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Global food security is an increasing challenge. A growing middle class in developing countries are demanding more protein. Read more

In the cult TV comedy Arrested Development, a character called Tobias Funke starts a folk band called “Dr Tobias Funke’s 100% good-time family band solution.” He and his family travel to medical conferences singing folk tunes persuading people to buy a lifestyle drug produced by a big pharma called Teamocil. Unfortunately, the sense of wellness in relationships created by Teamocil turns out to be the first sign of complete pituitary shutdown. Read more

Few things in politics look more certain than a change of government after the next Australian election in 2013. The Gillard Labor government is polling abysmally and plagued by constant leadership quarrels. Read more

Prime minister John Key observed that the 2011 election was about the economy. Business people are looking to the incoming government to address critical weaknesses in our economy and implement policies to boost economic growth. Read more

Last month Rebecca Macfie wrote an article in the Listener entitled “Our slack bosses”. In it she argued that “one of New Zealand’s dirtiest little secrets is that our businesses are not very well managed” and that “the poor quality of New Zealand managers is holding the country back”. Read more

The savings debate has not always been well-informed, and it’s good that the government has put together a well qualified group to advise it. The last official inquiry was part of the 2001 McLeod Tax Review. Read more

John Maynard Keynes once wrote: “There is no harm in being sometimes wrong – especially if one is promptly found out.” Unfortunately for the world, the problems with Keynes’ ideas were not discovered promptly, and the lessons were too soon forgotten as Keynesian thinking enjoyed a revival with the recent global financial crisis and subsequent recession. At the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s, Keynes advocated fiscal stimulus – higher government spending or tax reductions – to boost total spending in the economy and put the unemployed back into jobs. Read more

In recent years Statistics NZ has done an excellent job of shedding light on the productivity performance of the economy. It made a further contribution with a release last month of productivity statistics at the industry level for the years 1978-2008. Read more

A few weeks ago I decided to look out for examples of economic fallacies that routinely appear in our media. It didn’t take long to make a list. Read more

The annual budget is the main statement of the government’s overall economic and social programme. So in the first instance it needs to be evaluated in terms of the government’s own goals. Read more