On Monday this week, the prime minister said she was optimistic that the economy would not shrink further in the second quarter. That would avoid New Zealand officially being in recession. Read more

Paul Bloxham, HSBC’s chief economist, once described New Zealand as a “rockstar economy”. That was back in January 2014. Read more

On 4 June, The Dominion Post published a lengthy and disturbing article highlighting the woes and dilemmas of earthquake safety regulation in Wellington. It highlighted the arbitrariness of current building standards and decisions. Read more

A race-neutral approach to government health (and welfare) spending would give the same treatment to people in the same circumstances. It would ignore irrelevant matters such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or creed. Read more

We explained in our November research report "Walking the Path to the Next Global Financial Crisis" why concerns about prolonged economic stagnation, or even serious recessions, should be taken seriously. During the 2008-2010 global financial crisis, governments' responses had turned a banking crisis into a public debt crisis. Read more

Fevered with Covid and isolated in a Te Anau motel, I imagined the following interview. Q: Finance Ministers traditionally urge people to be prudent – not to borrow to invest in shares. Read more

Last week, Inland Revenue Minister David Parker gave a speech titled “shining the light on unfairness in the tax system”. His speech defended an Inland Revenue investigation into the “tax paid by the wealthiest New Zealanders relative to their economic income”. Read more

This government is teaching us many things. One is that it and its supporters have no quarrel with governments that steam-roll radical reforms through parliament. Read more

Too many people think that what people get paid should bear some relationship to effort, merit or responsibility. Useless economists think it should have something to do with supply and demand. Read more

There is potential value in having a country’s economic policies reviewed by international organisations. Done well, they provide residents with non-partisan expert perspectives. Read more