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“Our goal is to make sure the fight against poverty is based on scientific evidence,” Esther Duflo said shortly after becoming the second woman (and also the youngest economist, at 46) to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. Duflo, along with her husband, Abhijit Banerjee, and Michael Kremer, received this year’s top economics award “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”. Read more

Imagine, for a moment, the government were about to pass a Zero Carbon bill that takes the most direct path to success on our emissions targets. What would it look like? Read more

This week, the church of climate change was consecrated in New Zealand. Through widespread face-painting, chanting and dressing-up our newest saviour was born. Read more

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” American psychologist Abraham Maslow proclaimed in 1966. The concept refers to the cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. Read more

The great legacy of the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s were the durable institutions that have since guided how we are governed. The Fiscal Responsibility Act set a framework for balanced budgets that has withstood many changes in government. Read more

Freshwater management is a tough political problem. Any substantive reduction in the nutrient load in too many of our rivers will require significant land use changes – and changes in wastewater practices in some towns. Read more

If there’s one line in the 1967 classic film The Graduate that has aged poorly, it might be Mr McGuire’s advice to a young Dustin Hoffman to find his future in plastics. Now, just over 50 years later, plastics are more commonly cast as retro at best, and an environmental menace otherwise. Read more

Lost in the government’s response to the Interim Climate Change Committee this week was the decision to put on ice its 100% renewable electricity policy to focus on other more effective measures. It is hard to overstate the significance of this decision. Read more

Maybe things would be different if somebody had 'invented' prices. We tend not to understand and appreciate institutions, like prices, that emerge spontaneously through human interaction rather than are the product of human design. Read more