Economy
A recent column was concerned that the next health system redisorganisation was about centralising control, without adequate accountability, rather than about how to provide better health care. There has gotta be a better way.
Read MoreDuring a recent public consultation on the future of Archives New Zealand, a key report was suppressed. The Ombudsman has ruled that the refusal was unjustified. Sadly, the consultation was over by the time of the the decision has been made. However, the law on the use of the Official Information Act has been clarified.
Read MoreIs the consequence of the Simpson Report proposals for restructuring the health system poorer accountability to people?
Read MoreWill the Covid Crisis lead to a dramatic redirection for New Zealand and the World?
Read MoreThe past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
Read MoreThe Government is spending like it was trying to win the election. The Opposition is trying to outbid it
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Oliver Twist, famously asked for ‘more’. He did not challenge the system of workhouses – Dickens did – nor the authority of Beadle Bumble. He was only nine.
Read MoreThe ownership of newspapers and televison channels is in turmoil, and they want to redisorganise public broadcasting.
Read MoreThe media treat budgets as bit of a circus: lots of theatre and soon forgotten. For a serious economist they show how a team of economists is thinking about the wider economy.
Read MoreI wrote this note to sort out my ideas on the significance of a covid-19 vaccine for the return to economic ‘normalcy’. I am sharing it but expect readers to recognise there are judgements in areas for which I have no expertise.
Read MoreIt is too easy to stick to conventional thinking when we are in a totally new economic environment. Thinking about distributional issues allows us to think deeper.
Read MoreIsolation and PPE in 1918
I have been asked what my book, Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand, out this month, says about the Covid Crisis. The short answer is nothing ... and everything.
Read MoreAn uncertain attempt to explain what is going on in the economy. If you confidently know the answers to any of these questions, you have not been following closely enough.
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While we cannot eliminate the impending unemployment; we have to flatten the curve.
Read MoreA short, sharp curtailment of freedom might be better than a protracted, dull one.
Read MoreThe economy may not follow any of the just released Treasury scenarios, but they provide a basis for a discussion on our economic track. (The graph above is from the Treasury report.)
Read MoreThis is going to suck
Read MoreTo pull our society from the brink, we will need unprecedented economic change.
Read MoreThis paper demonstrates the truism that for every financial liability is matched by an asset. A fiscal deficit creates a liability of the government. Somewhere outside government – somewhere in the private sector – there is a private asset matching this public liability.
Read MoreThe vast majority of tributes to the Listener hearken back to its glory days, with little reflection on the magazine as it was at its end.
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