As New Zealand moves towards the 2020 Budget, there is increasing talk about shovel-ready projects, stimulus and building the recovery. It all makes me nervous, probably because I am still spooked by another crisis in another country. Read more
Wellington, 12 May 2020 - Taiwan’s relative success against Covid-19 makes it a great candidate for connections with New Zealand after lockdown, according to a new report from The New Zealand Initiative. As New Zealand prepares to downgrade to Alert Level 2, the Government will be keen to find other Covid-free countries to help restart the Kiwi economy. Read more
Alongside South Korea, Taiwan is one of the few countries to “flatten the curve” of Covid-19 without a national lockdown due to its prior experience with the SARS epidemic of 2003. New Zealand’s pathway is similar to Taiwan’s and there are lessons to be learned as New Zealand moves into Alert Level 2. Read more
Making sense of Wellington Council’s prioritisation of a new convention centre, while the city’s wastewater pipes crumble and streams fill with sewage, is a bit tough. It isn’t how you’d run a household: the new kitchen might take a back seat if the rest of the plumbing is wrecked – and especially if your partner had just been made redundant. Read more
Hardly anyone has questioned the merits of the Government spending taxpayer money in response to Covid-19, or examined its implications for public debt levels and future tax burdens. Next week’s Budget 2020 will reveal those fiscal implications. Read more
There’s an old short-handled shovel hanging in our garden shed. The plastic handle has split, but the blade and shaft are fine. Read more
As New Zealand nears the end of the Covid-19 public health emergency, all eyes are on the economic recovery. The New Zealand Government has already indicated the post-recovery world will look quite different. Read more
Wellington, 8 May 2020 - More economic freedom will be the key to surviving the next phase of the Covid-19 recovery, and the Government should step aside as soon as it can, according to a new report For better or for worse: How governments respond to crises by The New Zealand Initiative. After placing the country in enforced lockdown for nearly two months, the Government is now considering its options to reopen many Kiwi businesses sometime in the next few weeks. Read more
As the Government looks ahead to the end of the Covid-19 public health emergency it should first look to the past for examples of how good policy intentions in a recovery can go horribly wrong. For instance, a paper by US-based macroeconomists David and Christina Romer shows that fiscal headroom is crucial because it means countries with low-debt will experience much milder downturns after a crisis than highly leveraged countries. Read more
Taiwan is one of the few countries to “flatten the curve” while maintaining an open domestic economy. Earlier this week, Taiwan only had 104 active cases of Covid-19. Read more
The Government’s wage subsidy scheme has a lot going for it. After a few early wrinkles were ironed out the evidence suggests it has achieved its purpose, helping connect more than a million New Zealand workers with their employer. Read more
So far the Government has announced $50 million in funding to support the media industry as it deals with a financial hit from the Covid-19 crisis. There have also been calls for the Government to make digital platforms Google and Facebook share revenue from journalism. Read more
Among the more irritating education fads is the idea that schools need to teach a “growth mindset”. It is true that students who think they can improve wind up faring better than those who feel stuck in a hole from which they see no way out. Read more
It was an unusual document Angela Merkel just found in her in-tray. Written in French and on joint letterhead, 15 members of France’s Parliament penned an open letter to the German Chancellor. Read more
Even before the Covid-19 crisis, there were gaping inequities in the educational outcomes of students in New Zealand. For example, in its latest (2018) round of PISA testing, the OECD found that New Zealand had the worst socioeconomic gradient (i.e. Read more
