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)
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
Fresh numbers show the Labour-led administration was a big spender even before Covid-19 and New Zealand incomes overall in 2025 might be less than in 2019. Last week the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published its forecasts out to 2025. Read more
Read our submission, written by Dr Bryce Wilkinson to Treasury and the Reserve Bank. This submission is in response to the third round of consultation on Phase 2 of the review of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act. Read more
I had the misfortune recently to lunch with an economist. Economists are generally despondent about government stupidity, ineptitude and profligacy. Read more
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. About four months ago, I calculated it might be worth sacrificing 6.1% of one year of New Zealand’s GDP if doing so was sure to permanently avoid 33,600 Covid deaths. Read more
Last week, The New Zealand Initiative released a new research report: Pharmac: The Right Prescription? Pharmac’s core role is to get the best health benefits from medicines for New Zealand within a fixed budget. Read more
In George Orwell’s “1984” dystopian novel, the Ministry of Truth was the ministry for propaganda and falsifying history. He would have appreciated the Resource Management Act 1991. 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. 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. Bryce says Pharmac deserves credits for lowering the costs of many medicines, but he raises questions about whether the government needs to pay for medicines for everyone. Read more
The Pharmaceutical Management Agency, Pharmac, attracts plenty of praise and criticism. It has achieved notably low prices for many pharmaceutical medicines but is widely criticised for not subsidising a wider range of medicines and being slow to subsidise new medicines. 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 public health system is a political football. Every change of administration is an opportunity to boot the ball at a different set of goalposts. 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