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
New Zealand has come out of lockdown to enter the purgatory of Three-dom (hopefully for only a couple of weeks). The path towards a new normal remains long and littered with challenges. Read more
How do you get an economy going again when entire industries are destroyed? How do you encourage private consumption when families are trying to make ends meet? Read more
The New Zealand Initiative’s Executive Director Oliver Hartwich presented to the Epidemic Response Committee today. He outlined his vision for New Zealand’s social, political and economic future. Read more
Is it 2010 again? Back then, crisis meeting followed crisis meeting to save Europe’s monetary union from collapse. Read more
The longer the acute Covid-19 crisis lasts, the more we hear that our economic world will not be the same after the crisis. Some things will of course change. Read more
The world is at war. The enemy may be a tiny virus, but this string of ribonucleic acid has the effect of a large military force. Read more
We all know those newspaper segments which feature a previously famous person. And then we read these articles wondering why we have not heard from them for such a long time, and sometimes we may even be surprised to hear that they are still alive. Read more
Yesterday, New Zealand’s biggest magazine publisher Bauer announced it would close its operations. Many well-established magazines including The Listener, North & South and Metro will disappear from the shelves forever. Read more
More than 2000 New Zealand businesses have annual revenues over $80 million. That is the baseline for "tailor-made" assistance that Finance Minister Grant Robertson has promised to provide to larger firms that are suffering from the coronavirus pandemic. Read more
These are times like no other. Unless you are well over 80, you would not remember an existential and comprehensive crisis like this. Read more
Milton Friedman was wrong about the euro currency. Before its introduction, the godfather of monetarism predicted Europe’s monetary union would not survive its first recession. Read more
Oliver Hartwich talks to Heather du Plessis-Allan on Newstalk ZB about the Government's Covid-19 economic support package. He argues it is a good first step, but more work needs to be done. Read more
At our Initiative staff meetings over the past two months, Covid-19 already dominated our discussions. Startling as they are, we are not surprised by the events of the past days. Read more
What happened in Italy this week could tempt us to feel smug. Surely, the decision to put the whole country into lockdown must be an exaggeration. Read more
To start with a disclaimer, I am not a medical expert. I have no degree in epidemiology, nor can I claim any expertise in public health management. Read more