Eric is the Chief Economist at The New Zealand Initiative. With the Initiative, he has worked in policy areas ranging from freshwater management to policy for earthquake preparedness, and from local government to technology policy. He has recently focused on policy related to Covid-19 response. He served as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Department of Economics & Finance at the University of Canterbury from 2003 through 2014.
Eric’s columns and commentary appear regularly in New Zealand’s major media outlets, as well as on his blog, Offsetting Behaviour. He can also be found on Twitter at @ericcrampton.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
If philosophy students remember one thing from their lectures on Immanuel Kant in undergraduate classes, it is his categorical imperative. It’s easy to remember because it’s an awful lot like the old Christian ‘Golden Rule’. Read more
There’s a style of conference talk that I loathe. A self-described visionary will spend 20 minutes - or worse, even longer - stringing together clichés about how change is happening faster than ever before, how it will take soft skills to navigate it, and how we need to be ready. Read more
Sometimes, only truly committed localists can see the polished diamond hiding inside the very rough stone. We can remind ourselves that decades of poor incentives facing councils don’t build strong organisations. Read more
Alcohol policy is always contentious – but let’s start with something that should be uncontroversial: If the government wants to reduce alcohol-related harm, it should aim for measures that do more good than harm overall. If a harm-reducing policy stacks up, it does so whether the overall social cost of alcohol is $10 billion, $1 billion, or $100 million. Read more
When Guyon Espiner reported on a police estimate of ‘$7.8b harm from booze’, I was curious whether the figure was the old BERL alcohol cost zombie back again from the dead to torment the living. The BERL number included drinkers’ spending on their own alcohol – not a ‘social cost’ by any reasonable standard. Read more
In this podcast, Nick and Eric talk to Sam Broughton and Simon Randall from Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) about the potential for implementing city and regional deals in New Zealand - formal long-term partnerships between central and local government to better plan and fund local infrastructure and economic development. They explore the benefits such deals could provide, like aligning incentives, enabling tailored local policies, and sharing gains, while also examining the political barriers that need to be overcome. Read more
Wellington (Friday, 14 June 2024) - The New Zealand Initiative warmly welcomes the government’s review of health and safety regulation. “Current rules impose enormous compliance costs often for little safety benefit. Read more
If a picture contains a thousand words, this column is going to run well over our normal word limit. But the charts do say a lot, so we’ll let the charts do most of the talking. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton talked to Sean Plunket on The Platform about the accuracy of alcohol and meth harm estimates. Watch below. Read more
It would be ludicrous to describe Grant Robertson’s 2019 Wellbeing Budget as austere. Core government spending rose from around $27.50 of every $100 in economic activity to about $29 – a substantial increase. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton talks to Sean Plunket on The Platform to break down the 2024 Budget. Watch below. Read more
And so, the state advances. Thirteen steps forward, four steps back, then onward again. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton was interviewed on 1News on Budget Day about what he would like to see happen in the Budget. “What I would like to see today is a very clear path to get spending down to pre-Covid levels. Read more
American libertarian author and satirist P.J. O’Rourke used to joke that “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” The problem really is one of trust. Read more
Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister for most of 1968 through 1984, and father of the current Canadian Prime Minister, had a wonderful quip about being neighbours with the United States. In a 1969 state visit with President Nixon in Washington, Trudeau said, “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. Read more