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Today's Top 10 is a guest post from Oliver Hartwich, the executive director of the New Zealand Initiative. 1) Brazil’s recession In case you have missed it, the world economy is in crisis mode. Read more

Earlier this month Genesis Energy announced it was mothballing New Zealand’s only large scale coal fired electricity plant. The move, effective as of late 2018, will reduce the country’s total CO2 emissions by about 2.5%, setting the sector on course to produce 90% of the country’s electricity from renewable sources. Read more

You can tell how the mood of the global economy is turning by looking at the books getting published. Over the past few days, review copies of two new books landed on my desk. Read more

Online shoppers beware: getting that cheap paperback from Book Depository could get a lot harder. But, it will depend on just how the government goes about taxing direct-to-consumer imports. Read more

Late last week, Labour Party Trade spokesman David Parker claimed that overseas speculation on residential properties in Auckland were a lost opportunity for provincial regions like Timaru. Parker asserted that unproductive investment in the housing market came at a cost of missed productive investment opportunities for regions that need it most. Read more

I’m not a fan of paternalism but in one area it has its place: education. Students should be able to choose from a range of disciplines to find the one that best suits their inclinations, interests and future career ambitions. Read more

If one wanted to summarise all of economics in just one word, what would it be? For obvious reasons it cannot be “supply and demand” (because that is three words). Read more

The application of Trans-Tasman Resource (TTR) to go looking for heavy minerals off the West Coast captured few headlines when it was announced last month. It quickly sank below notice amid the tack and gybe of business journalism. Read more

As a researcher at a public policy think tank with a strong focus on economics, it is sometimes easy to take prices, and the influence they have on behaviour and innovation, for granted. Two recent incidents highlighted how powerful this mechanism can be. Read more