Last week, New Zealand’s Reserve Bank (RBNZ) cut interest rates to 3.0 percent. The government was quick to take the credit. Read more
When a constitutional law professor warns of “dangerous foes” threatening New Zealand’s legal system, you might expect concern about genuinely destabilising forces – political interference with judicial independence, or threats to the rule of law itself. You would be wrong. Read more
“Artificial unintelligence more like it.” So declared a reader of The Australian after one of my recent columns on artificial intelligence. Another chimed in with this observation: ‘AI can NOT work out what is a Spam or Phishing E-Mail, something that a human can do at just a glance.’ I stared at these comments, genuinely bewildered. Read more
It is hard to tell whether politicians have forgotten New Zealand’s pioneering work in inflation targeting and the central bank independence needed to back it up. Or if they simply fail to see the risks. Read more
Everyone is familiar with the term ‘monopoly’. It gets used a lot, often inappropriately. Read more
Learning to read is the first step in school education. It is essential to later learning. Read more
When government makes it hard for a start-up company’s investors to sell up and move on, it simultaneously warns other investors to steer clear. Or, as economists sometimes put it, barriers to exit are barriers to entry. Read more
It takes talent to lose listeners in a medium still drawing three and a half million Kiwis a week. But Radio New Zealand has managed it with aplomb. Read more
New research finds that incomes per capita in Italy could be 5% higher if the government wrote better laws. Many laws are confusing and hard to understand. Read more
Michelle Shocked’s 1988 song “Anchorage” tells of old friends whose lives diverged. One settled in Alaska with husband and kids, the other remained a punk rocker in New York. Read more
Last week a new educational controversy broke in the media. Headlines accused Education Minister Erica Stanford of ‘banning’ Māori words from primary school reading books. Read more
This week’s Herald reported the plight of an Ōrewa family hit with a 72% rates hike – more than $10,000 a year. The jump arises from rezoning, with new subdivisions now creeping up to their boundary. Read more
‘Every five years or so, I crunch the numbers on college grades across the US and report what I’ve found,’ writes Stuart Rojstaczer modestly on his website. What Rojstaczer, a former professor, has found is that grades are going up, and have been going up for quite some time. Read more
At the Initiative, we read the latest economic research, so you do not have to. Sometimes we find studies that are clever. Read more
Something has gone badly wrong in the public service. From energy policy to financial regulation to education, ministers are too often advised by officials lacking the deep technical background their roles demand. Read more