Reports & Media

In all the excitement over the new ‘Traffic Light System’ and National’s new leader, a big story went almost unnoticed last week. According to the Herald, the Government is about to complete its proposals for unemployment insurance. Read more

Celebrations this week for Delta Airlines, Delta Electronics, Delta-Fly Pharma Inc and Delta Goodrem as – finally – a new variant of COVID sweeps the world. But spare a thought for the staff at Omicron Inversiones, an investment company in Spain. Read more

Central bank independence matters. The grand bargain struck between governments and their central banks, coming out of the turmoil of the 1970s, and led by New Zealand in the late 1980s, was simple. Read more

Written language came to humanity relatively recently. Modern homo sapiens have walked the earth for at least 100,000 years. Read more

At the formation of new governments, it has become an element of German political kitsch to quote from Hermann Hesse’s poem ‘Steps.’ Well, at least the famous line, “A magic dwells in every beginning.” Nonetheless, the talks leading to Germany’s new 'traffic lights coalition' were not particularly magical. Its name comes from the colours of its three parties: the red Social Democrats, the yellow Free Democrats, and the green, well, Greens. Read more

It isn’t that a New Zealand drug approval agency is a bad idea per se. It’s rather that the one we have might not be worth having. Read more

If you’ve ever had concerns about economists’ ethical commitments, relax. It could be worse. Read more

It is easy to squander taxpayers’ money if you are a central bank. The losses amount to a few thousand dollars per household, but hardly anyone is aware of it. Read more

One in eight people worldwide could read Pride and Prejudice when Jane Austen published it in 1813. Today, it is the opposite. Read more