Bryce is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative, and also the Director of the Wellington-based economic consultancy firm Capital Economics. Prior to setting this up in 1997 he was a Director of, and shareholder in, First NZ Capital. Before moving into investment banking in 1985, he worked in the New Zealand Treasury, reaching the position of Director. Bryce holds a PhD in economics from the University of Canterbury and was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the Law and Economics Association of New Zealand.
Bryce is available for comment on fiscal issues, our poverty, inequality and welfare research. He also has a strong background in public policy analysis including monetary policy, capital markets research and microeconomic advisory work.
Latest reports:
Policy Point: Is climate change a key risk to global financial stability? (2020)
Roadmap for Recovery: Briefing to the Incoming Government (2020)
Pharmac: The right prescription? (2020)
Research Note: Doing whatever it takes with someone else’s money (2020)
Policy Point: FDI: Unjustified Urgency (2020)
Research Note: Deficit spending in a crisis: why there is no such thing as a free lunch (2020)
Research Note: Quantifying the wellbeing costs of Covid-19 (2020)
Research Note: How bad might the lockdown be for jobs and income? (2020)
Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour (2019)
Scroll down to read the rest of Bryce's work.
Phone: +64 4 472 5986
Who thinks that the current Labour government should seek to emulate the “great traditions” of the 1935 Labour government? At least one person thinks it should, and his opinion counts. Read more
Mike Hosking reviews and reads out part of Bryce Wilkinson's article (published in the NZ Herald) "How past illusions and future follies mar Grant Robertson's economic strategy." Hosking calls it today's "must read". In the article on his new report "Illusions of History: How misunderstanding the past jeopardises our future", Bryce warns that the government's economic policy settings risk a repeat of past mistakes. Read more
In his Budget speech last year, Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, outlined the government’s policy aspirations. He saw Labour as being able to take decisions that “will define the lives and livelihoods of many people for years to come”. Read more
Closing his 2020 Budget speech, Finance Minister Grant Robertson looked back to the First and Fourth Labour governments for lessons on how to tackle New Zealand’s current economic challenges. His first history lesson was that the way forward today lay in the “great traditions of the First Labour Government” (1935–49) that “rebuilt New Zealand after the Great Depression” under Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage. Read more
Wellington (Tuesday, 21 September 2021) – The 2.8 percent jump in GDP in the June quarter 2021 does not mean that the government’s economic strategy is sound. In fact, it is dangerous wishful thinking based on a false reading of history, according to a new research report from The New Zealand Initiative. Read more
The recent passing of Sir Michael Cullen, the former Minister of Finance, has been widely covered. The Super Fund, KiwiSaver and “Working for Families” are among Sir Michael’s lasting contributions to New Zealand - whether we like them or not. Read more
We seem to be living in a time of shameless posturing about caring for ‘our’ wellbeing by the government, and too many government agencies to list. The posturing reminds me of the saying - in the context of runs on a bank - that if a bank has to proclaim its virtue, it has already lost it. Read more
What happens to even the best juggler when ball after ball is added to his load? Sooner or later, collapse is inevitable. Read more
In my book, governments that do not publish a competent cost-benefit assessment justifying their spending and regulatory proposals do not take community wellbeing seriously.(Only if the wellbeing benefits plausibly exceed the costs is the policy likely to benefit the public.) The absence of such an assessment is now common. It suggests that a measure is being imposed on the public for partisan or elitist, paternalistic reasons. Read more
A news item this week reported the Minister of Health was “enormously frustrated”. We can think of quite a few in the private sector who know that feeling. Read more
The government’s announcement on Sunday of subsidies for electric vehicles did not make any case that the benefits to the public would plausibly exceed the costs. To fail to demonstrate positive net benefits is to fail to make a public wellbeing case for the measure. Read more
Matt Burgess, Eric Crampton, Oliver Hartwich and Bryce Wilkinson discuss the Government’s new feebate scheme. Will it help to cut emissions? Read more
Last week’s government budget reinforced the sense of fiscal fantasy that arises when one contemplates the unprecedented deficit spending funded by central bank credit creation occurring here and elsewhere. The government plans to borrow around $30 billion net in the coming fiscal year. Read more
Too many New Zealanders demand and expect too much from Government. One result is a never-ending cycle of disappointment and fruitless exhortation. Read more
Currently, every house auction is a contest between competing bidders. The auction confronts each bidder with the last price bid. Read more