Eric Crampton is Chief Economist with the New Zealand Initiative.
He applies an economist’s lens to a broad range of policy areas, from devolution and housing policy to student loans and environmental policy. He served on Minister Twyford’s Urban Land Markets Research Group and on Minister Bishop’s Housing Economic Advisory Group.
Most recently, he has been looking at devolution to First Nations in Canada.
He is a regular columnist with Stuff and with Newsroom; his economic and policy commentary appears across most media outlets. He can also be found on Twitter at @ericcrampton.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
A terrible spectre haunts New Zealand. Cash transactions come with no guarantee that they are not part of a money-laundering scheme. Read more
If you wanted to launder money, iPredict would hardly be your best choice. It would be unlikely to even make anyone's Top-20 list – or at least the Top-20 list of anyone sane. Read more
Most of the time, I look at policy in Canada and despair at how much worse things are back home. But the past few months have reminded me that Canada gets a couple of things right that New Zealand simply hasn’t managed to figure out yet. Read more
Last week’s town hall meeting in Khandallah on Wellington City Council’s proposed medium-density re-zoning was an eye-opener. I have been exceptionally frustrated by town planners’ inability to zone enough housing to meet the demands of a growing population. Read more
Most of the time, I look at policy in Canada and despair at how much worse things are back home. But the past few months have reminded me that Canada gets a couple of things right that New Zealand simply hasn’t managed to figure out yet. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton on Radio NZ: Gender diversity in leadership positions Read more
We do not yet know how the courts will rule on whether Wellington City Council can force its contractors to pay their employees a minimum of $18.55 an hour. But I think we can come to a verdict on the policy's economic merits, and I do not think council would much like it. Read more
It’s easier to seek forgiveness than permission. And it might be more effective as well. Read more
Labour’s Phil Twyford has been talking a lot of good sense on housing supply, but I am having a hard time making sense of his policies on foreign buyers. So far, the good outweighs the bad. Read more
It’s easier to seek forgiveness than permission. And it might be more effective as well. Read more
I hate self-inflicted wounds. New Zealand’s use of public data, or lack thereof, counts. Read more
Will the coming flag referendum pick the right flag? It looks like we might never know. Read more
The rationales of individual freedom and personal responsibility with Eric Crampton, head of research at The New Zealand Initiative... when we can't be quite sure what will work, what's our best approach, for instance, with special economic zones... Read more
Living longer is good. But a lot of things are good. Read more
Trialling policy reform in regions that are keen to see the benefits could solve rather a few of the country’s policy problems. New Zealand has one of the world’s more centralised forms of government. Only about nine cents of every dollar of government expenditure is spent at the local level. Read more