New Zealand has a successful economy. International rankings regularly put us near the top for competitiveness, economic freedom, and ease of doing business.
At the same time, New Zealand’s per capita incomes trail those of other developed countries. Our productivity growth is anaemic. Our ability to attract high-quality international investment is limited and constrained.
New Zealand cannot rest on the laurels of past reforms. We must continue to improve our economic policy settings.
The New Zealand Initiative’s research includes analysis of regulatory and fiscal policy. We explore how incentives can promote economic development, and we investigate the social effects of economic policy.
Our research as also warned of the perils of loose monetary policy and detailed how central banks have increasingly become occupied with non-core business.
Our flagship publications include:
Taxpayers commonly work hard to earn the money that governments take in taxes. Knowing the effort sacrificed they naturally want governments to spend that money wisely and well. Read more
Last month, the Initiative published an essay listing six mistakes Graeme Wheeler and I argue the world’s major central banks widely made in responding to COVID. The New Zealand media interpreted this as an attack on the RBNZ. Read more
A research note released today by The New Zealand Initiative mainly attributes the outbreak of inflation in many economies to central bank mistakes. Co-authored by Graeme Wheeler, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and Bryce Wilkinson, Senior Research Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative, the paper argues that central banks overall: were too confident about their monetary policy framework; were too confident about their models; were too confident they could control output and employment; lost their focus on price stability and took on too many mandates; faced conflicts in some cases with conflicting ‘dual mandate’ objectives; and were distracted by extraneous political objectives, such as climate change. Read more
Read our submission, written by Dr Bryce Wilkinson to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. This submission responds to the Bank’s 1 June 2022 consultation paper, Supporting New Zealand’s economic stability. Read more
In making this submission, we have drawn on the research and recommendations in our report, Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour (July 2019) (our Report). A copy of our Report is appended to this submission. Read more
Oliver Hartwich chats with ACT’s Transport and Climate Change spokesperson Simon Court about the Clean Car Scheme and how it's adding bureaucracy, not reducing emissions. To listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more
Economist Dave Heatley finds himself in something of a quandary. New Zealand’s economists firmly support the Emissions Trading Scheme as the best way of achieving New Zealand’s net zero target. Read more
Chief Economist at The New Zealand Initiative Dr Eric Crampton is in the studio to talk economics. Tonight he's talking competition and antitrust laws. Read more
Hard times make for bad thinking. Inflation has been running at 7.3%, or at 7.8% if you remember how the petrol excise holiday works. Read more
Mike Hosking discusses Roger Partridge's NZ Herald column on protecting highly productive soils. Read more