Paul Krugman described behavioural economics as the most important innovation in the economics discipline for half a century.

How to run a successful pressure group. In 2013 a group of idealists, led by Jordan Williams and David Farrar, established the Taxpayers’ Union. To celebrate its first decade as surely New Zealand’s ...

Industrial policy is once more on the agenda of many governments. There is a long history of Industrial Policies (IP) aimed at promoting a particular sector of an economy. When Henry VIII abandoned ...

A Rogernome Defends the Policies. One of the difficulties in making sense of what happened during the Rogernomics Stagnation from 1985 to 1993 is that professional economists sympathetic to its ...

Apply the golden fiscal rule and invest prudently. A lender is greatly disadvantaged compared to a borrower. The borrower gets the cash immediately. In exchange, the lender gets a promise that the ...

Is the consequence of the Simpson Report proposals for restructuring the health system poorer accountability to people? When in doubt, centralise‘ has been a persistent theme in New Zealand public ...

Understanding its history helps understanding where it is going. The ideas which underpin Kiwisaver entered into the New Zealand political dialogue in the late 1960s when the Labour Party, then in ...

Angus Deaton’s ‘Economics in America’ challenges the direction that economics has taken. In 2015 Angus Deaton was the sole awardee of the Bank of Sweden’s Prize in Honour of Alfred Nobel, for his ...

The recent reduction in the US credit rating signals that market lenders are not happy with the US fiscal arrangements. New Zealand’s lower rating is a warning that we could do better too. Fitch ...

Implementing the New Zealand Health and Disability System review not only involves major technical problems but creates fascinating political tensions. The government is promising to redisorganise the ...

Do its Property Right Provisions Make Sense? Last week I pointed out that it is uninformed to argue that the New Zealand’s apparently poor economic performance can be traced only to poor regulations.

The book I am currently working on – tentative title ‘In Open Seas’ – looks at the current and future New Zealand. One chapter describes the policy towards Covid using the trope of warfare. It covers ...