OPINION

Next week, The New Zealand Initiative will be taking a delegation of more than three dozen senior business leaders to Copenhagen. Our members want to study and experience first-hand what makes Denmark one of the world’s most successful small countries.Denmark’s success may appear surprising given it is one of the most highly taxed countries in the world. It is often regarded as the social-democratic country par excellence, with a cradle-to-grave welfare state.There is a grain of truth in these clichés. Read more

A Radio New Zealand journalist reported in the last fortnight that other top economists privately shared Eric Crampton’s publicly expressed concerns over Treasury’s economic capability. Yesterday, Treasury’s former deputy chief economist went public on the malaise in the organisation. Read more

We all know that best policy is not paying off the kidnappers. Countries that get in the habit of paying the kidnappers encourage the taking of more of their nationals as hostages. It’s a dangerous game to get into because it’s so hard to stop. Read more

New Zealand’s productivity track record is failing us. That was the key message delivered by the Productivity Commission’s new report, Productivity by the numbers: 2019. Read more

Economists, or at least economists of a policy-bent, like to distinguish between outputs and outcomes. Focusing on the former comes too easily at the expense of the latter, especially in the case of KiwiBuild and the Government’s overall housing supply agenda. Read more

The government has largely put the KiwiBuild and capital gains tax fiascos behind it. Read more

At its heart, Kiwibuild was a promise to end the housing crisis. The set of reforms Minister Twyford is overseeing can fulfil that promise, if he has the chance to see them through.The housing crisis has nothing to do with government failing to build enough homes. It stems instead from a nasty mess of perverse incentives facing growing councils, debt limits, infrastructure financing problems, and difficulty in revising district plans under RMA processes – as a starting point.If the prior... Read more

“Nothing good happens after 3 am,” Auckland’s top-ranking police officer once said.“Facts tend to be overanalysed,” his Wellingtonian counterpart claimed.Unfortunately, personal opinions and anecdotal evidence like this about opening hours and alcohol licences of bars and party venues often decide the direction of policy proposals for regulating the night-time economy. Yet, such arbitrary behaviour is typical – abroad and in New Zealand.For example, in 2014 the government of New South Wales introduced new controls for the nightlife across large parts... Read more

English is not my native language – not that you can tell by my German name or accent. I did learn the language, but the journey was most unusual.My teachers were the strict-but-brilliant Frau Voß and Monty Python. The latter turned out to be particularly instructive since they also prepared me for the absurdities of British life. Without Monty Python, I would be even more hard-pressed to make sense of Brexit.Just think of the Conservative Party’s circus to find a... Read more

Denmark last Wednesday elected a Social Democrat-led government – so what else is new? Read more

If the Canterbury earthquakes taught us anything, it’s that the immediate response to a disaster is a very different thing from the rebuilding that has to follow.Disaster response is about triage, the good-enough, and avoiding substantial further harm. The rebuild is different. It takes a fair bit of thought about what the place should look like, and a long-term strategy to get there. In the best case, the long-term vision has always been in place and all that needs to... Read more

Winston Peters’ comments on the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre were candid. Where Western politicians have turned not upsetting China over its human rights record into an art form, the Foreign Minister left diplomatic niceties behind. In an interview with Magic Talk radio on Tuesday, the Foreign Minister was blunt. “Thirty years ago, about 10,000 people – we don’t know how many – lost their lives when Chinese army’s guns were turned on them, which is very, very... Read more

New Zealand has to slow down. At least, that was the overall message from the NZ Transport Agency’s Mega Maps data released this week. According to the online interactive tool assessing road trip risks, 95 percent of the country's 100 km/h roads should have a lower speed limit – with two-thirds of them slowing down to 60 km/h. “We need to hit speed hard”, said Niclas Johansson, NZTA's acting director of safety and environment. Read more

Readers of the NBR may have seen my column last week, “The great Brexit delusion”. For reasons that may not appear obvious, I comment in the column on proposals from the British government to curb the number of calories in restaurant meals and takeaway food. Apparently, Britain’s bureaucrats seized on the idea of regulating ready-to-go meals as a weapon in the battle against obesity. The proposals provoked such a backlash they have had to be scrapped. But it got me thinking. Read more

Remember former finance minister Steven Joyce’s claim that Labour’s fiscal plan for its 2017 general election campaign had an $11.7 billion “hole”? Read more