Eric Crampton is Chief Economist with the New Zealand Initiative.
He applies an economist’s lens to a broad range of policy areas, from devolution and housing policy to student loans and environmental policy. He served on Minister Twyford’s Urban Land Markets Research Group and on Minister Bishop’s Housing Economic Advisory Group.
Most recently, he has been looking at devolution to First Nations in Canada.
He is a regular columnist with Stuff and with Newsroom; his economic and policy commentary appears across most media outlets. He can also be found on Twitter at @ericcrampton.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
It tasted like a normal glass of milk. Maybe a little bit thinner than I would have expected for the 3 percent fat content advertised on the bottle. Read more
Every year around Christmas time, the government provides a sneak preview of the coming year's budget. At the same time, Treasury provides its take on the state of the books. Read more
In this episode, Eric, Nick and Benno talk about the Government's proposal to abolish regional councillors while retaining regional councils, shifting governance to new Combined Territories Boards made up of local mayors. They explore how this reform creates space for mayors to rethink regional governance through a function-by-function approach, potentially establishing purpose-built agencies for issues like water catchments and transport that cross council boundaries. Read more
This episode traces how Competitive Urban Land Markets (CLM) made the leap from dissident economic insight to the organising principle of New Zealand's housing reform agenda. Phil Twyford reflects on his time as an Opposition MP, where he absorbed CLM's logic, underwent an intellectual shift inside Labour, and worked with a small circle of economists to translate competition and abundance into a language government could act upon. Read more
When everything had gone wrong and Homer Simpson couldn’t afford Christmas presents for the family, he took a punt. He went to the dog track and bet on a promisingly named greyhound: Santa’s Little Helper. Read more
In this episode, Eric talks to Oliver about a major loophole in New Zealand's tax system that allows some companies to accumulate PAYE and GST debts, stop filing, and effectively walk away — contributing to almost $7 billion in unpaid corporate taxes. They discuss Oliver's new research note, "Responsibility before ruin: A pre-emptive fix for NZ's phoenix problem", which examines how Germany prevents such debts from building up through automatic insolvency triggers. Read more
Damien Grant isn’t normally the one making the case that the government needs to take more in tax. The liquidator and libertarian-minded columnist over at the Sunday Star Times more typically wants what libertarians generally want – a government that spends less and that can let each of us keep more of our own money. Read more
When plans to abolish regional councils were first rumoured, I was more than mildly sceptical. It isn’t that I’m a giant fan of regional councils; I couldn’t name more than a couple of my own regional councillors, and I bet most of you can’t either. Read more
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that four Uber drivers have actually been Uber employees all along. In the Court’s view, Uber had enough control over those drivers’ businesses that they couldn’t be considered contractors. Read more
The opening episode traces the intellectual and personal journey that gave birth to the idea of "Competitive Urban Land Markets" (CLM). It follows Chris Parker’s path from his early attempt at NZIER to broaden traditional cost–benefit models so they could capture the transformative effects of infrastructure investment, to his move into Auckland Council as Chief Economist, where he began to see high land prices not as signs of prosperity but as symptoms of monopoly and institutional failure. Read more
Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that Uber did not merely facilitate connections between four drivers and their various passengers – as Uber has maintained. And that the four drivers were not contractors for Uber either. Read more
Announcements earlier this month make the Emissions Trading Scheme a bit less credible over the longer term. The problem can be fixed – and relatively easily. Read more
A commissioned report released this past week revealed a fact you may find surprising. Rules stopping a stadium from hosting many events cause an enormous amount of forgone revenue over time. Read more
Sometimes, policy work is like wishing on a cursed wish-granting monkey’s paw. Like the one in the old Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode, later parodied in The Simpsons. Read more
Illicit tobacco might now make up more than a quarter of New Zealand’s tobacco market. There are no wholly reliable numbers on the size of illicit markets. Read more