Reports & Media

A drunkard searches for keys under a street lamp. When asked if he lost them there, he replies: "No, but the light is better here." Economists can also seek solutions to poverty, inequality and social problems in familiar places. Read more

Last week, New Zealand’s Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced what she presented as a significant 25 percent cut to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s operating budget. The headlines were dramatic: the RBNZ would need to tighten its belt and focus on core functions. Read more

Come the next pandemic, we are going to be in the same stupid mess that we were in during the last one. Trusted pharmaceutical regulators overseas, like those in Australia, Canada, Europe, and the UK, will have given provisional approvals for vaccines that are safe. Read more

When does a “woman” include a biological male? And who gets to decide – Parliament or the courts? Read more

There’s a fragility to rules-based orders that has been around for as long as those orders have. So long as people generally agree that it is good to be bound by the rules, and that trying to change the rules is better than ignoring or breaking them, a rules-based order can persist. Read more

I have no doubt that Peter Smith loves the West. You can feel it in every line of his writing – the anger at its enemies, the contempt for its betrayal, the frustration at its leaders who lack the courage to defend it. Read more

Imagine owning a fortune in investments while lacking the ready cash to fix your crumbling house. That is New Zealand’s position today. Read more

Worries about social cohesion are on the rise. Initiative Chair Roger Partridge aired his concerns in the Herald last month, and this month saw the launch of a report on the subject by the Helen Clark Foundation. Read more

Easter is here, a rare four-day weekend when many of us will travel for getaways, see family and friends, or host those who have travelled to us. Yet Easter can be a trap for the unwary. Read more

“First and foremost, there is the need to maintain fiscal space for fiscal policy to play a shock-absorber role. That means paying our debt down during normal economic times.” With these words, Treasury Secretary Iain Rennie signalled a welcome return to sound economic principles in his speech launching the draft Te Ara Mokopuna 2025, the Treasury’s Long-term Insights Briefing on how to manage government finances sustainably. Read more

Two ships passing in the night might share the same destination yet follow very different courses. So it seems with David Harvey’s latest response to my report for The New Zealand Initiative, Who Makes the Law? Read more