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Dr Bryce Wilkinson

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Dr Bryce Wilkinson, Senior Fellow

Bryce is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative. Bryce is also the Director of economics consultancy Capital Economics. Prior to setting this up in 1997 he was a Director of Credit Suisse First Boston (now First NZ Capital). Before moving into investment banking in 1985, he worked in the New Zealand Treasury, reaching the position of Director. Bryce has a strong background in public policy analysis, including monetary policy, capital market research and microeconomic advisory work. Bryce holds a PhD in economics from the University of Canterbury and was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University.

Email: bryce.wilkinson@nzinitiative.org.nz

Publications

Reducing unnecessary regulatory costs

In March this year, the Prime Minister spoke at our members' retreat in Auckland. Members took the opportunity to express concerns about specific regulatory imposts for which there seemed to...

A Matter of Balance: Regulating Safety

The construction industry has made some substantial and laudable moves towards better safety practices. But recent changes in WorkSafe regulations, mandating extensive and expensive scaffolding for roof repairs and...

Investing for Success: Social Impact Bonds and the future of public services

Across the public sector, New Zealand is exploring new ways of contracting and delivering social services. Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) – sometimes referred to as social bonds...

The ABC of economic literacy

In early 2014, there had been strong hints in the media that the next general election was likely to take place in September and so the team of...

Guarding the public purse: faster growth, greater fiscal discipline

Guarding the Public Purse looks at the fiscal policy challenges facing New Zealand. It reviews Treasury's 2013 fiscal projections to 2060 and its policy options for responding to the...

Open for Business: Removing the barriers to foreign investment

Open for Business: Removing the barriers to foreign investment is the third report released by The New Zealand Initiative on foreign direct investment. This final report in The...

Capital Doldrums: How Globalisation is Bypassing New Zealand

Capital Doldrums: How Globalisation is Bypassing New Zealand, is the latest foreign direct investment report released by The New Zealand Initiative. This report is the second of three...

New Zealand�s Global Links: Foreign Ownership and the Status of New Zealand�s Net International Investment

New Zealand's Global Links: Foreign Ownership and the Status of New Zealand's Net International Investment provides a one stop shop for statistics on New Zealand’s investment patterns. In...

Opinion and Commentary

Child abuse needs new solutions | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

Child abuse is a shameful thing. It occurs to a disquieting degree. Child, Youth and Family (CYF), the police and health professionals deal with it on a daily basis. Few...

NZ Initiative's Bryce Wilkinson says it is bizarre that the Government does not have to assess the financial cost to Kiwis of declining an overseas bid for NZ assets | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | Interest.co.nz

Should the owner of Lochinver Station, the Stevenson Group, have the right to sell it to the Crown at the Shanghai Pengxin bid price of $88 million? In that case,...

Apathy feeds public waste | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

Central government is squandering billions of dollars of householders’ income. It is doing so simply because it lacks the incentive to assess value for money with sufficient rigour. Governments can...

Economically Speaking: Public Works Act good, RMA bad | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

Your property rights count for very little under the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA), yet they count for a great deal under New Zealand’s Public Works Acts (PWA) that date...

Coastal follies in Kapiti | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) has hired Crown research institute NIWA to draw up coastal hazard lines. Yet the 2012 hazard line guidance co-authored by NIWA staff fails...

Does deflation really matter? | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

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Weighing the costs of health and safety | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The Dominion Post

We should not pay through the roof for small safety benefits, argues Bryce Wilkinson How would you react to being told that government regulations have added 50 percent to the...

Pay equality versus pay equity

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The case for a fiscal watchdog | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

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NZ needs better public policies and institutions if it is to close the income gap with Australia | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | Interest.co.nz

Five years ago the 2025 Taskforce assessed the income gap with Australia to be 35%, or about $16,000 in dollars of the day for every man, woman and child. Some...

Yet more political grandstanding over foreign ownership | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

Democracy is a very fine thing, yet is worth dying for, and it is humbling to think of all those who have. Yet general election campaigns do not bring the...

Envy taxes also hurt the poor | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

A two-page feature in the Sunday Star-Times (Aug 3) says Labour’s promise to introduce a capital gains tax and raise the top rate of income tax has put “equality” back...

Examining child support | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | Stuff

An article recently published by the New Zealand Listener, Child support that works, asserts that the existing system of child support "is next to useless at reducing poverty" - because,...

How the RMA subverts community welfare | Dr Bryce Wilkinson |The National Business Review

Many economists are puzzled that New Zealanders are not more prosperous given the country's high rankings on international measures, such as ease of doing business, economic freedom and human development....

Capital Markets: Five myths about foreign investment | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The New Zealand Herald

MYTH 1: Foreign investment means loss of control Parliament remains the supreme law-making body, inwards foreign investment must comply with New Zealand laws, and foreigners don't get to vote. Land...

