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COINING IT: Our currency is worth every penny

Listener: 29 July, 2006. 
 
Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money; 
 
The change of coinage over the next few weeks will pay for itself. Not only will the new coins be more convenient to use, but also they are cheaper to make. The savings will pay for the administrative costs of the change. Today’s currencies cost less than their face [...]

29th July 2006 | Comments Closed

PROSPECTS FOR SOCIAL POLICY

In July 2006, I was approached by a team from the MSD involved in looking at past and future social issues to provide a context for social policy thinking. The following are revised notes from the 90 minute discussion. Contributors to the review are anonymous, but there was no objection to me publishing my [...]

28th July 2006 | Comments Closed

ENERGY FUTURES: An Economic Framework and Some Policy Implications

Keywords: Environment & Resources; 
 
Introduction
 
This is a response to the IPS Bio-fuels seminar series of July-August 2006. It is is both a reflection of what I learned and an attempt to put it in an economic framework.
 
It may be useful to begin with a little of my view of economics. At its best it offers [...]

24th July 2006 | Comments Closed

FIT THE BILL: Will National’s policies improve the education system?

Listener: 15 July, 2006. 
Keywords: Education; 
I thought the only really interesting manifesto policy in the 2005 election was National’s proposal to give parents more choice and schools more independence. National wants to relax rigid zoning restrictions, increase the number of places at integrated schools and restore the funding to independent schools to past levels so that [...]

15th July 2006 | Comments Closed

UNBUNGLING: Can we catch the world in broadband?

Listener: 1 July, 2006. 
Keywords: Business & Finance; 

It is not the first time that Telecom New Zealand has been “unbundled”. When it was a state-owned enterprise in the 1980s it was directed by its owner (the government) to provide the local-loop lines, which connect households and businesses to the telephone exchanges, separately from the [...]

1st July 2006 | Comments Closed