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:
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)
KiwiBuild: Twyford's Tar Baby (2019)
Fit for Purpose? Are Kiwis getting the government they pay for? (2018)
Recipe for disaster: Building policy on shaky ground (2018)
Welfare, Work and Wellbeing: From Benefits to Better Lives (2017)
The Inequality Paradox: Why inequality Matters Even Though it has Barely Changed (2016)
Poorly Understood: The State of Poverty in New Zealand (2016)
Reducing Unnecessary Regulatory Costs (2015)
A Matter of Balance: Regulating Safety (2015)
Investing for success: Social Impact Bonds and the future of public services (2015)
Phone: +64 4 472 5986
Treasury released its economic and fiscal forecasts to 2033/34 last week. Because it is politically neutral and fully informed, Treasury is best placed to make such pre-election forecasts. Read more
We should thank Ruth Richardson for requiring Treasury to publish pre-election economic and fiscal forecasts. Compliments also to Treasury for maintaining their quality over nearly three decades. Read more
A newspaper recently asked if the average Kiwi can live on a Covid-19 wage subsidy of $585 a week. Unsurprisingly, it found this would be difficult, particularly in Auckland where the average weekly expense for a couple with two children is about $2000. Read more
For those who care about New Zealanders’ wellbeing, the central issue is if the benefits of any given level of lockdown plausibly exceed the costs. Read more
Last week, The New Zealand Initiative released a new research report: Pharmac: The Right Prescription? Read more
In George Orwell’s “1984” dystopian novel, the Ministry of Truth was the ministry for propaganda and falsifying history. Read more
The Pharmaceutical Management Agency, or Pharmac, was founded in 1993 and over time has mostly achieved its goals to lower the cost of medicines for Kiwis. Read more
This report examines the strengths and weaknesses of New Zealand’s arrangements for prescription medicines. Central to them is the Pharmaceutical Management Agency, Pharmac, a Crown entity. Among OECD member countries, Pharmac is “unique” in combining “clinical, economic and commercial aspects, and decision-making within a fixed budget for subsidising pharmaceuticals.”1 Other member countries commonly separate these roles and may have more open-ended budgets.Perhaps the greatest strength in New Zealand’s arrangements compared to elsewhere is that, from its inception in 1993, Pharmac... Read more
Following the release of his new report Pharmac: The right prescription?, Bryce Wilkinson talks to Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB about the Pharmac funding model. Read more
The Pharmaceutical Management Agency, Pharmac, attracts plenty of praise and criticism. Read more
Use of the disembodied “we” in official policy documents usually suggests a false agreement about future resource use when, in fact, there are deeply entrenched opposing interests. To fail to acknowledge the conflict is to fail to resolve it. Read more
The concept of modern monetary theory is back. This set of economic ideas has been around for a while but has risen to prominence recently through the work of American economist and adviser to Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, Stephanie Kelton, whose book 'The Deficit Myth' was released in June. Read more
The public health system is a political football. Every change of administration is an opportunity to boot the ball at a different set of goalposts. Occasionally, all it takes is a change of Minister. Professor Robin Gauld, director of the University of Otago’s Centre of Health Systems and Technology, has published at least two books and a substantial academic article on the structural instability of New Zealand’s healthcare system since the 1980s. Read more
Never have governments and central banks spent other people’s money more freely to support incomes and boost banking system liquidity. Never before have the world’s major central banks’ policy interest rates been clustered so close to zero, if not already in negative territory. Read more
New Zealand is now on a dangerous path to higher public debt and unprecedented money printing with no credible plan for unwinding the situation before the next crisis, warns a new report by The New Zealand Initiative. Covid-19 and the various types of lockdown responses have caused many governments to go even more heavily into debt and print money to sustain asset prices with borrowed money. Read more