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
The true state of public finances is not meant to surprise any incoming government. The Public Finance Act 1989 aimed to prevent any outgoing government from handing an incoming government the kind of horrors David Lange and Roger Douglas found in the books in 1984. Read more
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. At least according to the Sage of Baltimore, journalist and essayist H.L. Read more
If punters at Australia’s Betfair are right, there’s an eighty-nine percent chance any government formed after Saturday’s election will have a National Party Prime Minister. But the things Betfair can’t tell us makes me miss our missing election stock market. Read more
Pro-housing policy generally tries to find ways of outflanking NIMBYs – the Not In My BackYard objectors to new development. It’s an approach well-supported in academic research and reflected in New Zealand policy. Read more
As a proud Canadian, I am occasionally compelled to draw Kiwis’ attention to the wonderful service that my homeland provides to the world. The election here has been tedious. Read more
On Newstalk ZB's Early Edition, Dr Eric Crampton talks to Kate Hawkesby about Labour's pledge to help new supermarket retailers and warns against subsidising entry for new chains. Listen to his interview below. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton appeared on The Platform to talk with Sean Plunket about grocery competition and the 'weetbix war' between The Warehouse and Sanitarium. You can find a snippet of their conversation below. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton talks to RNZ about media funding and regulation. Listen to the interview below. Read more
Wellington (Monday, 2 October 2023) - The New Zealand Initiative welcomed today’s announcement that a re-elected Labour government would ease the path for new grocers to enter the New Zealand market. But it also warned against subsidising entry. Read more
Elections are the classic zero-sum game. In a zero-sum game, one person’s gains are necessarily another’s losses. Read more
The ban on the only cold medicine that seems to work never seemed likely to work. On Friday, some twelve and a half years after John Key banned it, David Seymour announced that the ACT Party would work to restore over-the-counter access to pseudoephedrine-based cold medicines. Read more
1.1 This submission in response to the Draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative), a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. In combination, our members employ more than 150,000 people. Read more
Transport funding has become an incoherent mess. In August, the Ministry of Transport released the Draft Government Policy Statement on land transport funding. Read more
In June, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand told us something surprising. It said it had never banned experts in monetary policy from serving as external members of the Monetary Policy Committee. Read more
Join Dr. Eric Crampton and Scott Wilson for a discussion about the recently released Government Policy Statement on land transport and a wider conversation about transport policy. You can also read Scott Wilson's recent blog post about what's wrong with New Zealand's land transport funding system here. Read more