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
Can market forces help get the chores done? Chief Economist Dr Eric Crampton discusses the economics of parenting with Barry Crump on the Radio New Zealand Nights programme. Read more
Last week, Labour finally began delivering on its urban growth agenda. Housing affordability was one of the two main themes of the 2017 election. Read more
Following the Government's announcement of the $12 billion for infrastructure, Dr Eric Crampton discusses on Radio New Zealand about the need to enable other ways of financing infrastructure on a stable basis rather than constantly relying on infrastructure deficits hitting near-crisis levels.
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There was something in the original plans for the post-earthquake Christchurch downtown rebuild that never really made much sense. Well, there were a lot of things that never made any sense, both in the plans and in practice, and that's why a lot of business fled to the suburbs. Read more
One of the underappreciated joys of parenthood is lying to your children. Children are full of questions. Read more
Moving to New Zealand in 2003 was a bit like stepping into an underpowered time machine. The new-release movies in theatre were ones that had hit the big screen in the US months earlier. Read more
It is too easy to convince ourselves of things that are not true. We all do it and it is hard to avoid. Read more
Sometimes, being at the front of the queue isn't a good thing. If you lined countries up in a row, starting with the places least friendly to foreign investment, and ending with the places with the fewest restrictions, New Zealand would be near the front of the queue. Read more
The Government can pass whatever legislation it likes regulating the relationship between landlords and tenants. Some of it might make sense; some of it might wind up harming the people it’s intended to help. Read more
New Zealand’s basic bargain around firearms ownership and policing always seemed rather sensible. It was very much a feature of New Zealand’s general “Outside of the Asylum” approach to policy. Read more
There was a great old The Three Stooges bit about plumbing that teaches us a lot about regulation. The Stooges were a trio of hapless idiots who produced comedy gold in the days before colour television. Read more
In a world without laws about fists meeting noses, it would make a lot more sense to prohibit us from punching someone else on the nose without their consent than to ban us from punching ourselves on the nose. It might make sense to ban both, but it would be ridiculous to start by banning people from punching themselves. Read more
I often describe New Zealand as the Outside of the Asylum – the last sane place in a world going mad. But just what should we make of New Zealand’s public health system? Read more
I don’t know if anyone ever really believed manufacturing televisions in New Zealand made sense. Controls in place until New Zealand’s reforms prohibited importing fully assembled televisions, to encourage manufacture and assembly in New Zealand. Read more
Suppose I told you that anticompetitive activity right here in New Zealand was behind a transfer of wealth amounting to, at the very least, hundreds of billions of dollars. The victims of the cartel are New Zealand’s poorest, who have had to endure hardship so substantial that its effects are directly visible in New Zealand’s poverty and material deprivation statistics. Read more