Paper for the Conference of Booksellers New Zealand, Auckland, July 30, 1996. Inner Wellington where I live is littered with bookshops. To start mid-city at Manners Mall, where Eileen’s Bookshop sells magazines, greeting cards, lotto tickets, but no books. A little way along is Unity, which sells only books except for a very few specialist…
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Everyone Assumed That Productivity Growth Would Increase with the Employments Contracts Act. But Check the Data: No Significant Change.
Listener: 27 July, 1996.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Labour Studies;
The non-ideological economist would have made three confident predictions about the effects of the Employment Contracts Act (ECA) introduced in May 1991. First, it would weaken the unions. True. Second, it would depress wages of low pay workers (because of the mass of unemployed with similar skills). True. Third, it would generate productivity increases (at least in the short term). False.
Just How Out of Synch Are the Interests of the Political Party Elite with Those of the Voters?
Listener: 13 July, 1996.
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
Once upon a time voting for a party for many people was a marriage for life. Nowadays it is more like a one night stand, consummated once every three years. This loss of loyalty leads to considerable anxiety by parties about their image, and the potential clients’ beliefs. Some insight is thrown on the inconsistency in the book Towards Consensus, by a group of university political scientists, Jack Vowles, Peter Aimer, Helena Catt, Jim Lamare and Raymond Miller. Their research is based on a sample of nearly 3000 New Zealanders who responded to a lengthy questionnaire at the time of the 1993 election. The book is rich with fascinating insights about political behaviour, but here we look at only voter and party elite attitudes to welfare and economic issues.