A fair pay agreement sounds like something everyone should want. After all, no one wants to work for unfair pay. Read more
Former Prime Minister Jim Bolger burst back into public life in mid-2018 to lead the government’s Fair Pay Agreement Working Group. The working group’s report was made public on 31 January. Read more
Can local community growth pay for itself? In other words, can economic growth itself pay for the community’s required infrastructure expansion (e.g. Read more
Parables, biblical or otherwise, are excellent instruction. They warn of the dangers of getting what you wish for. Read more
Three unanswered questions hang over the Reserve Bank capital proposals. First, do the benefits of the proposals exceed the costs? Read more
Former Prime Minister Jim Bolger came charging back into public sight when the Government released his Fair Pay Agreement Working Group's report in January. The Bolger-led working group recommended the Government introduce a new system for setting wages and other terms and conditions of employment. Read more
Many New Zealanders are living longer and healthier lives than at any point in history. In the last quarter century, health outcomes in New Zealand have improved across the board. Read more
We cannot vouch for the authenticity of the following conversation that mysteriously arrived in my Inbox. The sender’s name was Dante, surely a fake. Read more
Joel Hernandez and I have been lucky to be spending the past few days at the 60th Annual Conference of the New Zealand Association of Economists. The meetings are always a great way of keeping abreast of what other economists around the traps are working on. Read more
The Organisation for Economic Corporation and Development’s latest economic survey of New Zealand was published last week. I always read these surveys with a somewhat jaundiced eye. Read more
Cabinet shuffles provide great journalistic set-pieces. For the politics-as-sport contingent, it provides all the narrative arc of changes to the Black Caps line-up for the World Cup: winners and losers, who’s in and who’s out, and whether the changes will do more to help the team score political runs or to defend against the Opposition’s bowling attack. Read more
Not too long ago, Canada’s Northwest Passage was effectively unnavigable. The ice was simply too thick for sailing ships to make it through during the too-short summers. Read more
Politicians have a lot of privileges, but one privilege that regular folks have over them is the freedom to change our minds. In an interview with Meet the Press in 1970, economist Paul Samuelson explained his changing views on inflation to a journalist by saying, “Well when events change, I change my mind. Read more
If politics makes it hard to change a policy after it is announced, then testing policies before they are announced has potentially huge benefits. Testing is particularly important in climate change policy as policies vary enormously in performance, and governments have a particularly hard time in backing away from environmental policies that do not work. Read more
Coffee comes with a paradox. Night owls like me cannot simply begin to function before our restorative java, but getting the first cup takes some organising. Read more