Scrap foreign investors� rules | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

Openness to foreign trade and capital is fundamental to New Zealand's prosperity. If we get both aspects right, New Zealanders can enjoy the best things the world can offer and...

Take politics out of water | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

Economists can agree about many things. The importance of tradable property rights in scarce fresh water is a case in point. The essence of the problem that arises when water...

New Zealand's debt legacy | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | Stuff

Fiscal surpluses are in sight, export prices are extraordinarily high relative to import prices, national income growth prospects look brighter than for many years, and this is a general election...

Tax churn money-go-round puts high cost on society | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

It is often said that tax is the price we pay for a civilised society. Indeed, taxes are necessary to fund key public services, including defence, law and order, the...

How Singapore overtook New Zealand using foreign direct investment | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

Singapore determined in 1965 that it had to excel on a broad front. Meanwhile, New Zealand dithered. ...

Chorus "tar baby" spreads risk from investors to taxpayers | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

Healthy competition is the key driver of efficiency gains. ...

What resident ex-pats think | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

HSBC asked more than 7000 expats in 37 countries how they felt about the attractiveness of their host country from a financial, quality of life and child raising perspective. ...

Asset sales referendum: why the No vote does not make sense | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

The logical implication of many of the Green Party’s arguments seems to be that the government should down all the nation’s commercial assets. ...

Treasury's living standards framework � a case of role confusion? | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

No overall advice is possible without some over-riding criterion for assessing trade-offs ...

Who�s afraid of sea-level rise? | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

Scaremongering about sea-level rise is an international pastime. Retired NASA scientist James Hanson appears to be leading the pack. He has argued on "climate change" grounds that the global sea-level...

How RMA undermines rural property rights | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

On July 25, a Dominion Post article (Consent proposals upset rural residents) asserted that, under a proposed district plan, rural landowners might face new requirements if their property includes dominant...

New report explores and exposes foreign control and debt phobia | Dr Bryce Wilkinson | The National Business Review

“Fears of an Asian takeover of New Zealand are chimerical. Fears about New Zealand’s net external debt have a sounder factual basis” ...

Insights

Those obscene bankers

Eminent UK economist and Financial Times columnist John Kay reportedly believes that the global financial system is broken and that there is a simple remedy. It is broken because bankers...

Local government: myths, facts and challenges

Politics, not finance, is the prime factor stopping local authorities from being more pro-growth and pro-housing. That is a primary conclusion of a report, Local Government: Myths, Facts and Challenges,...

A bad reason for discounting cost-benefit analysis

Question: Do the likely benefits from the Health & Safety Reform Bill (or any other Bill) exceed the costs? Answer 1: They do if you hire the right economist Answer...

Policy Quarterly

The current issue of Policy Quarterly, published by Victoria University of Wellington, has a special focus on Budget 2015. It kicks off with an article by New Zealand Children's Commissioner,...

Undisciplined workplace safety regulation

This week we released a research report, A Matter of Balance: Regulating Safety. It looked into the costs and benefits of Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment's (MBIE) campaign to reduce workplace...

KCDC water metering: the problem of what is not seen

The Kapiti News reported on 17 June 2015 that lower water consumption following the advent of water metering "now means a pricing increase to recover the costs" of piped water...

Local Government: Passing the NIMBYism buck

Auckland City, Auckland house prices. Politically, that is the government's most immediate local government issue. The government knows RMA reform is needed to reduce its anti-subdivision bias, and the clout...

Investing for Success: Social impact bonds and the future of public services

This week, The New Zealand Initiative released a report assessing social impact bonds in a New Zealand context. The report identifies both opportunities and challenges. It makes a number of...

In praise of identified media opinion bias

Tribalism rules, OK? This week David Farrar posted some provocative "inaugural media statistics" on media opinion in New Zealand as between National and Labour. The statistics covered a five month...

Growth can ease misery

Bloomberg has just published its list of the 15 most miserable economies in the world for 2015. Misery is measured as the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation...

An economically liberal Green Party of Aotearoa?

Could the Green Party of Aotearoa become an environmental party that was neutral, if not liberal on economic issues? Must it see economic growth and a healthier environment as opposites rather...

Scaffolding Regulation: The Morality of Cost-Benefit Analysis

One critical response to my 12 January 2015 Dominion Post article here on the need for the benefits from government scaffolding regulation to exceed the costs asserted that: This misses...

(Child) poverty: efficiency versus self-professed compassion?

William Voegeli, a senior editor at Clarement Review of Books, recently gave a speech, The case against liberal compassion, at Michigan's Hillsdale College that raised the question of why many...

Is our government system REALLY the best?

Last week Tyler Cowen drew attention, in Marginal Revolution, to Vox blogger, Dylan Matthews', opinion that "New Zealand's parliament is better designed than just about any other developed country government"....

