Listener: 28 October, 2011. Keywords: Social Policy; Is New Zealand the best place in the world to bring up children? A report from economist David Grimmond, The Effectiveness of Public Investment in New Zealand Children, suggests not. After combining 26 indicators of children’s welfare from 30 OECD countries – ranging from drunkenness, bullying and suicide…
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Stout Research Centre Research Roundup: 26 October 2011 (A previous version of this paper is at http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1504) Keywords: Political Economy & History; Today I want to talk about my current project: writing a history of New Zealand from an economics perspective – it has the tentative title Not in Narrow Seas. Economics is not much…
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Fabian Society, Wellington, 20 October, 2011 (Note that this is a revised version of the paper at http://www.eastonbh.ac.nz/?p=1524. Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Macroeconomics & Money; Tonight I want to talk about our economic priorities. I’m going to differ from the conventional wisdom by arguing we should pay less attention to the growth…
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Paper to NZIIA Seminar ‘Addressing the Global Agenda’, 20 October 2011 Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; My message today is both simple and troubling.[1] The simple version is that the unipolar world is coming to an end, and is being replaced by a multipolar one. The change reflects a new phase in the globalisation of the…
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Poverty in New Zealand, St Peters on Willis , Wellington, 17 October, 2011. (This followed a presentation by Stephanie McIntyre, the director of the Downtown Community Ministry.) Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History; I want to begin by saying I have an enormous respect for Stephanie McIntyre, the team she…
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Listener: 14 October, 2011. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; Regulation & Taxation; I have been preoccupied by leaky building syndrome, which may have damaged up to 110,000 dwellings as well as costing considerable domestic stress and even lives. Commercial and public buildings have suffered, too. There were many causes of the disaster but it illustrates the…
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I wrote this note in October 2011, to sort out some of my ideas. I am putting it on the websirte, because it represents a step on the way to some important developments in my thinking on the role of tort law and social insurance. Keywords: Social Policy; My thinking on a number of issues…
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Listener: 1 October, 2011. Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; The world’s economic difficulties arise because so many balance sheets are badly balanced. A balance sheet – of a person, a business, a financial institution, a government or a country – consists of the entity’s assets on the left and its liabilities on the right. (Accountants are…
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