The New Zealand Association of Economists’ annual conference is unlike other academic conferences and better for it.

The Association’s membership spans academics, officials, consultants and a few think-tankers. Once a year, members share some of the things they’ve been working on. Academics learn a bit about the policy problems that officials are wrangling with; officials learn about some of the academic research going on that can help improve policy.

And think-tankers learn who they need to call when different problems come up.

As it has over the past several years, the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, Te Waihanga, really shone.

Many of our data series only go back to the 1960s. This year, InfraComm provided early results from yet-to-be-released work estimating infrastructure investment going back about a hundred and fifty years. They dug up old year books to put together annual spending on roads, telegraph lines, and other kit going all the way back to Vogel’s time. Simply remarkable.

InfraComm also put up work showing the state of New Zealand’s infrastructure in international comparison and forecasting what infrastructure investment is likely to be like over coming decades. One bottom line from that work: user charges can provide the best guidance about when choosing where to invest.

People often see economists on a spectrum ranging from those wanting heavier reliance on markets and those wanting heavier reliance on the state. Two plenary sessions reminded everyone about a third option.

Professor Wendy Carlin of University College of London looked back at early and more recent academic work on civil society. Communities can manage some problems without having to turn to government or markets. She urged us to remember that all three options can be available. And that all three modes can fail.

And RMIT University’s Professor Jason Potts explained how technological change will radically enable this kind of community self-management, which otherwise has a hard time scaling up. Emerging digital property rights and blockchain solutions mean we now have a ‘full tech stack’ of digital institutions. They may succeed in areas that both markets and governments have found challenging – particularly in environmental management.

Professor Potts also put a challenge to us during a session on science funding. He noted that basic research abroad has been shifting away from the public sector, including universities, over to private research institutions. Why? Because administrative requirements have made research in public institutions incredibly onerous. There are so many forms to fill out and so many approvals to be sought from so many people who love to say no.

Potts said that funding for science is far from scarce, from private backers. By contrast, strong institutions supporting research, like good access to public data that’s safe to use, and sane administrative requirements, are rare. Improving those institutions could do much good.

Waikato University’s Jacques Poot’s plenary lecture on the implications of a global aging population was sobering. Half of Europe has already passed its peak population and is in decline. Fertility rates have plummeted everywhere. And smaller populations are likely to be less innovative.

Auckland University’s Olga Sudareva showed that, in European cities where crime makes people feel unsafe, women spend less time in work. Crime has disproportionate effects on female labour supply.

Canterbury’s Onur Koska has been working on smuggling. The problem is bigger than you might have thought. When one country exports something to another, that trade should show up in the accounts for both countries. One country’s import is literally the other country’s export. But there can be very substantial discrepancies between different countries’ accounts of the value of that trade – because people try to avoid tariffs and taxes.

San Jose State University’s Prof Darwyyn Deyo, visiting with the New Zealand Initiative and the University of Canterbury this year, provided cautionary tales of the costs of America’s occupational licensing regimes. But also some promising stories: easing those restrictions has seemed beneficial.

Treasury has been thinking about the big and extended O.E.’s implications for public finances. The government spends a lot on each of us when we’re children, takes a lot back from us in taxes when we’re working, then gives some of it back when we retire. On average across everybody, over the life-cycle, it should balance out.

But when a lot of people head overseas in their 20s and don’t come back until closer to retirement, things get messier. It will have implications. The final results will be worth reading when released.

Economists emphasise opportunity costs – the thing you give up every time you choose to do something else. When four or five sessions run in parallel, opportunity costs can run high.

There are more than a few papers I will have to chase up next week from sessions I did not attend.

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