At a recent Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) event on housing affordability, the most telling moment came when economist Arthur Grimes said: “You can have big cheap cities, or small expensive cities, but just don’t say you can have small and cheap.” This statement seemed to come as a surprise to some, particularly Auckland Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse, who appeared to strongly disagree with Grimes’s position. Her reaction is understandable given that the Auckland Plan aims to deliver affordable housing by increasing the population density of the city. Read more

An Insights reader recently wrote in with a thoughtful question: how could we advocate for the release of land in New Zealand cities as a means of tackling the housing affordability crisis and promoting economic growth? They noted that continued growth, driven by population expansion, is not sustainable in the long term. Read more

If a week is a long time in politics, it is an age in business, especially for those sectors of the economy exposed to political volatility. Just ask the listed electricity companies, whose share prices are still wearing the effects of the single buyer policy the Labour and Green parties launched one year ago. Read more

Competition is a transformative force and is responsible for shaping everything from biology to the economy. Governments have set up institutional bodies to foster and encourage it. Read more

Consistency is regarded by some as a hallmark of a good politician, so by this logic Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce should be commended for steadfastly fronting the government's apparent commitment to ensuring that expensive recreational pastimes get well-rewarded. The latest beneficiary of the taxpayers’ purse is the New Zealand Open pro-am, an annual golf tournament which takes place at The Hills and Millbrook course in Queenstown. Read more

In a week where the headlines were dominated by housing affordability concerns, Prime Minister John Key said central government would need a compelling reason to allow local councils to collect additional taxes on top of their standard rates revenue. Well, here are 415,000 reasons. Read more

It’s tough for parties in the opposition benches. They have been stripped of a major rod with which to beat National in an election year. Read more

For professional reasons, Rachel Smalley may have had to quickly retract her unfortunate on-air slip, where she labelled New Zealand women ‘heifers’ and ‘lardos’, but the facts speak for themselves. According to the Ministry of Health, one-in-three adults in New Zealand is obese, with a Body Mass Index reading of 30 or more. Read more

One of the principal arguments put forward for the development of Auckland into an international-sized city is that urban economies of scale generate better outcomes. This is called an agglomeration benefit, or rather the economic advantage that firms and people get from being situated closer to markets, suppliers and places of work. Read more

In Greek mythology the Hydra was a deadly water serpent with multiple heads. For each head that was cut off, two others sprang out to replace it. Read more

Two years ago, when the New Zealand Business Roundtable merged with the New Zealand Institute to form The New Zealand Initiative, there were a fair share of people who wondered how these organisations would merge. Both were research organisations that had been headed by well-respected economists, the late Roger Kerr and David Skilling, who were perceived to come from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. Read more

Expect to hear a chorus of grumbling from various parts of New Zealand on Thursday when the Reserve Bank is set to hike the Official Cash Rate (OCR) for the first time in almost four years. The move is not a foregone conclusion, but with the market "90 per cent" confident of a 25-basis point hike (plus all the throat clearing, nudging, and winking that has been coming from No 2 The Terrace over the past few months), a bump-up in the interest rate is pretty much guaranteed. Read more

The Wellington City Council this week started holding community meetings over plans to introduce cycle lanes across large parts of Wellington, with the aim of making cycling safer. The move has been backed by an editorial from Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter, an adviser to Mayor Celia Wade Brown, who claims bike-only lanes could lift the percentage of people cycling from about 2.6 per cent in 2006 to 7 per cent – on par with Portland Oregon. Read more

In the for-and-against debate surrounding compact cities and their impact on housing affordability, Auckland and its Unitary Plan stand out as an oddity. The compact city term lacks a clear definition, but if you look for commonalities across the literature and practical examples of this urban form, two policy outcomes repeat themselves: urban growth restrictions and higher population densities. Read more