No attention is paid to what will be the future composition of economic activity. It assumes that the growth will happen and that the required businesses – critically, exports – will appear. After all ...

Shane Jones is committed to state-led economic development.

This column started out to explain how the proposed structural outsourcing of public surgery was partly a consequence of the peculiarities of our fiscal borrowing practices. In summary, the ...

What are the economic and political implications if the New Zealand economy stagnates for five and more years? Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Morning Report that ‘We've got the worst recession* ...

Stein’s law says that if something cannot go on forever, it wont. But does a speculative bubble matter? The cryptocurrency bubble can be left to itself (tax evasion and criminal transactions aside).

Can we trust the Trump cabinet to act in the public interest? Nine of Trump’s closest advisers are billionaires. Their total net worth is in excess of $US375b ...

New Zealand has ‘Scandinavian ambitions in terms of quality of life, but a US attitude to tax’: Lara Clark. One of the most perceptive remarks about New Zealand’s fiscal tension was made by former ...

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 ...

A close analysis of the Treasury assessment of the Medium Term in its PREFU 2023 suggests the economy may be entering a new phase. Last week I explained that the forecasts in the just published ...

Winning office is not the same as achieving change. A recent Economist columnist divided politicians and their political advisers into either ‘jock wankers’ or ‘nerd wankers’. It’s a distinction which ...

There was great disappointment following the just released poverty figures for the year ended to June 2022. Whatever your take, we are not facing up to the real child poverty problems. Some say 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.