Watch Dr Eric Crampton, Cameron Bagrie, Professor Paul Dalziel's panel session, Getting the mix right: Monetary policy, fiscal policy and the wellbeing of the nation, from the New Zealand Economics Forum 2021 held at the University of Waikato.
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A well-functioning education system that delivers good outcomes for all is essential to New Zealand's future prosperity and the wellbeing of its people. However, there have been a number of recent reports highlighting our declining educational performance. Read more
A well-functioning education system that delivers good outcomes for all is essential to New Zealand’s future prosperity and its people's wellbeing. However, there have been a growing number of stories about New Zealand’s educational decline over recent months. Read more
The Government’s announcement of a review into Pharmac declares that its budget, and the total amount allocated to pharmaceuticals, will be out of scope. This ignores the most serious weakness with current arrangements: that no one really knows whether they are improving health outcomes, let alone the well-being of New Zealanders, according to a substantial report, Pharmac: The right prescription? Read more
The New Zealand Initiative welcomes today’s call from business leaders for greater clarity about the border. The Initiative also urges the government to further strengthen the testing regime at the border. Read more
The nationwide housing shortage and soaring prices are only going to get worse. Leonard Hong, author of our The Need to Build report, tells Kathryn Ryan on Radio NZ that demand-side solutions such as the bright-line test are just tinkering around the edges. Read more
A well-functioning education system is vital to equip our children for life. Educational Performance and Funding in New Zealand: Are our children getting the education they deserve? Read more
Academic debates are rarely high stakes. Compared with the kind of work the Climate Change Commission is doing, debates among academics are of almost no consequence at all. Read more
A well-functioning education system is vital to equip our children for life. However, a new report from The New Zealand Initiative says it is not clear whether the education system is serving our children as well as it should. Read more
Last week’s Covid cases in Auckland delayed Finance Minister Robertson’s housing policy announcements. The housing shortage has been at crisis levels for a long time, but the delay in this case is not likely to make any difference. Read more
It is 2035, and the Government’s new BBQ buyback scheme has begun. It is now illegal to cook with gas, and the police are cracking down on underground Weber parties. Read more
On Tuesday, the Climate Change Commission extended the deadline for submissions on its draft recommendations by two weeks. The short extension would give the extra bit of time needed to receive crucial information from the Commission before submissions close. Read more
Eric Crampton talks to Bryan Crump on Radio NZ Nights about urban land use planning systems and if they are fit for purpose. Eric would like to see more localised planning powers and points to a report by a UK think tank Policy Exchange called Strong Suburbs: Enabling streets to control their own development. Read more
Wellington, 22 February 2021 – If New Zealand politicians thought the housing crisis in 2020 was bad, the worst is yet to come, warns a new report by The New Zealand Initiative. In The Need to Build: The demographic drivers of housing demand, Research Assistant Leonard Hong modelled 36 scenarios and found that New Zealand’s population gets older and larger by 2038. Read more
“Demography is destiny”, as French sociologist Auguste Comte once put it. Few developments shape our society more than the composition, the age and size of our population. Read more