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“Productivity isn’t everything but in the long run it is almost everything,” observed economist Paul Krugman. “A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise output per worker.” This is bad news for New Zealand. Read more

Every two years, Treasury surveys stakeholders about Treasury’s performance. The 2015 survey was up on Treasury’s website about two months after it was completed. Read more

“Siri, give me directions to the airport.” After a long couple of days of meetings in Auckland it was time to head home. The reply from my smartphone was immediate. Read more

Having spent the past six weeks as a visiting fellow at The New Zealand Initiative, I noticed a certain Kiwi fascination with my home country, Switzerland. It is irritating because no one seems to believe me when I am untiringly explaining all the problems we have in Swiss politics. Read more

Zombies are hard to kill. Since the classical zombie only really occurs in fiction, accounts vary. Read more

New Zealanders have come to rely a great deal on government. The proportion of national income taken by taxes more than quadrupled in the 20th century and the number of Parliamentary Acts increased 50-fold. Read more

It was the year 2019 and Kiwis had had enough. It was time for legislation to finally protect the interests of those of us stuck in the car leasing market. Read more

People can argue the toss about whether the government should be more or less active in redistributing income but it’s good to have an accurate picture of how much the government already does to reduce inequalities in market income. It’s especially important when the government’s reviewing the tax system. Read more