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For those who care about New Zealanders’ wellbeing, the central issue is if the benefits of any given level of lockdown plausibly exceed the costs. About four months ago, I calculated it might be worth sacrificing 6.1% of one year of New Zealand’s GDP if doing so was sure to permanently avoid 33,600 Covid deaths. Read more

With the number of Auckland’s Covid cases increasing exponentially, there is every chance the Government will extend the city’s Alert Level 3 lockdown for several weeks. How we got here and the lessons we can learn are questions for another day. Read more

Presented as an engineering or operations management problem, it would seem almost impossible to solve. Thinking about it as that kind problem is now part of the problem at New Zealand’s border. Read more

Over the past fortnight the border issue troubling politicians and the media has been whether Kiwis returning from overseas should contribute to the costs of their managed isolation. But even with its half-billion-dollar price-tag, the cost of quarantining returning Kiwis is the least of the country's border concerns. Read more

Last week, The New Zealand Initiative released a new research report: Pharmac: The Right Prescription? Pharmac’s core role is to get the best health benefits from medicines for New Zealand within a fixed budget. Read more

The problem isn’t just that the Provincial Growth Fund is poorly managed with slipshod standards and politically-driven spending decisions. The problem is that it exists at all. Read more

Family coming to stay for the weekend is hardly a reason for home renovations. In a pinch, folks can bunk in together for a while. Read more

In George Orwell’s “1984” dystopian novel, the Ministry of Truth was the ministry for propaganda and falsifying history. He would have appreciated the Resource Management Act 1991. Read more