The war in Europe is entering its most dangerous phase yet. Over the past week, we saw 300,000 Russian soldiers mobilised, scam referenda in Russian-occupied territories, and apparent bombings of the Nord Stream pipelines. Read more
Businesses should brace for next week’s return of the Government’s Fair Pay Agreements Bill. The Bill had its first reading in April. Read more
The Prime Minister has announced a new strategy for tackling inflation. The announcement follows recent legislation transferring responsibility for fiscal management from the Reserve Bank to the Ministry for the Environment. Read more
This episode of the Popperian Podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with James Kierstead. From The Open Society and Its Enemies, later essays, and private letters, they speak about the meaning behind Karl Popper’s ‘paradox of tolerance’: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. Read more
In this episode Michael Johnston hosts Oliver Hartwich and Eric Crampton to discuss various European crises and how New Zealand should be learning from, and not repeating, the European mistakes. To listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more
Imagine that you are given a new project at work. It is similar to things you’ve done before, but more complex. Read more
Wellington (Wednesday, 28 September 2022) – New Zealand’s economists strongly support the Emissions Trading Scheme and strengthening it through a carbon dividend. The latest survey of members of the New Zealand Association of Economists finds extraordinarily strong agreement that: Tightening the ETS’s cap on emissions makes far more sense than measures like fuel economy standards on imported vehicles (53% strongly agree, 35% agree, 5% disagree); If additional market failures are present, policies should target those directly to reduce the cost of mitigating emissions (24% strongly agree, 57% agree, 2% strongly disagree); A carbon dividend to households beats measures like electric vehicle subsidies or targeted regulations for ensuring equity (45% strongly agree; 48% agree; 2% disagree). Read more
If you are a political reformer, New Zealand should be your oyster. You could turn around a failing education system. Read more
Chief Economist at The New Zealand Initiative Dr Eric Crampton is in the studio to talk economics. Tonight he's talking competition and antitrust laws. Read more
Hard times make for bad thinking. Inflation has been running at 7.3%, or at 7.8% if you remember how the petrol excise holiday works. Read more
Mike Hosking discusses Roger Partridge's NZ Herald column on protecting highly productive soils. Read more
Having attended too many public policy conferences, it was only a matter of time until they started haunting me in my sleep. So, one night, I woke up from a nightmare. Read more
In 2011 the Ministry of Education initiated a new school property strategy. Its aim was to replace New Zealand’s classrooms with ‘Modern Learning Environments’ (MLEs). Read more
Political theatre is not usually associated with Julius Vogel (1835-99), the chief architect of the radical expansion of New Zealand’s rail network in the 1870s. A poor speaker, Vogel was also partially deaf in one ear – no small handicap in the heyday of parliamentary debate. Read more
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman once quipped that David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage defined who counts as an economist. Because every economist understands comparative advantage and its related notion of "opportunity cost" and practically nobody else does. Read more