What might the public’s increasing demands for safety and security tell the economist? Criminology and economics are quite different disciplines. Someone from one discipline trespasses on the other ...

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 ...

The tensions between different approaches to the economy are surfacing as the election nears. As we head towards next year’s election, the tensions between the coalition partners are becoming ...

We should follow the Golden Rule of Fiscal Management and not borrow for consumption in the medium run. Asymmetry is a crucial, but often ignored, feature of credit transactions. You would normally be ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Behavioural economics has been described as the most revolutionary thing which has happened to economics for ages. The notion that people do not behave like ‘rational economic men’ (women are mainly ...

The proposal to organise fresh water, storm water and waste water into four entities reflects the contempt that New Zealand’s central government has for local communities. It is not the only example ...

There was no less razzamatazz about the 2024 Budget than about earlier ones. Once again the underlying economic analysis got lost. It deserves more attention. Just to remind you, the Budget Economic ...

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 ...

Congestion pricing is easier said than done. The first seminar I attended in Britain – around sixty years ago – explained a scheme for road usage pricing which would eliminate traffic congestion and ...