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
New Zealand deserves far better water management. Scores of newspaper articles and rigorous reports lay out the problems in the current system. Read more
Eric Frykberg discusses our new report Refreshing Water in the Rural News update on Radio New Zealand. Author Eric Crampton explains why a cap-and-trade system (similar to the Emissions Trading Scheme) would give New Zealand a real chance to substantially improve the sustainability of our rivers and aquifers. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton speaks to Ngati Porou radio about his report, Refreshing Water, saying we believe our research provides a tool that will help Minister Parker, and the Government, achieve their goals of improving freshwater in New Zealand as outlined in the Essential Freshwater programme.
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Chief Economist Eric Crampton shares his thoughts on the cannabis referendum, and legalisation, with Mike Yardley on Newstalk ZB.
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It’s too easy for bad statistics to influence policy. About a decade ago, BERL added up every dollar spent by heavier drinkers, counted some other costs twice, and claimed that alcohol use cost New Zealand $4.8 billion per year. Read more
Eric Crampton shares on Radio New Zealand his thoughts on the government's recent decision not to pursue a capital gains tax. Read more
“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake it for the genuine article.” Poe’s Law warns that without strong warnings, parody will confuse people. We occasionally get into a bit of a pickle with the third column in our Insights newsletter. Read more
Essayist and author Nassim Taleb is more than a little tedious on Twitter. But he gets one big thing very right. Read more
It seemed a simple enough question. It was, really. Read more
Big organisations get up to a lot of stuff that looks pretty silly from the outside – and even from the inside. Corporate retreats with ridiculous team-building exercises. Read more
They say hard cases make for bad law. Hard cases are emotionally wrenching. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton discusses how our comprehensive, year-long econometric analysis buries the old myth that school quality is linked to school decile. Our findings are published in our latest Research Note, Tomorrow's Schools: Data and Evidence, written by Joel Hernandez. Read more
Our Chief Economist Dr Eric Crampton talks to Newstalk ZB's Kate Hawkesby about findings from our latest research, Tomorrow's Schools: Data and Evidence, and the importance of comprehensive, evidence-based research when it comes to looking at school performance. The Initiative has developed a school performance tool with the primary purpose of evaluating the relative effectiveness of every secondary school in New Zealand. Read more
For those of us of a certain age, part of the thrill of staying up late as a kid was getting to see and hear things on television that did not air during afternoon cartoons. Before 9pm, one set of rules applied. Read more
Last week feels like it was a year ago. And the past week has made the world feel a little smaller. Read more