The war in Europe is entering its most dangerous phase yet. Over the past week, we saw 300,000 Russian soldiers mobilised, scam referenda in Russian-occupied territories, and apparent bombings of the Nord Stream pipelines. Read more
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
Chief Economist at The New Zealand Initiative Dr Eric Crampton is in the studio to talk economics. Tonight he's talking competition and antitrust laws. Read more
Imagine that you are given a new project at work. It is similar to things you’ve done before, but more complex. Read more
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
If you are a political reformer, New Zealand should be your oyster. You could turn around a failing education system. Read more
Hard times make for bad thinking. Inflation has been running at 7.3%, or at 7.8% if you remember how the petrol excise holiday works. Read more
Mike Hosking discusses Roger Partridge's NZ Herald column on protecting highly productive soils. Read more
Having attended too many public policy conferences, it was only a matter of time until they started haunting me in my sleep. So, one night, I woke up from a nightmare. Read more
In 2011 the Ministry of Education initiated a new school property strategy. Its aim was to replace New Zealand’s classrooms with ‘Modern Learning Environments’ (MLEs). Read more
Political theatre is not usually associated with Julius Vogel (1835-99), the chief architect of the radical expansion of New Zealand’s rail network in the 1870s. A poor speaker, Vogel was also partially deaf in one ear – no small handicap in the heyday of parliamentary debate. Read more
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman once quipped that David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage defined who counts as an economist. Because every economist understands comparative advantage and its related notion of "opportunity cost" and practically nobody else does. Read more
Mike Hosking from Newstalk ZB comments on Oliver Hartwich's recent Newsroom article about the possibility of Italy's most right-wing government since Mussolini. Read more
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
Wellington (Tuesday, 20 September 2022) – Ideology rather than evidence is the basis for the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) ‘Modern Leaning Environments’, research by think tank The New Zealand Initiative reveals. 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), is the main finding of the Initiative’s new report, No Evidence, No Evaluation, No Exit – Lessons from the 'Modern Learning Environments' experiment. Read more