabilisation after the Global Financial Crisis which began in 2008, although there were clear signs of its onset in 2007 and even 2006. It would be easy to think that the world…
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Paper for NZIIA Seminar “New Zealand and the BRIC Group”, 24 November 2009 It may be useful to first read New Developments in Trade and Trade Theory. Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; I begin with a question; its answer eventually leads to an extraordinary scenario for the future of the world. ‘What two countries had the…
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