The research evidence is that humans, even experts, are poor forecasters.
Read MoreEconomic Predicting Is Not What It Seems
Economy
Has Our Electricity System Burnt Itself Out?
Trying to organise the electricity system around a competition model based on financial markets does not make sense.
Read MoreThe Executive Is not just Politicians; the Bureaucracy Counts.
Politics in New Zealand is presented to the general public as theatre or sport. What is really going on is often misunderstood.
Read MoreHow Broken is the Public Service?
Geoffrey Palmer has said that the public service has been so run down since 1984 that it could not today implement changes of the magnitude that the Lange-Douglas Government did.
Read MoreAre We Nudging Enough?
Inside the Nudge Unit by David Halpern, provides new insights into behaviour which New Zealand public policy is steadily taking into consideration.
Read MoreMichael Cullen’s Policy Achievements
Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
Read MoreIn Defence of Social Democracy
Michael Cullen’s memoir Labour Saving provides one of the most coherent defences of social democracy written by a New Zealand politician.
Read MoreHousing Policy is Dealing with Three Huge Problems
Analysis of the housing market is difficult, so superficial solutions do not work. Perforce, this column has had to go into more technical detail than usual. It concludes, ‘The lesson is that the mainly neoliberal regime for the housing market since the early 1990s does not work: it has under-supplied quality housing, generated unsustainable house price inflation and excluded many “worthy” people from home ownership (and given a rough time to those who depend upon rental accommodation). That should not surprise any properly trained economist; many of the assumptions which underpin the standard market analysis do not apply to the housing market. The nostrums based upon such simple analyses will continue to fail no matter how plausible they sound.’
Read MoreBrash Arguing
Newsroom’ recalled Édith Piaf’s ‘je ne regrette rien’ to head an article in which Don Brash expressed much the same sentiment.
Read MoreDebt is A Part of A Modern Economy. It Still Is, Even If We Call it ‘Colonial’
Unemployment Insurance
Providing for the redundantly unemployed is admirable but difficult and expensive to implement.
Read MoreHow Are We Progressing with the War on Poverty?
Child Poverty Levels Are only Slowly Coming Down, What Next?
Read MoreA Boringly Benign Economy or Going Through a Concerning Climacteric?
What was the big change the Treasury saw in its budget 2021 forecasts? (Treasury GDP graph Shown above.)
Read MoreDebt Dilemmas and Discussions
If you know the answer to how much public debt New Zealand should bear, you do not understand the issue.
Read MoreThe Class of Labour
Do some offshore trends presage the future of New Zealand politics?
Read MoreAre We Really Serious about Child Poverty?
The poverty indicators are coming down but, oh, so slowly.
Read MoreWhy Are We Moving to Auckland?
Might the drift to the north be resisted?
Read MoreCentralising the Public Health System
The proposed health redisorganisation seeks to markedly centralise the health system. Is this grab for power justified; will it work?
Read MoreDestroying Public Service Broadcasting
The recognition that there is a media problem is correct, but the chosen solution is likely to be disastrous.
Read MoreWill The 2021 Budget Be Focused on Wellbeing?
Now is about the time that the Government is getting its Budget Strategy together
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