According to the Mayan calendar, the world will end on 21 December this year. It’s not clear, though, whether this was the motivation for the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to cut interest rates to 3% doomsday levels. Read more
Up until the last Olympics, most Kiwis would have known little about Belarus. But after the rather masculine Belarusian shot-putter, Nadzeya Ostapchuk, was caught out as a drug cheat, and the gold medal was awarded to New Zealand’s Valerie Adams, Belarus was noticed a lot more. Read more
One of the most oft-quoted sayings in economics is Herbert Stein’s famous dictum that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. It is so often quoted because it is logically true. Read more
Negotiations on an extension of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free-trade agreement meant to liberalise economic relations across the Pacific, are to go into their fifteenth round next week. Proponents of the TPP hope it will improve conditions for foreign direct investment (FDI). Read more
Exports are the thing! At least that is the refrain of many economists, commentators, and observers: we need to export more, we should help exporters, and so on. Read more
Sir Peter Jackson, a man of many talents, has put New Zealand on the map again. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has made the NZ film industry bigger and better than ever, revolutionising cinema by filming with double the usual number of frames (48). Read more
Luke Malpass examined why New Zealand has some of the most expensive, but poorest quality houses in the world. He comments on the link between local government finance and housing affordability, and analysed the effects of regulations on house prices and quality. Read more
It was a different era: Vague prospects of making money on the internet were enough to mobilise billions of dollars. Political scientists still believed in the end of history and the final triumph of liberal democracy. Read more
The announcement of ‘KiwiBuild’ by Labour leader David Shearer was certainly bold. Under Labour, for the next decade the government will build 10,000 homes every year, for less than $600,000 each. Read more
World share markets rose markedly on Monday this week: the US S&P 500 (by 2%), London FTSE (by 2.4%), Paris CAC (by 2.9%), Tokyo Nikkei (by 1.4%), and the Hong Kong Hang Seng (by 0.5%). Europe saw the biggest daily gain in 10 weeks, but from the lowest levels for months. Read more
Does watching TV change your life? And in particular, do TV commercials change your consumption habits? Read more
When will we finally get a lasting solution to the Greek problem? Not a stop-gap measure, but one that actually puts the country on a sustainable path towards recovery? Read more
With the affordability of housing currently circulating the walls of parliament, it seems timely to ask, why are houses in New Zealand so expensive? Luke Malpass, Research Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative, who is currently conducting significant and intensive research in this area, will be presenting a talk to try and explain why housing is so costly. Read more
In 2010, the Ministry of Education introduced new National Standards for primary schools. In September this year, stuff.co.nz published the first data set. Read more
The policy problem of ‘affordable housing’ is all the rage. But aside from a vague sense that housing is too expensive, what does the term actually mean? Read more