Final Oliver Hartwich

Dr Oliver Hartwich

Executive Director

Oliver is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative. Before joining the Initiative, he was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, the Chief Economist at Policy Exchange in London, and an advisor in the UK House of Lords. Oliver holds a Master’s degree in Economics and Business administration and a PhD in Law from Bochum University in Germany.

Oliver is available to comment on all of the Initiative’s research areas.

Phone: +64 4 499 0790

Email: oliver.hartwich@nzinitiative.org.nz

Recent Work

Lizz Truss square

Learning from the Truss disaster

Most political careers end in failure, but few politicians fail as spectacularly, or as rapidly, as Liz Truss. Truss has wrecked more than her own political career since she became British Prime Minister less than two months ago: her personal reputation, her party’s credibility, and the UK’s finances. Read more

Dr Oliver Hartwich
Insights Newsletter
21 October, 2022
Eric for podcast

Podcast: Oliver Hartwich and Eric Crampton on barriers to supermarket entry

Oliver Hartwich and Eric Crampton discuss how the government is preventing overseas supermarkets from entering the New Zealand market. To listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more

Dr Oliver Hartwich
Dr Eric Crampton
Podcast
20 October, 2022
Podcast image

Podcast: Europe’s mega crisis – Michael Johnston in conversation with Oliver Hartwich and Eric Crampton

In this episode Michael Johnston hosts Oliver Hartwich and Eric Crampton to discuss various European crises and how New Zealand should be learning from, and not repeating, the European mistakes. To listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more

Dr Oliver Hartwich
Dr Eric Crampton
Dr Michael Johnston
Podcast
29 September, 2022

Media release: Strong support for the ETS to get us to Net Zero

Wellington (Wednesday, 28 September 2022) – New Zealand’s economists strongly support the Emissions Trading Scheme and strengthening it through a carbon dividend. The latest survey of members of the New Zealand Association of Economists finds extraordinarily strong agreement that: Tightening the ETS’s cap on emissions makes far more sense than measures like fuel economy standards on imported vehicles (53% strongly agree, 35% agree, 5% disagree); If additional market failures are present, policies should target those directly to reduce the cost of mitigating emissions (24% strongly agree, 57% agree, 2% strongly disagree); A carbon dividend to households beats measures like electric vehicle subsidies or targeted regulations for ensuring equity (45% strongly agree; 48% agree; 2% disagree). Read more

Dr Oliver Hartwich
Dr Eric Crampton
Media Release
28 September, 2022
GeorgeOrwell 1984 square

An Orwellian distortion of journalism

According to a quote sometimes attributed to George Orwell, “journalism is printing what someone else does not want published; everything else is public relations.” Whether Orwell actually said it or not, it is a useful definition. There are whole armies of PR and comms people trying to make you swallow their predetermined messages. Read more

Dr Oliver Hartwich
The Australian
21 September, 2022
Cover Image

Podcast: Oliver Hartwich and Michael Johnston on the modern learning environment experiment

Ideology rather than evidence is the basis for the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) ‘Modern Leaning Environments’, research by The New Zealand Initiative has revealed. Dr Oliver Hartwich and Dr Michael Johnston discuss the fact that a government ministry could not produce data to support its policy for mass conversion of New Zealand’s classrooms to Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) and other findings of the Initiative’s new report, "No Evidence, No Evaluation, No Exit – Lessons from the 'Modern Learning Environments' experiment". Read more

Dr Oliver Hartwich
Dr Michael Johnston
Podcast
20 September, 2022

Stay in the loop: Subscribe to updates