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
Kludges are short-term fixes that can patch things over until the main problem can be addressed. If the latch for the rear hatch on your people-mover breaks, a kludge that ties it shut until you can get it to the garage for repairs is just the thing. Read more
On his regular Radio New Zealand Nights chat, Eric Crampton is taking a look at what we've learned from American Marijuana legalisation. Read more
Eric Crampton says anchor projects for the Christchurch rebuild were a terrible idea. He talks to Jim Mora on The Panel about that and the government's announcement about the Metro Sports Facility project in the city. Read more
The best thing about the National government was its focus on evaluation. Finance Minister English often reminded us a large portion of government spending was probably wasted. Read more
The International Monetary Fund has concluded its 2018 visit to New Zealand, checking with a broad range of stakeholders on how things are going here. Executive Director Oliver Hartwich and I were happy to share our views with them last week. Read more
On Tuesday, economist Eric Crampton argued that legislation to prohibit foreign property buyers will do nothing to alleviate the housing crisis. Today, he lays out all the other reasons why the ban makes no sense. Read more
There is not a shred of evidence the prohibition on foreign property buyers will alleviate the housing crisis. It is popu, argues economist Eric Crampton. Read more
The autumn storm that took out parts of Auckland’s power grid last week spared Wellington. The weather in the capital remained relatively calm – or at least no worse than any other wintry day. Read more
The biggest lesson of 20th Century economics is that it is hard to get anything right if prices are wrong. It is high time that lesson were applied to transport. Read more
New Zealand’s republicans have a point. There is a nefarious foreign influence dictating too much in New Zealand. Read more
Loyal readers of the Initiative’s work will know there are more than a few problems with New Zealand’s secondary school qualification. As Briar Lipson’s report released earlier this month showed, the system makes it rather too easy for students to be directed through ‘safe’ pathways to qualifications of little quality. Read more
If you wanted to know how well New Zealand’s education system and Kiwi students were doing, you really wouldn’t want to start with NCEA data. Getting a comparative assessment of students’ strengths was never the point of NCEA. Read more
NCEA completion rates have been increasing, with more children than ever earning an NCEA diploma, but New Zealand’s performance on international benchmarks in numeracy and literacy has been flat or declining. Co-author Eric Crampton discusses on Radio Ngati Porou our new report Score! Read more
To begin with, sugar taxes are offensive. They presume that some government official knows better than you about what food choices are best for you. Read more
New Zealand’s education system is designed not to measure performance. How can we tell whether policies intended to boost student performance are successful, or how much academic achievement matters for later life outcomes, if we cannot measure it? Read more