A physician’s memoir describing a successful research program leads to pondering about research funding strategies. (The picture shows Eric Espiner with present and former colleagues celebrating his ...

The untimely passing of Act’s candidate for the Port Waikato electorate throws an unexpected spanner into the 2023 election machinery. Maybe it’s time to think about how the law responds to such ...

Winning office is not the same as achieving change. A recent Economist columnist divided politicians and their political advisers into either ‘jock wankers’ or ‘nerd wankers’. It’s a distinction which ...

For some it’s just a passing news headline. But when your musical hero dies it can cut deep and bring back all sorts of memories. Such it was with the tragic death of singer-songwriter Andrew Brough ...

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 ...

Do its Property Right Provisions Make Sense? Last week I pointed out that it is uninformed to argue that the New Zealand’s apparently poor economic performance can be traced only to poor regulations.

Centre right voters have three realistic options this year. The National Party, which is currently at something of a low ebb but which remains the primary vehicle for conservative and moderate liberal ...

Do we treat the government finances with the common sense that household’s manage theirs? It is a commonly held view that we should treat the government as if it is a prudent household. We don’t when ...

Stagnation and ContractionStagnation and Contraction 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 ...

There is a constant theme from the economic commentariat that New Zealand needs to lift its economic growth rate, coupled with policies which they are certain will attain that objective. Their ...

The picture the commentariat presents of Winston Peters is a misleading caricature. If we don’t try to understand the complexity of the man, we cannot understand what is going on in New Zealand ...

The recent reduction in the US credit rating signals that market lenders are not happy with the US fiscal arrangements. New Zealand’s lower rating is a warning that we could do better too. Fitch ...