The new public management of the 1980s was based in part on a range of important new insights about the role of transaction and agency costs arising from contractual incompleteness in defining the boundaries of the firm and the governance relationships within it. In this paper, we consider the...

Money and Medicines: An Economic Analysis of Reference Pricing and Related Public-sector Cost-containment Systems for Pharmaceuticals with Special Reference to New Zealand, by Alan Woodfield, John Fountain and Pim Borren (Merck Sharp and Dohme (New Zealand) Ltd.), October 1997 Tigers in New...

This paper considers the application of competition law and price regulation in the very small and isolated economy that is New Zealand. It argues that the total surplus (efficiency) criterion should be applied in tests of practices and actions where the competition threshold is not met or...

We appraise the theoretical basis and the consequent empirical work of Frank Wolak in his study of the New Zealand electricity market in a report to the New Zealand Commerce Commission released in March 2009. The report found no multilateral actions, but concluded there was evidence of...

In this paper we explore the question of the sustainability of the intergenerational contract that is represented by the current structure of social welfare. We argue that sustainability and time consistency of social welfare policies could be improved by more explicit recognition of the social...