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 .
Submission: Transforming Recycling - Container Return Scheme (2022)
Submission: Wellington Council on the Draft Economic Wellbeing Strategy (2022)
Submission: Managing exotic afforestation incentives (2022)
Submission: The market study into residential building supplies preliminary issues paper (2022)
Submission: Issues raised at the consultation conference on the Commission's market study into the retail grocery sector draft report (2021)
Submission: Resource management enabling housing supply and other matters Amendment Bill (2021)
Submission: Covid-19 public health response Amendment Bill (no 2) (2021)
Research Note: Safer arrivals and the path to 2022 (2021)
Submission: The market study into the retail grocery sector draft report (2021)
Fording the rapids: Charting a course to fresher water (2021)
Submission: Proposals for a smokefree Aotearoa 2025 action plan (2021)
Submission: Inquiry into congestion pricing in Auckland (2021)
Policy Point: A risky place to do business (2021)
Roadmap for Recovery: Briefing to the Incoming Government (2020)
Submission: Smokefree environments and regulated products Act 1990: Proposals for regulations (2021)
Democracy in the Dark (2020)
Research Note: Safe Arrivals (2020)
Policy Point: Open for minds: export education and recovery (2020)
Submission: Smokefree environments and regulated products (vaping) Amendment Bill (2020)
Policy Point: Stay on Target (2020)
Research Note: Effective Treatment: Public policy prescription for a pandemic (2020)
Policy Point: Time to process (2020)
Scroll down to read the rest of Eric's work.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
There’s a special kind of mental contortion that seems required in politics. A politician has to be able to hold mutually inconsistent beliefs in their head and not notice they don’t really work well together. Read more
When the government broke for the summer, Prime Minister Ardern told her Cabinet to cut its legislative cloth to suit the government’s election-year capacity. The government was attempting complex reform of the resource management system, council water infrastructure, and the entire health system. Read more
FIRST PUBLISHED OCT 31, 2022 Updated Jan 19, 2023 In June 2020, the Labour government strengthened New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme, ensuring it would be effective in getting the country to net zero by 2050. The government then promptly forgot how an Emissions Trading Scheme works – if it ever understood the ETS in the first place. Read more
In this week's podcast The New Zealand Initiative's chief economist, Dr Eric Crampton, chats with Christian van der Pump about building regulations, fire safety and the causes of 'market failure' in the building industry. Christian van der Pump is a professional engineer with qualifications in chemistry, engineering and economics. Read more
Government clean car scheme breaks EV records, but ‘Ute Tax’ may need to rise to pay for discounts. New Zealand broke two records for electric vehicles in the month of December, capping off a year of surging demand for clean cars. Read more
This submission in response to the Grocery Industry Competition Bill is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative), a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. The Initiative has been actively involved in the Commerce Commission’s market study process investigating retail grocery competition. Read more
Bad constitutional processes are necessarily worse than bad policy processes. Constitutions, whether written or unwritten, are our basic rules about how we make laws and elect representatives. Read more
Sean Plunket talks with NZ Initiative's Dr Eric Crampton who gives us an economic wrap-up for 2022. Read more
In this week's podcast The New Zealand Initiative's chief economist, Dr Eric Crampton, chats with Jonathan Alve, National Operations Manager at Hospitality New Zealand, about proposed amendments to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act and the challenges these may hold for licence holders. To listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more
Perhaps the timing was simply a coincidence. But not long after central government firmed up its intention to take water infrastructure away from local government, and its intention to shift planning up from local councils to regional bodies, Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta opened a review of local government. Read more
A rowboat drifts at sea, water seeping in from a hole in its side. Its captain has engineered all kinds of ingenious devices to bail out the boat and to dry sodden things. Read more
The Royal Commission announced this week will not help voters provide better-informed brickbats or bouquets in 2023. The inquiry will focus instead on lessons for future pandemics and will report back well after the election. Read more
This week's podcast is a Free Kiwis episode. Drs Michael Johnston and James Kierstead discussed a range of issues with Dr Eric Crampton. Read more
There’s a fundamental arbitrariness to almost any voting age. Except one. Read more
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. Even still, it is hard to see how policy could be less friendly to entry by grocers like Aldi or Lidl if it were intentional. Read more