BBC Russian

CATCH AUSTRALIA? Only if We�re ready to pay.

Business Herald, 26 March 2010.
Keywords:� Growth & Innovation;
While accelerating the rate of GDP � even catching up with Australia – may be an official aspiration it is not simply a matter of trebling productivity as one businessman airily explained to me; he changed the topic when I asked how his firm is going about it. [...]

FOOD FOR FUTURE THOUGHT

A fundamental change in the global economy bodes well for New Zealand.
Listener: 20 March, 2010
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Throughout most of the 20th century, the prices we got for our farm exports fell relative to what we paid for our imports. This drop in our terms of trade meant we had to export more to import [...]

WHAT DOES A MULTIPOLAR WORLD MEAN?

Presentation for the Wellington Branch of the NZIIA AGM, 16 March 2010
Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;
Last year was a period of economic re-stabilisation after the Global Financial Crisis which began in 2008, although there were clear signs of its onset in 2007 and even 2006. It would be easy to think that the world has got [...]

EVIDENCE OR BLIND FAITH?

If you wanted to close the gap with Australia, wouldn’t you look at why the gap exists?
Listener: 6 March, 2010.
Keywords: Growth & Innovation;
A meta-analysis brings together all the existing research studies, pooling their conclusions to get an overall one that is more precise and revealing than the individual studies. John Hattie, professor of education at [...]

HOW TO GET HIGHER WAGES

This was a note I prepared following a discussion on some troubling statistics. 1 March, 2010.
Keywords: Labour Studies; Statistics;
Suppose you did exactly the same job for the whole of your life. How do you think your wages would increase the same as inflation, or faster?
I cant be sure of the answer for a lifetime but [...]

TAX AND EQUITY

PSA Journal, March 2010.
Keywords: Distributional Economics; Regulation & Taxation;
In my Commercialisation of New Zealand there is a chapter on �the abandoning of equity�, of how under Rogernomics social fairness went steadily down in the policy priorities. The report on tax reform by the Victoria University of Wellington Tax Working Group (TWG) confirms the relegation. Of [...]

Brian Easton