In the past, this column has pointed to a transition in the world order, as the American hegemony weakens. It was uncertain ...

The turmoil in the world economy from Trump’s attack on Iran will delay New Zealand’s economic recovery. Back in 1993 I was perhaps the first to announce that the economy seemed to be in recovery. 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 ...

While many of the world’s Christian religions seem preoccupied with personal issues that Jesus, their founder, barely touched upon, they must engage with economic issues too. Robert Prevost, chose the ...

What can you do when you have hit your borrowing limit and still want to spend? One option is to cut back on maintenance of your capital – say, to delay repainting the house or keeping the car in ...

The book I am currently working on – tentative title ‘In Open Seas’ – looks at the current and future New Zealand. One chapter describes the policy towards Covid using the trope of warfare. It covers ...

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 ...

It is the professionalism – competence and integrity – of the doctors, nurses and technicians who provide the care which obscures the managerial failure. The column-blog, Otaihanga Second Opinion is ...

The invitation to comment on the proposed Regulatory Standards Bill opens with Minister David Seymour stating ‘[m]ost of New Zealand's problems can be traced to poor productivity, and poor ...

Is there a German word for the feeling you get when someone famous dies who created glorious, uplifting art, or music or oratory or cover drives but whom you never met but wished you had? Wished and ...

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 ...

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 ...