There has been no shortage of villains in the financial crisis which began in Asia and has now encompassed all major emerging markets: bankers regulators hedge funds and the IMF have all been excoriated for incompetence and immorality. This paper argues that the problems which have emerged from...

Professor John Creedy presents his reflections on the Tax Working Group Report (Report available here.) John presents his findings to a Wellington audience on Tuesday 23 February and in Auckland on Thursday 25 February.

New Zealand's current competition laws like Canada's are comparatively new. The Commerce Act (the "Act") and Canada's Competition Act were both passed in 1986. The New Zealand Act in essence recognises the efficiencies defence. Where a merger is likely to result in the acquisition of a dominant...

In 1988 the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission gave permission for the University of Iowa to begin operating the Iowa Electronic Market (IEM) thus ushering in the world's first information market (sometimes called a prediction market). Similar markets have subsequently appeared at the...

Money and Medicines (WFB) analyses government provision of prescription pharmaceuticals in New Zealand focussing on the performance of the Pharmaceutical Management Agency Ltd. (Pharmac). Pharmac is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Transitional Health Authority (THA) and has the responsibility...

When New Zealand's railway system was privatised in 1993 it was as one entity thus avoiding any issues arising from the 'separation of wheel and rail'. Yet this approach failed in time in that in 2003 the New Zealand Government had to come in and purchase the track in order to bail out the...

Would you willingly pay more for groceries from the local cooperative than identical brands sold by the local branch of the privately-owned chain? Conventional economic theory suggests that a rational Homo Economicus would never entertain such a proposition. However Morris Altman's survey-based...

Bronwyn Howell recently attended the International Telecommunications Society conference in Perth. Attached are copies of her presentations to the conference including slides of her involvement in a Policy Roundtable.

John Hancock, CGNZ, presented Twelve Months On: Blacking out through Reforming the Unreformable? contrasting international perspectives on the electricity blackouts experienced in London, Italy and New York and how electricity markets will work to ensure sufficient supply and reliable delivery...

Slides from the presentation by Professor Lewis Evans on Infrastructure Investment and Uncertainty, presented at the IIPS/Motu Workshop, victoria University on July 13, 2010.