Monthly Archives: July 1992

The Challenge of Religion to Economics

St Andrew’s Trust for the Study of Religion & Society, 23 July, 1992. (There was a companion lecture in which Richard Randerson looked at the challenge of economics to religion.)   Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;   Adam Smith, often described as the founder of economics, never held a position in economics. He…
Continue reading this entry »

Fences and Ambulances: an Economist Looks at Family Policy

Paper for ‘The Children’s, Young Persons and their Families Act -A Review’, A Public Seminar. Palmerston North College of Education, Friday July 10, 1992

Keywords Health; Social Policy

It is a curious, if instructive, oddity that our most famous quotation about health promotion does not appear in the Heineman Dictionary of New Zealand Quotations. We talk about the need to put fences at the top of the cliff, but the thrust of our social policy is the ambulance at the bottom -although in recent years it has been more like a cardphone from which one can ring a private cab. Fences and ambulances represent quite different ways of responding to social policy problems. The more erudite might refer to holistic social policy versus pathological social policy.