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 the 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
As that great philosopher Homer Simpson once said, “Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand.” For climate policy debates, it is a bit different. Most people do care about cutting carbon emissions, but they still do not understand how it works. Read more
Thanks to the work of successive climate change ministers from David Parker to James Shaw, New Zealand has a world-leading Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). We should rely on it to drive down our carbon emissions, argues the Initiative’s executive director Dr Oliver Hartwich. Read more
In this episode of the New Zealand Initiative podcast operations director Chelsy Killick and executive director Oliver Hartwich share their experiences with researching the problems with Kiwi education. Both have been with the Initiative for its entire eight year existence, and during that time, have chronicled the deterioration of education since they were at school in New Zealand and in Germany. Read more
In this Quick Take podcast, Oliver Hartwich explains why Italy’s dire debt situation threatens the European Union's integrity and why no one in the bloc wants to think about forgiving the country’s enormous loans anytime soon. If you would like to listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more
In this Quick Take podcast, Oliver Hartwich unpacks his op-ed for the Australian Financial Review in which he argued that politicians on both sides of the Tasman aren’t thinking clearly about their respective housing crises. Oliver's article in the Australian Financial Review can be read here. Read more
One of the shortest jokes about economics goes like this: Teach a parrot to say supply and demand, and you have created an economist. But there is an even better joke: Teach a parrot to say demand and demand, and you have created a politician. Read more
When the Covid-19 crisis first struck Italy earlier this year, this column warned it might set off a chain of events that would wreck the Mediterranean country’s economy. On 10 March (A catastrophe that will cripple Italy), I pointed out that Italy would experience an economic collapse as public debt soared past 150 percent of GDP. Read more
In this episode of the Initiative’s Freely Speaking podcast, Matt Burgess, Eric Crampton and Oliver Hartwich trade hypotheses on why the New Zealand housing market is so broken with a few comparisons in Europe and how a change of incentives for local councils might be a big part of the solution. If you would like to listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more
Oliver Hartwich wrote an open letter to Mike Hosking in the NZ Herald taking aim at some of the radio host’s recent comments on housing. They discuss their different point of views in Mike’s radio show on Newstalk ZB. Read more
On this Quick Take podcast, Oliver Hartwich explains his open letter to Mike Hosking. The radio host’s position that the government has nothing to do with fixing the housing crisis is unhelpful and misses that governments – over the last decade – are responsible for the skyrocketing prices. Read more
Dear Mike, In a country where people often hold back opinions for fear of offending others, your breakfast show is a refreshing exception. I am a fan of your clarity and boldness (though, sadly, we still haven’t met). Read more
Thanks for tuning in to the New Zealand Initiative’s Freely Speaking podcast where the style is casual, the topics are important and the brakes are off. In this episode, around the table is executive director Oliver Hartwich, chief economist Eric Crampton, senior fellow Bryce Wilkinson and chief editor Nathan Smith. Read more
Oliver Hartwich wrote in his Newsroom column that he is looking forward to a defrosting of the trans-Atlantic relationship as a new US administration enters the White House. He discusses the details with Nathan Smith in this podcast. Read more
Just a few hours into the vote count of the US Presidential election, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša sent out a congratulatory tweet – but to the wrong president-elect. “It’s pretty clear that American people have elected @realDonaldTrump @Mike_Pence for #4moreyears,” Janša wrote. Read more
In a year of bad news, the past few weeks were a welcome exception. Pfizer’s announcement of a potentially effective Covid-19 vaccine opens a path back to normal life. Read more