The notion of ‘market failure’ used here is a bit naive. No market works perfectly so every market fails to meet the benchmark of the ideal. Taken superficially, the IMF argument that IP can be ...

Since US president Donald Trump was elected for a second term, New Zealand has taken a ‘Homer in the Hedge’ approach to its foreign policy in relation to America. Like the famous meme from The ...

What are the economic and political implications if the New Zealand economy stagnates for five and more years? Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Morning Report that ‘We've got the worst recession* ...

New Zealand has ‘Scandinavian ambitions in terms of quality of life, but a US attitude to tax’: Lara Clark. One of the most perceptive remarks about New Zealand’s fiscal tension was made by former ...

What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions. I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on ...

Does the Autumn 2024 British budget point to a change in fiscal strategies? Many countries found their fiscal position was unsustainable, following the 2008 Global Financial Crash. Their public ...

The public service is suffering from the downgrading of the role of professionals, experts and those at the workface with the public. There is a management fashion that believes that by imposing ...

Following the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families ...

The ACT party election manifesto will propose to introduce a Regulatory Standards Act to set a higher bar for new regulation, and test regulations against the key principles of the Regulatory ...

While there have been decades of complaints – from all sides – about the workings of the Resource Management Act (RMA), replacing is proving difficult. The Coalition Government is making another ...

There are three major but separate issues which constitute our housing problem: not enough quality housing; a speculative boom in house prices generating unsustainable inflation; an inability by ...

A previous column looked at Winston Peters biographically. This one takes a closer look at his record as a minister, especially his policy record. 1990-1991: Minister of Māori Affairs. Few remember Ka ...