Infometrics' Greatest Hits collects our economic articles on a single page. Articles that are more than six months old are generally available to the public free of charge.

Rank by: Date | Views | Topic:

AllEconomicBuildingTransportNZ RegionsOtherDom Post

Goto page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

Following the global financial crisis people all around the world were angry and they wanted someone to blame.  Given that the crisis seemed to originate from credit markets, it became natural for everyone to blame bankers.  In Britain there have been calls to make bankers pay through the introduction of a tax on speculative banking transactions called a “Robin Hood tax”.  It even has the all important celebrity backing of Bill Nighy, and 131,919 fans on Facebook.  Economists have seen this tax before in a different guise – we call it a financial transaction tax.  Instead of attacking bankers, lowering financial market volatility, and raising money for the needy the burden of such a tax would fall mainly on ordinary people while having few of the claimed effects.

Many people do not support an increase in GST, or so the polls tell us. I recall the same popular sentiment in 1986 when GST was first introduced. At that time there was a natural fear about a type of tax that was unfamiliar to most New Zealanders. Would it work? Would politicians deliver the accompanying income tax cuts? Who would gain and who would lose? Would government be bigger or smaller? Perhaps these fears still exist even though the change being talked about this time is much less dramatic.

In 1914 New Zealand was the richest country in the world and in 1960 we were the third richest. We are now ranked at number 50. We have been overtaken by Greece and Slovenia and are about to be overtaken by Israel, Taiwan and Korea. That our economic performance has been so mediocre is surprising as we have checked so many of the correct boxes to achieve growth.

One of the grimmer aspects of the holiday season is the prominent focus given to the holiday road toll. Although it will be small comfort to the friends and relatives of those who died on the roads this summer, 2009’s holiday road toll of 13 was a substantial improvement on the 25 who died in 2008. After adjusting for the number of vehicles on the road, 2009 would be the third lowest holiday road-toll since records began in 1958.

Some people see enrolling with an employment agency as a good way of boosting their chances of getting back into work. And in a developed society, experts and intermediaries play an important role in many facets of everyday life. Real estate agents have wider networks and greater marketing skills to help sell your house. Mortgage brokers know the ins and outs of the banking sector and can potentially get you discounted interest rates. And given that it’s the job of investment advisers and money managers to monitor financial markets, they should have the expertise to provide good financial advice – at least, that’s the theory!

With great temerity I would like to discuss the national standards introduced into primary and intermediate schools this week. There has been criticism from a number of quarters that the introduction of the standards will lead to a narrowing of the curriculum and the labelling of children as failures. On the other side there are arguments that greater information is required for parents who wish to know more about the performance of their children.

The festive season is a time for family and reflection. After a few drinks on Christmas Day, this combination got some of my family musing about future generations. First we started talking about New Zealand’s flaccid emissions trading scheme, the lack of progress at Copenhagen, and finally about living in a world of more than 2 degree temperature rises. The impacts on New Zealand may be manageable, but how might we deal with the global fallout, possibly including refugees from a drought stricken Australia?

The coming year is shaping as a watershed year for the New Zealand economy.  The short-term picture will be defined by tightening monetary and fiscal policy, both here and overseas, and anticipating the economy’s response to those necessary changes will be at the forefront of executives’ minds over the next 12 months.  But arguably even more important is the longer-term potential growth of the economy.  A number of taskforces and working groups have made policy recommendations to the government over the last couple of months.  Some changes will be made, but the extent of these will determine whether any significant progress is made towards addressing some of the fundamental imbalances and shortcomings of the New Zealand economy.

There has been a renewed focus on public asset sales in some western countries as governments reassess the value they get from owning commercial assets when faced with spiraling public debt. The British Government, for example, has announced it will sell £16bn ($35.8bn) in public assets over the next two years. Several other European countries such as France and Germany are also undergoing or seriously pondering public asset sales.

Like the 30,000 members of the facebook group “bring back Georgie Pie”, I have fond memories of the franchise. Some would swear by the taste, but the biggest attraction for many was that the pies were cheap. Georgie Pie’s $1, $2, $3, $4 menu became legendary in fact, but therein lies the problem. The economic and regulatory environment has evolved since the 1990s, and the costs of doing business for an outfit like Georgie Pie have increased substantially.