Brian Easton

Those Magic Moments … Budgeting At Three O’Clock in the Morning
Listener 26 July, 1997

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;

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.

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.

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.

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)