The Prime Minister is delivering on her main promise. Before the 2017 election, Jacinda Ardern promised to lead a "transformational" government. Read more
Vaccine access campaigners get one very big and very important thing very right. If only the richer part of the world can afford Covid vaccinations, the costs will not be borne only by people in poorer countries suffering from ongoing waves of illness and misery. Read more
On Radio NZ Nights Eric Crampton asks if waiving vaccine patents will improve worldwide access to a covid vaccine in reality, or are the bottlenecks found elsewhere in the system?
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In a recent column for Newsroom (4 May 2021), Oliver Hartwich wrote about Europe, and whether its recovery will be worse than the recession. He wrote that the Covid-19 pandemic has not caused an ordinary recession - at least not in Europe. Read more
What is it about climate change that turns august institutions into the intellectual equals of quivering jellyfish? Last week, Germany's highest court upheld a constitutional complaint against the Federal Government on climate change. Read more
Grant Robertson could not have looked more pleased delivering his 2021 pre-budget speech to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce earlier this week. For a start, he was speaking to a live audience, in stark contrast to 2020. Read more
Last week, The New Zealand Initiative released a paper outlining the perils of rent controls. It was fun to reminisce about our first year of economics study. Read more
Recently, you have been really responsible with your finances. You stopped buying chicken paninis, cut back on the flat whites, and eating out at KFC. Read more
In our submission to the Commerce Commission on its open letter "Ensuring our energy and airports regulation is fit for purpose" we urge the Commerce Commission to act consistently with our statutory emissions targets as they are worded in the legislation. Terms like “decarbonisation,” “energy transition” and “low carbon economy” are not consistent with our statutory targets. Read more
Wellington (Friday, 7 May 2021): The Government’s proposal announced today to impose compulsory industry-wide collective bargaining on employees and employers without their agreement or even their participation will harm everyone but unions,” said Roger Partridge, chair of The New Zealand Initiative. Partridge said The New Zealand Initiative’s 2019 report, Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour, found that Fair Pay Agreements would be likely to harm productivity and would be not be in the interests of workers, the unemployed, consumers, and overall wellbeing. Read more
Following the release of his recent research note, Rent controls: The next mistake in housing policy, Dr David Law highlights some of the issues of rent controls and explains why it is often older, and high-income earners who end up benefitting the most when rent controls are introduced.
The New Zealand Initiative · Podcast: David Law on the perils of rent controls Read more
Europe’s economy is at risk of becoming a place for the walking dead. That is how you can read a new report by the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB). Read more
What if the real problem with local government is not that there are too many of them, but rather too few? Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta in April announced an independent review of local government. Read more
Research Fellow Briar Lipson joined a panel of other educators and academics on Sunday's Q+A's education special to discuss our children's declining maths performance, and ways that we can fix this problem. You can watch the full panel discussion below. Read more
For this week's podcast, we chat to the Initiative's Executive Director Oliver Hartwich a few days on from his New Zealand citizenship ceremony to find out about what led him to think tank-land in New Zealand.
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