The EU is falling apart
Last week, I wrote in this column that Europe’s refugee crisis could undo the EU. This week, I notice how much progress has been achieved in that respect over the past seven days. Read more
Last week, I wrote in this column that Europe’s refugee crisis could undo the EU. This week, I notice how much progress has been achieved in that respect over the past seven days. Read more
Wellington (17 September 2015): The New Zealand Initiative today said that Cabinet’s blocking of the Lochinver Farm sale to Shanghai Pengxin shows that the Overseas Investment Act (OIA) is not fit for purpose. The decision goes completely against NZ’s international reputation as a place to do business, but is unfortunately consistent with New Zealand’s poor OECD ranking for openness to foreign investment. Read more
Dr Oliver Hartwich discusses the economy with Paul Henry on 11 September 2015, and talks about a potential future GFC. Read more
Wellington (15 September 2015): The New Zealand Initiative says the Productivity Commission’s final report on improving outcomes from social services underscores the need to constantly assess their effectiveness. Jenesa Jeram, a researcher at The New Zealand Initiative, said that the commission was right to note that there are many social services that continue to receive funding without proper assessment of their impact or cost-effectiveness. Read more
Do older Australians hate younger Australians? This is a question that some were left pondering after attending a recent presentation by John Daley of the Grattan Institute on the urbanisation challenge facing Australian cities. Read more
When Cal Tech economist D. Roderick Kiewiet looked hard at the stack of American regulations affecting health and safety, he found a mess. Read more
I came to New Zealand as a refugee from Rwanda almost 20 years ago. The refugee world once seemed so far from us. Read more
It is really hard not to sympathise with calls for increasing the refugee quota. Seeing the pictures from the Mediterranean tugs at the heartstrings. Read more
The final week of September will mark ‘Banned Books Week’, a celebration of the freedom to read and a challenge to literary censorship. It is certainly good timing: the New Zealand Film and Literature Board of Review’s decision to temporarily ban a novel is the first since the law was enacted 22 years ago. Read more
“At least Germany is getting some good press recently,” a friendly businessman just told me a few days ago. “That’s quite a change from what we have seen before.” What he was referring to was the European refugee crisis, in which the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel was suddenly regarded as humane, caring and compassionate -- and not as brutal, egotistic and authoritarian as in its dealings with Greece. Read more
After the recent review of Child, Youth and Family (CYF), the Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC) has come to the conclusion that the system is failing children on far too many fronts. In fact, the Children’s Commissioner goes as far as to doubt that children are better off in state care at all. Read more
Sometimes it is easier to see things clearly the further you remove yourself from them. For me it has been like that with Europe. Read more
We this week released Elisabeth Prasad's report running some of the numbers on whether compensating live kidney donors makes sense. She finds that the typical kidney transplant saves the Ministry of Health on net about $125,000 over the longer term: dialysis is expensive. Read more
Question: Do the likely benefits from the Health & Safety Reform Bill (or any other Bill) exceed the costs? Answer 1: They do if you hire the right economist Answer 2: They do if you assume the benefits are large enough to exceed the costs Public policy decisions have to be made on some basis. Read more
Earlier this week, my colleague Jason Krupp discussed the consequences of overzealous urban planning. Drawing from a recent paper by urbanist Alain Bertaud, the premise is that too much planning control impedes the efficient functioning of cities, producing unintended and undesirable outcomes. Read more