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Two years ago, when the New Zealand Business Roundtable merged with the New Zealand Institute to form The New Zealand Initiative, there were a fair share of people who wondered how these organisations would merge. Both were research organisations that had been headed by well-respected economists, the late Roger Kerr and David Skilling, who were perceived to come from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. Read more

Expect to hear a chorus of grumbling from various parts of New Zealand on Thursday when the Reserve Bank is set to hike the Official Cash Rate (OCR) for the first time in almost four years. The move is not a foregone conclusion, but with the market "90 per cent" confident of a 25-basis point hike (plus all the throat clearing, nudging, and winking that has been coming from No 2 The Terrace over the past few months), a bump-up in the interest rate is pretty much guaranteed. Read more

The New Zealand economy is undoubtedly in good shape but not all the factors behind the boom can or should be sustained indefinitely. This raises two questions: How much is temporary? Read more

It is often said that tax is the price we pay for a civilised society. Indeed, taxes are necessary to fund key public services, including defence, law and order, the courts, border controls, civil defence, foreign affairs, public administration generally, and a contestably lengthy list of other potentially worthy activities of a collective nature. Read more

On Tuesday, I spoke at a conference organised by our sponsor, PortfolioConstruction Forum. The audience were mainly Australian and New Zealand investment advisors and wealth managers and my topic was the state of their respective economies. Read more

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a contentious subject and there is no limit to the number of debates questioning the efficacy of inwards FDI to the economy. However, the link between investment, FDI and economic growth is well-established. Read more

In debating, speakers are not rewarded for having a superior argument per se. They are rewarded for convincing the audience that they do. Read more

The New Zealand Initiative’s latest report, Capital Doldrums: How globalisation is bypassing New Zealand, was released late last week. The report shows that while our domestic economy rapidly integrated with the rest of the world between the mid-1980s and 1990s, inwards foreign direct investment (FDI) stocks have since stagnated relative to GDP (albeit at quite a high point). Read more

Last week the New Zealand Productivity Commission (NZPC) published its second interim report on productivity in the private sector component of the services industry. This website provides easy access to this report and related documents. Read more