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Brian Fallow: Spending caught in a squeeze
COMMENT: The population is up, the Govt wants debt to go down. Net result: not a lot left to play with, writes Brian Fallow.
COMMENT: The population is up, the Govt wants debt to go down. Net result: not a lot left to play with, writes Brian Fallow.
COMMENT: Unwinding a cross-subsidy is never popular among those who have been on the bludger's end of one.
COMMENT: The Reserve Bank was radiating signals this week that its next intervention in the housing market may well target debt-to-income ratios.
COMMENT: 'The only genius I ever met," says Alan Bollard, the biographer of pioneering New Zealand economist Bill Phillips.
COMMENT: When Bill English delivers his next Budget a month from now, he will no doubt portray the Govt as a model of providence and fiscal responsibility.
COMMENT: From rising sea levels to flooded rivers, from drought to wildfire - scientists list the impacts of climate change.
COMMENT: Migrants are pouring into NZ by the thousand, but these days the new arrivals aren't boosting prices the way they once did.
COMMENT: Technology and foreign competition are consuming jobs, but a universal income is too crude and costly a solution.
COMMENT: At a first glance, economic growth lately does not look too bad. At a closer look, the picture is more froth than beer.
Employers are among the stakeholders the Productivity Commission wants to hear from as it sets about a wide-ranging inquiry into tertiary education.
Trying to quantify the gains from planned trade agreement is an exercise in futility, writes Brian Fallow. Trying to get a grip on the TPP's effects is about as easy as catching trout with your bare hands.
It is high time for the Government to go easy and give itself more room to manoeuvre in setting fiscal policy, writes Brian Fallow.
Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler will be acutely conscious that inflation for the past year has been below the 1 per cent bottom of the bank's target band.
Households and most businesses face higher power and fuel bills under proposed changes to the emissions trading scheme.
A more cheerful picture of productivity growth than the official statistics give us emerges from new research into what has been happening at the level of individual firms.
While we await the final text of the agreement it may be worth reflecting on the importance of the 90 per cent of the TPP iceberg below the surface of media attention, writes Brian Fallow.
Brian Fallow asks, can the techniques economists use predict the winner of the Rugby World Cup? It is about quantifying the relative explanatory power of the variables.
Among inflation-targeting central banks, it is essential for inflation expectations to remain anchored to their inflation targets, writes Brian Fallow. Credibility on that point is their stock in trade.
Brian Fallow speaks to a New Zealand-based analyst who sees the EU sliding into paralysis and inevitable decay.
Slip-ups are no surprise, given the vast reforms the country is going through, Brian Fallow writes. As China has contributed about a third of global economic growth in recent years, few are immune from the effects of its slowdown.
Wherever you draw the line, too many children are going without, writes Brian Fallow.
In light of the stress the dairy industry is under right now, they really do need to take the longer-term view that they say they are taking, writes Brian Fallow.
It is not only Southlanders who can breathe a sigh of relief that the Tiwai Pt smelter received a stay of execution this week, writes Brian Fallow.
Should we be dismayed or relieved at the disarray the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations are in? Sorry, but on the information to hand it is impossible to say.
Kiwis are better off than you might have thought, suggests a study of teens' living conditions.
A key industry is suffering, but other economic signs paint a happier picture, writes Brian Fallow.
Exactly where does the housing ladder lead, asks Brian Fallow - to financial security, or to years and years of debt servitude?
Is the emissions-reduction target the Government announced this week ambitious, as it says, or feeble and inadequate, as its critics say?
Economics editor Brian Fallow says today's business opinion survey shows we've passed the peak of economic growth.
New Zealand is enjoying 3.2 per cent economic growth and 0.1 per cent inflation, the statisticians tell us, but Bank of New Zealand economists warn we could see those numbers switch.