rmacculloch

Jul 29, 2022
4 min

Depression Election 2023: a State of the Nation Essay

I just wrote this Opinion Piece for the National Business Review - it's about putting an historical perspective on NZ's present situation: The only-marginally-different economic band aids which Labour and National are proposing to try winning the 2023 election are taking shape. Put bluntly, the Kiwi economy is being buffeted by large supply shocks to labour, oil and a host of other inputs which require extensive deep-level reforms to mitigate. Yet neither political party has

rmacculloch

Jul 28, 2022
1 min

How the Kiwi government made monopolies stronger

Here are just a couple of ways the Kiwi government greatly enhanced monopolies and duopolies the past few years: Exhibit A Although Fletcher Construction has been in the news regards its' Gib Board monopoly and the company dominates its industry, it was given a tax-payer funded welfare check of $68 million (courtesy of the wage subsidy scheme in 2020-21). Exhibit B Although our big supermarkets have also recently featured in the news for being a duopoly, the government made i

rmacculloch

Jul 27, 2022
3 min

No Finance Minister Robertson = you are the one who does Hindsight Economics

The Finance Minister responded to the NZ Initiative report released yesterday, called "How Central Bank Mistakes after 2019 led to Inflation", by former Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler & Bryce Wilkinson, with a line that is incorrect. The National Business Review report Finance Minister Robertson said (at his stand-up on the way to parliament), ".. the NZ Initiative report (which blamed the RBNZ for the inflation we now have) is an exercise in hindsight economics”. Wrong. Three

rmacculloch

Jul 26, 2022
2 min

The RBNZ is now a Political Party, not a Central Bank

In an extraordinary powerful report published today by the NZ Initiative, called "How Central Bank Mistakes after 2019 led to Inflation", former Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler, together with one of this country's best economists, Bryce Wilkinson, writes the following: "Some Central Bankers suggested that global forces are the main cause of rapid inflation & pointed to commodity price increases flowing from damaged supply lines due to Covid restrictions .. and Russia’s i

The NZ Herald confuses Inequality with Poverty

rmacculloch

Jul 25, 2022
2 min

The NZ Herald confuses Inequality with Poverty

One of the lead articles in the Herald today, entitled "Beggars Belief: Pursuing NZ's Richest Earners - would a wealth tax work?" opens with the lines: "In August 2014, a two-year-old girl from South Auckland .. died of a brain haemorrhage after being admitted to Starship Hospital. The coroner's report determined that damp, cold conditions of the girl's home, owned by Housing NZ, the government agency now rebranded as Kāinga Ora, may have contributed .. In a 2021 paper co-aut

rmacculloch

Jul 25, 2022
2 min

Feeding the Media: Business Lobbies, Academics and Think Tanks

It has emerged that the taxi company, Uber, waged a campaign to influence positive media stories about itself. The UK Guardian newspaper reports, "Uber paid high-profile academics in Europe & the US hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce reports that could be used as part of the company’s lobbying campaign. The Uber files, a cache of thousands of confidential documents leaked to the Guardian, reveal lucrative deals with several leading academics who were paid to publish

rmacculloch

Jul 22, 2022
2 min

Remarkable: New Zealand now has the world's highest weekly death toll per capita from Coronavirus

This past week NZ has been recorded by Our World in Data, which is run by a research team at the University of Oxford, as having the world's highest number of weekly fatalities from Coronavirus. My old thesis examiner, the late Sir Tony Atkinson, who developed inequality measures, was one of the initiators of Our World in Data. Ranking by Weekly Deaths per million New Zealand 34.51 San Marino 29.63 Monaco 27.26 Malta 22.78 Greece 22.11 Saint Kitts and Nevis 21.01 Taiwan 19.91

rmacculloch

Jul 22, 2022
3 min

The Costs of Inflation & Unemployment Compared

Kiwi politicians famously announced a "go hard - go early" approach to coronavirus in 2020-21. However, when it came to containing inflation the policy was "go soft - go late". Yes, our so-called "elimination policy" was never applied to inflation. As such, the Finance Minister and Reserve Bank Governor got us into the current mess. The position of this blog is that not going hard and early on inflation was a monumental mistake. That being said, now that inflation is high, a

rmacculloch

Jul 8, 2022
1 min

The Nats & Labour cannot solve NZ's cost-of-living problems since both have rejected neoliberalism.

