Podcast: Breaking up the supermarkets is hard to do... and a bad idea
Dr Oliver Hartwich
Dr Eric Crampton
23 September, 2026
In this episode, Oliver talks with Eric Crampton, chief economist at the New Zealand Initiative, about his new paper "Breaking up the supermarkets is hard to do... and a bad idea", which finds the promised savings rest on an untested assumption about how Foodstuffs prices its supermarket banners.
They run through the Newstalk ZB interviews on splitting Foodstuffs, hearing Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister Nicola Willis in their own words and weighing their key claims against the evidence.