Eric is the Chief Economist at The New Zealand Initiative. With the Initiative, he has worked in policy areas ranging from freshwater management to policy for earthquake preparedness, and from local government to technology policy. He has recently focused on policy related to Covid-19 response. He served as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Department of Economics & Finance at the University of Canterbury from 2003 through 2014.
Eric’s columns and commentary appear regularly in New Zealand’s major media outlets, as well as on his blog, Offsetting Behaviour. He can also be found on Twitter at @ericcrampton.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
The government’s draft Emissions Budget gets a few important things right. It abandons measures like subsidies for electric vehicles that, perhaps counterintuitively, cannot reduce net national emissions. Read more
Wellington (Wednesday, 17 July 2024) - The New Zealand Initiative today welcomed the government’s intention, stated in the Draft Emissions Reduction Plan, to rely on the Emissions Trading Scheme to achieve the Zero Carbon Act’s goal of net zero emissions from 2050. But it also urged measures that would strengthen the ETS. Read more
Policy problems should be dealt with by the level and part of government best placed to deal with them. Good public policy should recognise subsidiarity. Read more
I wonder whether Media Minister Paul Goldsmith appreciates the problem that he has caused for the tech sector, for media companies, for himself, and for his government. Before the election, National Party spokesperson Melissa Lee condemned Labour’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton talks to Sean Plunket on The Platform about the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. Watch below:
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The New Zealand Initiative is urging the government to abandon the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, warning that the proposed legislation could harm the very news organisations it aims to help. In a new research note, the Initiative argues that the bill, which would require large digital platforms to negotiate payment for news content with New Zealand media companies, is based on flawed premises and risks significant unintended consequences. Read more
Wellington (Wednesday, 10 July 2024) - The New Zealand Initiative is urging the government to abandon the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, warning that the proposed legislation could harm the very news organisations it aims to help. In a new research note, the Initiative argues that the bill, which would require large digital platforms to negotiate payment for news content with New Zealand media companies, is based on flawed premises and risks significant unintended consequences. Read more
If philosophy students remember one thing from their lectures on Immanuel Kant in undergraduate classes, it is his categorical imperative. It’s easy to remember because it’s an awful lot like the old Christian ‘Golden Rule’. Read more
There’s a style of conference talk that I loathe. A self-described visionary will spend twenty minutes, or worse - even longer, stringing together clichés about how change is happening faster than ever before, how it will take soft skills to navigate it, and how we need to be ready. Read more
Sometimes, only truly committed localists can see the polished diamond hiding inside the very rough stone. We can remind ourselves that decades of poor incentives facing councils don’t build strong organisations. Read more
Alcohol policy is always contentious – but let’s start with something that should be uncontroversial: If the government wants to reduce alcohol-related harm, it should aim for measures that do more good than harm overall. If a harm-reducing policy stacks up, it does so whether the overall social cost of alcohol is $10 billion, $1 billion, or $100 million. Read more
When Guyon Espiner reported on a police estimate of ‘$7.8b harm from booze’, I was curious whether the figure was the old BERL alcohol cost zombie back again from the dead to torment the living. The BERL number included drinkers’ spending on their own alcohol – not a ‘social cost’ by any reasonable standard. Read more
In this podcast, Nick and Eric talk to Sam Broughton and Simon Randall from Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) about the potential for implementing city and regional deals in New Zealand - formal long-term partnerships between central and local government to better plan and fund local infrastructure and economic development. They explore the benefits such deals could provide, like aligning incentives, enabling tailored local policies, and sharing gains, while also examining the political barriers that need to be overcome. Read more
Wellington (Friday, 14 June 2024) - The New Zealand Initiative warmly welcomes the government’s review of health and safety regulation. “Current rules impose enormous compliance costs often for little safety benefit. Read more
If a picture contains a thousand words, this column is going to run well over our normal word limit. But the charts do say a lot, so we’ll let the charts do most of the talking. Read more
