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
If you think you understand something pretty well, here’s a fun exercise. Explain in detail how the thing works, including how one part causes another part to move. Read more
Emile Donovan spoke to Dr Eric Crampton on his show RNZ Nights about prediction markets and whether they are more accurate than polling. Listen below. Read more
Sean Plunket talks to Dr Eric Crampton on The Platform about whether social media bans for kids actuallly work. Watch below. Read more
Imagine that someone invents a new cigarette that produces even more tar and harmful chemicals. Nobody is quite sure how much worse it is than a standard cigarette. Read more
I can’t pretend that dinnertime on the 21st of October was anywhere near as exciting as dinnertime on the 3rd of November. On the evening of Sunday the 3rd, I expect most of us were tuned into the final overs of the third cricket test, hoping that New Zealand would be the first to sweep a full test series in India. Read more
New Zealand’s poor productivity statistics are less puzzling if you understand the country’s land use planning and consenting system. It isn’t much of an exaggeration that, for many activities, anyone’s “no” can block anyone else from doing anything. Read more
If next week’s American Presidential election is a coin toss, that coin looks increasingly weighted toward Trump. In early October, the race was much closer to a fair coin toss. Read more
1. Introduction and Summary 1.1 This submission is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative) in response to the Government's consultation document "Have your say on Work Health and Safety," released in June 2024. Read more
Paul Brennan talks to Dr Eric Crampton on Reality Check Radio about New Zealand’s alarming drop in birth rates, and why we ranked dead last in infrastructure delivery in a global survey. Listen below. Read more
On Tuesday, Ngāi Tahu set a compelling vision of tino rangatiratanga centred on economic self-determination. The late Māori King Arikinui Tuheitia asked iwi and hapū to hold four hui to build ‘kotahitanga’ – unity. Read more
In this episode, Dr Eric Crampton and Prof Steven Hamilton explore why New Zealand and Australia's COVID responses shared similar successes and failures despite their different paths. Their conversation draws from Prof Hamilton's new book "Australia's Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race," examining how both countries excelled at initial elimination and wage subsidies but stumbled with testing regulations and vaccine procurement, ultimately revealing important lessons about institutional capacity and adaptable policy responses for future pandemics. Read more
If you haven’t yet read Aaron Smale’s series on abuse in care, you really should. New Zealand doesn’t have a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism, but the series would rightly be up for nomination. Read more
Fertility rates have been dropping for a very long time, but the recent plunge is precipitous. Neil Johnson, Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at Flinders University, took us through the numbers at a panel session for Fertility Counts Aotearoa at Parliament last week. Read more
BusinessDesk’s Pattrick Smellie had the best synopsis of New Zealand First’s announcement on foreign direct investment this weekend: “it was less important for what it said than for the fact that Peters said it.” The Overseas Investment Act has placed New Zealand among the developed world’s least hospitable climates for foreign investment. Other countries recognise investment as a benefit to be sought. Read more
I am kicking myself that we at the Initiative had not read Federated Farmers’ submission to the Banking inquiry before drafting our own. Their submission exhibits a creativity that I had thought New Zealand had lost decades ago – sometime around 1987, if we had to pin a date on it. Read more