The asymmetry between borrower and lender is well illustrated by Keynes telling the New Zealand Minister of Finance, William ...

ACT was founded as a party advocating neoliberal economics; neoliberal economists still advise it, even if many of its members do not always appreciate the economics they are signing up to.

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 ...

Robert Solow transformed the way we think about economic growth. When you are in the trenches, you may not always realise what the war is about. Years later you read an account and see more clearly.

The Government’s plans to remove the wellbeing provisions in the Public Finance Act represents a reversal of the way society is travelling. I welcomed the Ardern-Robertson’s Government decision to ...

While many of the world’s Christian religions seem preoccupied with personal issues that Jesus, their founder, barely touched upon, they must engage with economic issues too. Robert Prevost, chose the ...

One Could Reduce Child Poverty At No Fiscal Cost. Following the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child ...

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 ...

Attitudes to 'artificial intelligence' and predictive algorithms seem to oscillate between hype and hysteria. The true picture is a good deal more mixed, but as more examples of predictive analytics ...

It is the professionalism – competence and integrity – of the doctors, nurses and technicians who provide the care which obscures the managerial failure. The column-blog, Otaihanga Second Opinion is ...

This is a column about MAGA – Make America Great Again. But as a prequel I scroll back sixty years to when I was teaching in England. I have fond memories of the students – bright and personable as ...

New Zealand’s electoral system gives it a parliament which represents voters. Its winner-takes-all executive government, however, remains unrepresentative.* (This is a follow on from the earlier ...