Reports & Media

Last week’s post-Covid fiscal and monetary policy workshop, hosted jointly by the Reserve Bank and Treasury, seemed designed to warm the policy economics community to higher levels of public debt. While low interest rates mean investment projects that might not normally make the grade can now stack up, stacking up debt builds its own fragility. Read more

I am increasingly convinced that our impressive economic recovery from COVID is being led by orange cones. The things are everywhere, clogging up our roads and cycleways and footpaths. Read more

A news item this week reported the Minister of Health was “enormously frustrated”. We can think of quite a few in the private sector who know that feeling. Read more

According to the Peter Principle, people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence." While intended as satire, many people will have their own story of the Peter Principle in practice. Of a boss not up to the role they have been promoted to fulfil. Read more

This week, a strong majority of Australian economists came out in support of a policy measure to encourage electric vehicle adoption on their side of the Tasman. But they did not support subsidies for electric vehicles. Read more

Readers of this column will be only too well aware why the Government’s proposals to return to compulsory, occupation-wide collective bargaining (misleadingly dubbed “Fair Pay Agreements”) will damage New Zealand’s already fragile productivity growth. The evidence is set out in black and white in The New Zealand Initiative’s 2019 report, Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour. Read more

There are many ways a Minister can communicate with their Ministry. From an email from an advisor to a quiet word with officials (or sometimes a not so quiet word). Read more

The Government’s so-called clean-car ‘feebate’ scheme has copped a lot of criticism. However, the Government at least deserves credit for its creativity. Read more