US foreign policy, especially in Latin America, has often been at the point of a gun. But the Trump Doctrine is going places ...

New Zealand is a small, isolated nation and needs to design itself accordingly. We should avoid uncritically imitating larger ...

Does the Autumn 2024 British budget point to a change in fiscal strategies? Many countries found their fiscal position was unsustainable, following the 2008 Global Financial Crash. Their public ...

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* ...

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 Minister of Finance says it is but, parochialism aside, are we doing anything to ensure it really is? One of the necessary skills of a politician is to hold on to at least two contradictory ...

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 ...

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 ...

Following the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families ...

Recently, I have often been asked whether we (New Zealand or the World) are experiencing a stagflation. There is no meaningful ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. You have to define the term before deciding what is ...

This year’s Nobel awards in economics raise critical issues about the future of the world. I was not alone with high hopes when the Soviet Union collapsed. It has been good to see various nations ...

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 ...