If you have been scanning the press over the past week or so you may have come across an opinion piece by Michael Pascoe, prophesying doom for the New Zealand dairy industry and the Kiwi economy in general. Pascoe has taken a look at the similarity between iron ore and dairy prices since 2013 - both have more or less halved in value over the period - and concluded that there is a hard landing in store for New Zealand. Read more

When you publish a report with the title Poverty of Wealth: Why minerals need to be part of the rural economy, it is best to prepare yourself for some strong responses to your work, and to quickly grow a thick skin. Feedback from green groups, politicians, officials, and the online communities who populate the comments sections of various websites are all obvious sources of critical feedback. Read more

Sitting in one of New Zealand’s urban centres, it is tempting to look across the various data points and conclude that all is well with the country. Yes, dairy and log prices have pared back substantially over recent months, but almost every other economic indicator is improving, holding its own, or lingering below warning levels, as in the case of inflation. Read more

There are many emotions that Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler is likely to provoke, depending on the state of your bank account, but sympathy for this modern Beowulf is hardly the first choice. Yet that is exactly what I felt for the technocrat last week when he announced that he was thinking about delving deeper into his economic toolbox in the hopes of finding a gizmo that could zap more heat out of the housing market. Read more

Imagine for a minute there were a magical ring that, when twisted, rendered the wearer invisible. In using the ring, would that person remain true to their moral code, or abandon their principles and use it to their undue advantage? Read more

With the housing affordability crisis square in the sights of the Key government, the recent launch of the Rules Reduction taskforce is welcome news. Headed by MP Jacqui Dean and Auckland Chamber of Commerce CEO Michael Barnett*, the group is tasked with hacking through redundant layers of local government regulation that drag on the efficiency of the economy. Read more

Elections are not just turbulent times for voters but for investors as well. Common wisdom has it that equity markets tend to lose some of their froth as the vote gets nearer, and perk up once the policy uncertainty dies down. Read more

With votes on the Scottish independence referendum still being counted, it is worthwhile pondering what the nation state will look like if the Scots choose to secede from the union. There are fundamental questions that will need to be answered, such as how public debt, social services, and gas field revenues will be divided. Read more

With housing back in the pre-election spotlight, the Green Party this week launched their policy package, targeted at an often overlooked segment of the voter spectrum – renters. The problem, as the party sees it, is that a significant proportion of rental stock is in poor condition, and security of tenure for renters is weak, giving landlords disproportionate power in the contractual arrangement. Read more

Recently, Transportblog.co.nz bemoaned the fact that Auckland CBD was running out of office space.The pro-transit and compact city advocacy group is concerned because central government is insisting that certain rail usage and CBD employment targets be met before it co-funds the $2.9 billion City Rail Project. These targets include the doubling of rail patronage to 20 million trips a year, and lifting the number of people employed in the CBD by 25 per cent (or 22,000 jobs) if the city wants the project to start in 2020. Read more

Only a handful of phrases that instantly provoke an angry reaction from me. And while I am grateful the list is limited, some entries are now common. Read more

I am probably inviting a storm of controversy, but I think the perfect motif for the movie industry profession should not be film reel, but a figure with their hand wedged deeply in the taxpayer’s pocket. Sir Peter Jackson recently bemoaned that funding levels for film production in New Zealand have remained at about $12 million per annum since the late 1980s even as the cost of production has risen. Read more

Last week Minister for the Environment Amy Adams piled into the Auckland Council over the Unitary Plan, saying the rule set was unlikely to come close to delivering the 300,000 plus houses the city needs over the next 30 years. The minister noted that the plan imposed even more red tape on the already regulation-choked sector, and if anything, was likely to worsen housing affordability in Auckland. Read more

Economist Edward Glaeser, ranked as one of the profession's top 50 practitioners, summed-up 40 years of transport economics at Harvard University in four words when he was visiting Wellington last year: "Bus good, train bad." Glaeser's argument is centred on the risks of bus versus rail. Rail is capital and land intensive as you need to buy the land at market prices in order to put a track on it. Read more