It pays to reflect on an interview PM Ardern gave to Stuff in 2017 (at that time she was opposition leader) which was titled "Ardern says neoliberalism has failed". "The opposition leader, outlining her economic ideology to RNZ in a lengthy interview, was asked if she agreed with former National Party PM Jim Bolger's assessment of neoliberalism in NZ: that it had failed. "Yes," she replied. Little could our PM have known that several years later, NZ would be buffeted by massi

rmacculloch

Jul 6, 2022
2 min

NZ currently has one of the highest weekly Covid death rates in the world

According to Our World in Data, NZ currently has the 6th highest weekly Covid death rate (out of 211 countries). Four of the five countries ranked ahead of us have tiny populations (Monaco, Bermuda, Saint Vincent & Iceland). Weekly deaths (per 1 Million people) JULY 4, 2022 Iceland 70.50 Monaco 50.61 Bermuda 32.21 Taiwan 28.50 Saint Vincent & Grenadines 26.96 New Zealand 18.92 Suriname 16.90 Saint Lucia 16.27 Malta 15.50 Portugal 15.15 Cayman Islands 15.04 Barbados 13.90 Domi

rmacculloch

Jul 6, 2022
1 min

What Institution do Kiwis Distrust the Least?

Statistics NZ released its' Well-being Statistics yesterday. Look what comes bottom, by a long way: the Media. Average rating of selected wellbeing measures, 2021 Selected wellbeing measures - Average rating Life satisfaction in 5 years 8.2 Life worthwhile 8 Trust held for police 7.7 Happiness yesterday 7.7 Family wellbeing 7.7 Overall life satisfaction 7.7 Sense of control 7.5 Trust held for education system 6.8 Trust held for courts 6.8 Trust held for people in New Zealand

rmacculloch

Jul 5, 2022
2 min

NZ should never do an EU-style agreement with Oz says Mitchell Palmer

The Mont Pelerin Society's International 2022 Hayek Essay Contest has just announced the winners of their Friedrich A. Hayek Fellowships. They are as follows: 1st prize: Mitchell Palmer, New Zealand 2nd prize: Marcos Falcone, Argentina 3rd prize: Simón Maturana, Germany A rising star in Kiwi economics, Mitchell Palmer, who was a top Scholar at Auckland Grammar School, has just won first prize. His essay recommends countries like NZ should not form European Union-type agreemen

rmacculloch

Jul 4, 2022
2 min

The Economics of the "Barriers-to-Entry" Fletcher Gib Board Monopoly

One of NZ's most experienced and decorated business reporters, Tim Hunter at the National Business Review writes: "Fletcher, meanwhile, has been happy to cultivate & harvest its [Gib plasterboard] monopoly for years .. [One] would do well to consider the strange feature of NZ’s construction sector that uses the material as structural bracing .. In NZ, builders of light timber-framed dwellings can use an off-the-shelf compliance regime called NZS3604, which was last updated in

rmacculloch

Jul 1, 2022
1 min

So Robertson tolerates Financial Conflicts of Interest but has Zero Tolerance of Academic ones?

The media, including the NZ Herald, has been awash with stories about potential financial conflicts-of-interest arising from some of the new Directors who have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Board. The Minister of Finance seems relaxed about the matter. However, Grant Robertson is not relaxed about appointing another potential type of person. For these folks (which includes the likes of .. me) there is zero tolerance. Interest.co.nz reported earlier this year, "Robertson

rmacculloch

Jul 1, 2022
4 min

Politicians have sucked the life out of young Kiwis

I wrote an Opinion Piece with the above title for the NZ Herald this week. It is available here: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/robert-macculloch-politicians-have-sucked-the-life-out-of-young-new-zealanders/JPZD6V7IIJJDM6KSDUUOSWMHK4/ or if you are not a subscriber to that paper, below: Although we “returned” to the university campus this past semester, students are reluctant to physically attend classes. They can’t see a future. Their mojo & buzz are gone. Despondency rules.

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Robert MacCulloch

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