A Hong Kong-refreshed view of New Zealand's FDI debate

A week just spent in the glittering, throbbing city-state metropolis that is Hong Kong, is a reminder that there is a lot more to this place than its stunning night-time...

Does the Overseas Investment Act 2005 serve a useful purpose?

This week we published the last in our series of three reports on New Zealand’s external financial links. Our report, Open for business: Removing the barriers to foreign investment, co-authored...

�B� is for banking (central)

It is a wonderful convenience to be able to buy almost anything we want, offering nothing in exchange but flimsy paper or an electronic claim on our bank account. We...

NZPC report on services

Last week the New Zealand Productivity Commission (NZPC) published its second interim report on productivity in the private sector component of the services industry. This website provides easy access to this report...

Man of war without guns

It is a new thing for New Zealand to have a chief science advisor to the Prime Minister. Sir Peter Gluckman’s laudable brief is "to promote discourse that will lead...

The plight of Chorus and its shareholders

Healthy competition is a key driver of efficiency gains. It forces businesses to focus on meeting customer needs better than anyone else. Intrusive regulation is potentially the enemy of healthy...

Through the eyes of resident ex pats � New Zealand in 2013

This year, HSBC asked over 7,000 ex pats in 37 countries how they felt about the attractiveness of their host countries from a financial, quality of life and child-raising perspective....

Acronyms don�t build houses

The argument that we need to build more homes to tackle the housing affordability crisis was underscored this week by reports that suggest loan-to-value ratio (LVR) restrictions are having unintended...

Caring about a living wage

The idea of a living wage is not new. New Zealand’s Arbitration Court determined in November 1936 that a basic weekly wage of £3.16s for an adult male would be...

Property Rights 201: Snapper skirmishing in Auckland

New Zealanders are an irascible lot when it comes to recreational fishing. Around 50,000 people have made submissions opposing options for tightening recreational snapper fishing limits. This was floated in...

What is the RMA�s real purpose

The National-led government is introducing changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) and fears are being expressed that they will favour economic development ‘at the expense of the environment’. The...

More RMA stupidity

On 25 July, a Dominion Post article (Consent proposals upset rural residents) asserted that, under a proposed district plan, rural landowners might face new requirements if their property includes dominant...

Why householders can't win

By now, householders must be used to being exhorted by politicians, economists, and international agencies to save more. Yet, some policies encourage them to borrow in order to save or...

The income gap is wider, but by how much?

The 2025 Taskforce’s 2009 report put New Zealand’s income gap with Australia (2008) at 35%. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) latest statistics for real GDP per capita...

New Zealand's global links explained

This week, The New Zealand Initiative released its first report: New Zealand’s Global Links: Foreign Ownership and the Status of New Zealand’s Net International Investments. The report contains 84 tables...

Wishful thinking about monetary policy

Governments, worldwide, control the issuance of domestic money. That monopoly position creates the problem of determining how much money to print. There is always a temptation to print money in...

Has the RMA made the well-being of the community irrelevant?

I had the occasion last week to browse through the Proposed District Plan of a certain local authority in New Zealand in order to see how it assessed the costs...

New Zealand's minimum wage

Governments use the minimum wage to keep workers with the least skills or work experience out of work, albeit as an undesired consequence rather than a direct intent. School-leavers have...

Market volatility thrills - Fiscal cliff versus debt mountain

World share markets rose markedly on Monday this week: the US S&P 500 (by 2%), London FTSE (by 2.4%), Paris CAC (by 2.9%), Tokyo Nikkei (by 1.4%), and the Hong...

Measuring intrusive regulation

George Mason University’s Mercatus Center is a top public policy think tank based in Virginia near Washington, DC. Some of its 2012 publications might be of interest to readers of Insights:...

The jobs crisis summit and the exchange rate

The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union’s ‘jobs crisis’ summit in Auckland will be over in an hour or so after you receive this edition of Insights. The secretary of the EPMU,...

New Zealand's hostility to FDI

The Government has a website (New Zealand Now) that markets New Zealand to the world as “a great place to live, invest and do business”. A great many New Zealanders,...

Investor protection good, property rights bad

Having security in one’s person and property is fundamental to human dignity and civilised society. The instruction “Keep your hands to yourself” and the commandment “Thou shalt not steal or...

More evidence of evidence based policies please

In 2008, the auditor-general said public sector performance reporting “needs to improve significantly to allow Parliament and the public to hold public entities accountable for their use of taxes and...

Budget 2012 - National's discouraging war of attrition

Budget 2012 continued National’s battle to control government spending by attrition rather than by ground-breaking reforms. This battle will be lost eventually because mere attrition increasingly mobilises thwarted spending interests,...

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Dr Bryce Wilkinson

Dr Bryce Wilkinson, Senior Fellow

Publications

Opinion and Commentary

Insights

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