Nicola Willis has leaned into National Party traditions but without the ruthless rationing of Ruth Richardson or Jenny Shipley. Still, she’s placed her bet for the election that people will vote for b ...

The Treasury economic forecasts for May budgets are usually settled in April to feed into the fiscal forecasts and, critically, the borrowing program. They can be changed in the interim six weeks if ...

We talk about 2 percent inflation, when we mean 2 percent annual inflation or inflation is 2 percent per annum (p.a.). Leave out the time dimension and add to the confusion between stock and flow. * ...

Is there a German word for the feeling you get when someone famous dies who created glorious, uplifting art, or music or oratory or cover drives but whom you never met but wished you had? Wished and ...

The invitation to comment on the proposed Regulatory Standards Bill opens with Minister David Seymour stating ‘[m]ost of New Zealand's problems can be traced to poor productivity, and poor ...

A Rogernome Defends the Policies. One of the difficulties in making sense of what happened during the Rogernomics Stagnation from 1985 to 1993 is that professional economists sympathetic to its ...

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 ...

The public service is suffering from the downgrading of the role of professionals, experts and those at the workface with the public. There is a management fashion that believes that by imposing ...

Does it make sense to compare our climate change adaptation with Rogernomics? (There is nothing in this column which questions the notion that global warming presents a serious challenge which will ...

The US is throwing away its world leadership; will China fill the gap? In the past, this column has pointed to a transition in the world order, as the American hegemony weakens. It was uncertain how ...

Legitimate pressures on government spending suggest we are going to have to raise total tax revenue or suffer a poorer quality New Zealand. About a decade ago, I was on the external Treasury panel ...