US foreign policy, especially in Latin America, has often been at the point of a gun. But the Trump Doctrine is going places ...

The Minister of Finance says it is but, parochialism aside, are we doing anything to ensure it really is? One of the necessary skills of a politician is to hold on to at least two contradictory ...

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 tensions between different approaches to the economy are surfacing as the election nears. As we head towards next year’s election, the tensions between the coalition partners are becoming ...

There is a view that the world economy is entering a period of higher inflation and higher nominal interest rates, but who knows? Presumably New Zealand has to follow. If you know everything about the ...

Implementing the New Zealand Health and Disability System review not only involves major technical problems but creates fascinating political tensions. The government is promising to redisorganise the ...

In this column I use the less familiar measure of GDP per capita instead of the GDP measure favoured by the commentariat. I became familiar with it when I began doing international comparisons because ...

‘It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. I am quite sure that it is figures which show us whether it is being ruled well or badly.’ Goethe I was struck at a recent conference on equity ...

How to run a successful pressure group. In 2013 a group of idealists, led by Jordan Williams and David Farrar, established the Taxpayers’ Union. To celebrate its first decade as surely New Zealand’s ...

The proposal to organise fresh water, storm water and waste water into four entities reflects the contempt that New Zealand’s central government has for local communities. It is not the only example ...

This column started out to explain how the proposed structural outsourcing of public surgery was partly a consequence of the peculiarities of our fiscal borrowing practices. In summary, the ...

What might the public’s increasing demands for safety and security tell the economist? Criminology and economics are quite different disciplines. Someone from one discipline trespasses on the other ...