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
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
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
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
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
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
Wellington, 1 May - New Zealand’s relative success against Covid-19 now gives Kiwi universities a unique opportunity to attract a new wave of keen international students, according to a report by the New Zealand Initiative. In the report, Open for minds: export education and recovery, chief economist Dr Eric Crampton highlights what may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Kiwi universities to reinvigorate their foreign student numbers as the pandemic crisis is brought under control. Read more
New Zealand’s universities have, at least since the mid-2000s, relied on foreign students for substantial parts of their income. Though the extent of foreign students’ contributions is obvious to anyone working in academia, they are not well appreciated outside the tertiary sector. Read more
This week, the vice chancellor of Victoria University (in Wellington) proved once again he is the bull in the china shop by doubling down on an $150 weekly holding fee for first year student halls. Now, we can all sympathise with universities since they have lost a large portion of their income from international students. 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
New Zealand has come out of lockdown to enter the purgatory of Three-dom (hopefully for only a couple of weeks). The path towards a new normal remains long and littered with challenges. Read more
The Covid-19 pandemic and economic lockdown means many countries are looking inwards. But global cooperation will be an important lever out of the economic and social consequences of the virus. Read more
Wellington, 30 April - Now is not the time to rethink New Zealand’s hard-won network of trade ties around the world with protectionist policies, warns a new report Reinforcing New Zealand’s trade relationships after Covid-19 by the New Zealand Initiative. While the Covid-19 crisis exposed vulnerabilities in the global supply chain, the answer isn’t to create new trade barriers, said the report’s author and chief editor Nathan Smith. Read more
Last Wednesday, The New Zealand Initiative published a 13-page research report explaining why reliance on central bank credit to fund fiscal deficits is not a free lunch and it is economically dangerous to claim otherwise. The New Zealand Social Credit Association subsequently placed a full-page advertisement in the weekend’s Herald espousing the opposite position. Read more