Monthly Archives: July 1997

The Broadcasting Reforms

This entry was posted in Governance, Literature and Culture on by .

Appendix to Chapter 4 of Commercialisation of New Zealand. An excerpt was published in J. Farnsworth & I. Hutchinson (ed) New Zealand Television: A Reader, 2001, Dunmore Press, p.225-230.

Keywords: Governance; Literature and Culture;

It is very easy to argue that there is something special about some economic commodity such as broadcasting, but to overlook there are other activities which are just as special, such as hard copy periodicals. A good magazine shop sells over 5000 titles. They range from daily newspapers to monthly science journals, from gardening to financial investment. In a big city there will be dozen of competitors also selling titles, as well as specialist shops for ethnic language literature, rock music, obscure political views, to whatever. Alternatively there is subscription by post. This extraordinarily rich supply in response to a myriad of public demands is provided without significant government involvement other than the framework for normal commerce.

The New Zealand Experiment: A Model for World Structural Adjustment? (review)

This entry was posted in Political Economy & History on by .

by Jane Kelsey New Zealand Studies, July 1997, p.37-38

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Early in The New Zealand Experiment, Jane Kelsey writes about a 1993 colloquium sponsored by the Washington-based Institute of International Economics (IIE). Its convenor, John Williamson, is reported as suggesting that societies have a natural tendency to become sclerotic and their flexibility declines, a reference to Mancur Olson’s The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation and Social Rigidities.

Baths, Hogwash and Taxes

This entry was posted in Listener, Regulation & Taxation, Statistics on by .

In the search for correlations, are economists forsaking rigorous standards for sloppiness?
Listener 12 July 1997

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Regulation & Taxation;

Nobel prizewinning physicist Steven Weinberg recently wrote “the existence of a common standard of judgement leads physicists, who are no more saintly than economists, to question their own best work.” He was referring to Alan Guth who, having discovered the universe went through an inflationary phase early in its creation, nevertheless tested his own work to see whether the hypothesis was wrong. As Karl Popper says, be your own sternest critic. Is it fair to imply economists are less rigorous?

The Efficacy Of the Market

This entry was posted in Health, Regulation & Taxation on by .

Extract from Chapter 2, The Commercialisation of New Zealand.

Keywords: Health; Regulation & Taxation;

This is not an economics textbook, so we simply report a substantial body of economic theory as follows. The market may be thought of as a signalling system which coordinates the decisions of the various actors in an economy. It has two key features. First under certain circumstances (key features to be outlined shortly), the price signals reflect the social value of the resources being used or traded. Second the signalling system is self-enforcing, in that the actors have a practical selfinterest in obeying the signals.

SCIENCE POLICY

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on by .

Chapter 14 of The Commercialisation of New Zealand   Keywords: Growth & Innovation;   Science interfaces with broad economic policy because it uses public resources and impacts on industrial policy. But even though the science community did not always help itself, Treasury’s approach was fundamentally anti-science. (Chapter 6) There is an instructive article by a…
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The Commercialisation Of New Zealand

This entry was posted in Governance, History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Political Economy & History, Regulation & Taxation, Social Policy on by .


Auckland University Press, 1997. 288pp.

Well-known economist and commentator Brian Easton describes the origins, theory, history and politics of the dramatic change in economic policy in New Zealand from Robert Muldoon’s interventionism to Roger Douglas’s commercialisation and beyond. It is graphically illustrated with case studies including health, education, broadcasting, environment and heritage, government administration, the labour market, cultural policy and science. Lively broad ranging and controversial, this is a valuable commentary on the ‘more-market’ prevalent in New Zealand from the mid 1980s. (Publisher’s blurb)

A Coiled Spring

This entry was posted in Political Economy & History on by .

Prologue to “The Commercialisation of New Zealand”    Keywords: Political Economy & History;  Following the introduction of refrigeration in 1881, New Zealand developed as a specialist pastoral exporter of meat, wool, and dairy products, mainly to Britain. Before that, distance from markets had confined the economy to exported quarried resources (especially gold) and wool, tallow,…
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The Abandoning Of Equity

This entry was posted in Distributional Economics on by .

Chapter 3 of ‘The Commercialisation of New Zealand’   Keywords: Distributional Economics;   Between 1984 and 1991 the public policy objective of equity, in any of its meanings of the 1970s, was increasingly abandoned. There was no single moment when this occurred, as happened with employment policy when the Labour government downgraded the priority of…
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The Fallacy Of the Generic Manager

This entry was posted in Governance, Health on by .

Appendix to Chapter 9 of The Commercialisation of New Zealand

Keywords: Governance; Health;

A central notion of the New Zealand reforms of the 1980s and early 1990s was that an able manager was capable of managing any agency in the private or public sector. This has two implications. First, it suggests that all economic activities are broadly the same, or may be treated so for policy purposes, since the required management skills and approaches are not sector specific. Second, it encourages the replacement of specialist managers, who had typically developed in the sector, with generalists who had not, but who would be loyal to the managerialist philosophy and anxious to impose it on the institution.

The Health Reforms (and the Blitzkreig)

This entry was posted in Health on by .

Chapter 9 of The Commercialisation of New Zealand

Keywords: Health;

Undoubtedly there was at the end of the 1980s a widespread perception that there was a problem with the health system, although in retrospect this seems to have been a grumbling rather than a deep discontent. When the reforms were being put in place the public indicated they were more satisfied with the existing structures than their earlier surveys has shown. Every health system in the world appears to beset with difficulties, which ought to be a warning to reformers that there are no easy solutions.

The Growing Up Of the Unions

This entry was posted in Labour Studies on by .

Appendix to Chapter 7 of The Commercialisation of New Zealand

Keywords: Labour Studies;

The union movement will think of itself as largely marginalized by and marginally involved in the commercialization shift. This appendix explores another story: one which advocates of the reforms should be keen to point out. All institutions find it very difficult to reform themselves. Genuine institutional reform involves some external pressure. This is the case study of the union experience, but there are numerous others including the corporatization of state owned enterprises (Chapter 1).