It has become fashionable to complain about New Zealand's cost-of-living crisis. And it is true: life has become grotesquely unaffordable for many Kiwis. Read more
"Unlearning Helplessness" may sound like the theme of a TED talk event. Or the title of a book in Whitcoulls' personal growth section. Read more
You’ve heard all the jokes before: If you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion; put 10 economists in a room and you’ll get 11 opinions; economics is the only field where two people can share a Nobel Prize for saying opposite things. While the first two are purely speculative, that last one actually happened, in 1974. Read more
Last November we published a report, Walking the Path to the Next Global Financial Crisis. Public debt ratios in many major economies are alarming. Read more
Europe’s environmental taxonomy system is working so well it is being extended to cover everything else. The system is very advanced. Read more
The Wellington economics fraternity was up in arms last week. The reason was a job opening. Read more
Two weeks on from our last International Outlook podcast on the Russia/Ukraine conflict, Oliver Hartwich joins Ben Craven to discuss what has happened since. Were the meetings between Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin constructive? Read more
The controversial Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act came into force from 1 December 2021. It has significantly changed how Kiwis gain access to credit. Read more
It’s the standard critique of local government, and it’s often right. Councillors and mayors are more interested in spending a lot of money on flashy convention centres than on maintaining the pipes. Read more
It is hardly the highest-profile job in the country, but it is one of the more important ones. The members of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand set the country’s monetary policy. Read more
What passes for economics in Wellington has seemed increasingly out of step with the academic consensus. Ideas long dismissed by academic economists as mad or harmful become trendy in Wellington circles. Read more
If you thought central planning was buried with the fall of communism, you should look at the European Union. In recent years, the EU has been working on its so-called taxonomy. Read more
It is hard to be funny when you are an economist. Thankfully, we have the Reserve Bank. Read more
The European Union has recently labelled nuclear energy and natural gas as environmentally sustainable energy sources. What has led to this labelling and what does it mean for Europe’s energy future? Read more
Top economists agree on critical policy issuesThe inaugural New Zealand Economics Experts Survey finds remarkable consensus among the country’s top economists on critical policy issues. The New Zealand Association of Economists, in conjunction with the New Zealand Initiative, invited Distinguished Fellows, life members, and former Presidents of the New Zealand Association of Economists, and recipients of the NZIER ‘Economist of the Year’ award, to serve as an expert panel. Read more