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
Right now, you probably have homeowner’s insurance that, if a catastrophe happened, would let you build a new house providing similar functionality to your current house, up to a specified total cost. Here’s the deal. Read more
2016 is closer to 1240 than you might think. In 1240, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, established the first ever documented student loan system. Read more
Our Head of Research, Dr Eric Crampton, talks to Newstalk ZB about our latest report, Signal Loss: what we know about school performance. Read more
The train-wreck was utterly predictable but we should still look back to see how it happened, how bad it was, and how we can keep it from happening again. This week, The New Zealand Initiative released its decade-on retrospective look at the government’s interest-free student loan policy. Read more
A lot of people have done well out of the past decade of interest-free student loans. But that hardly means the policy is what is right for the country. Read more
Just over a decade ago, the government stopped charging interest on student loans. Before 2006, student loan debt drew interest after the borrower left school. Read more
Minister Simon Bridges has killed a few of my favourite things. By not granting tiny, low-risk iPredict an exemption from Anti Money Laundering regulations designed for the big banks, he helped to strangle it. Read more
In politics, the good enough is the best you can usually hope for. On most policy questions, the best is irrelevant. Read more
Tax policy is usually about picking your poison. Set company taxes too high relative to international norms and firms will want to set up abroad. Read more
It is not easy to say where to pin the blame. Is it media consumers who want more and more hot-takes on the terrors of inequality? Read more
I have a solution to inequality. It will take a long time, and I don’t think you’re going to like it. Read more
Our Head of Research, Dr Eric Crampton, talks to Andrew Patterson from NBR Radio about why we need more data about student achievement and why some of the current NCEA statistics tell us very little about how well particular schools are doing. CLICK HERE to listen to the audio. Read more
If you found out your local school had a 60% NCEA level three pass rate, would you know whether you should congratulate the principal or demand a sacking? Students come to school from different starting points. Read more
Nelson’s Medical Officer of Health wants a place at your table. Not in person, of course, but in spirit. Read more