Note written for circulation in March 2024 There’s almost no issue on which outgoing Labour MP and former Finance Minister Grant Robertson would find agreement with former National and Act leader Don Brash. But when Robertson was asked during his exit interview with the Herald whether he thought it was worth considering Brash’s idea of…
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This note was to try to clarify my thinking about what was going on in WP’s speech to the party on Sunday 17 March. It was, of course, a speech to the NZF annual conference which makes numerous political points – some valid. But the attack on his government’s tax policies is something in addition….
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I have not weighed in on the vigorous and welcome discussion on the dual mandate of the Reserve Bank to both target inflation and maintain maximum sustainable employment. This note is about why the new government gave so much priority to abolishing it. One reason for not joining in is that I am unsympathetic to…
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Do I detect increasing uncertainty as to the effectiveness of monetary policy to deal with inflation? It may be helpful for an understanding what is going, to recount the conventional wisdom before ‘monetarism’; that term was coined in 1968 so I was there before it and recall some of the debate leading up to it….
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Circulated 13 April 2023 There is a fetish for setting performance targets in, among other places, the education and health system. This note draws on economists’ experiences to caution about their use, and illustrates how this has mattered in the health system. The foundation principle is Gilling’s Law which states ‘how the game is scored…
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Working Paper for New Zealand Productivity Commission Introduction Unexpected shocks to the New Zealand economy are endemic. The numerous small ones have been dealt with by the local initiatives inherent in the market economy and by common sense. However, there are a few big shocks where national action has been necessary. Sometimes those actions have…
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Jasfest, 7 December 2021 I apologise for not presenting this short tribute to Jas. I have had a tumour removed from my larynx. The prognosis is good, but it will take some time for my voice to recover sufficiently to be able to make presentations. I want to talk about Jas as a macroeconomist, but…
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Now is about the time that the Government is getting its Budget Strategy together In the week before the budget – the 2021 one is to be delivered on Thursday 20 May – there is a strange ritual in which all the commentariat and lobbyists (who are not necessarily distinct from one another) tell us…
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Introduction: The focus of this paper is on macroeconomic management and not on the entirety of economic policy. There are many issues which macroeconomic interventions cannot address. To use macroeconomic instruments, rather than the relevant targeted instrument, will blunt the effectiveness of macropolicy interventions. Reflecting, this paper is really a critique of the current primary…
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The Treasury forecasts suggest the economy is doing better than expected after the Covid Shock. John Kenneth Galbraith was wont to say that economic forecasting was designed to make astrology look good. Unfair, but it raises the question of the purpose of economic forecasts. Certainly the public may treat them as horoscopes which is usually…
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I was writing almost weekly about the Covid Crisis during its peak of between March and June 2020. Not that I had any technical expertise in the area (in the following please allow for that) but its impact on economics areas where I had some expertise was great. Here is a list of the Pundit…
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I prepared this note on the contribution of Joseph Stiglitz of the same title to an important symposium in Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Volume 34, Numbers 1–2, 2018 (pp. 70–106). It is for economists. A shorter version is published in the AUT Briefing Papers series. Stiglitz’s text is in italics: I believe…
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This paper on public debt strategy is published as an AUT Briefing paper. It is available here.
Paper to the Fabian Society, 12 October, 2016 While we continue to chew over the carcass of the Fourth Labour Government – the Lange-Douglas one – we pay little attention to the subsequent Fifth Labour Government. Yet the Clark-Cullen one is greatly shaping the current Labour Opposition and the current National Government. It will,…
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A major preoccupation of the budget was preparing for the next major financial crisis. To do so it is reducing government spending relative to GDP. Where do tax cuts fit in? Our politics reminds me those weekly serial movies where each week the heroine ends in an impossible situation but next week she miraculously escapes…
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If it necessary to run a budget deficit then it should be spent in the interests of future generations, rather than on increased consumption to be paid for in the future. It is very easy to demand the government should run, or increase, its budget deficit, that is, it should spend more than its revenue…
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The history of New Zealand is speculation on farm land which stokes up debt, with disastrous consequences when the bubble bursts. The New Zealand industry is going through another one. During the Great War, farm land prices boomed. When farm product prices collapsed in 1920, farmers walked off their land. It was not that the…
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World Sharemarkets Are Sneezing. What Does That Tell Us About the World Economy? Before discussing the state of the world economy – especially what is going on in China – it is useful to say something about the importance of the sharemarket (Americans call it ‘stock market’). It is far more important in pop-economics than…
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The more one is certain about the state of an economy, the more one is likely to be wrong; the more one is certain about the state of an economy, the greater the media coverage. No wonder the public is confused. I shan’t add to the confusion. In quick summary, the New Zealand’s economic growth…
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Also notes for Radio NZ Nights with Brian Crump: 11 August, 2014 The indications are that economic growth is slowing down from the boom rates of the last few years. The slowdown may turn into a contraction – that is, output may fall. There is a view that the contraction began in the middle of 2015. (It is…
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