Jason Krupp was a Research Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative from 2013 to 2017. Before joining the Initiative, Jason was a business reporter at The Dominion Post. He previously worked for Fairfax’s Business Bureau where he was chiefly responsible for covering equity and currency markets for the group. Prior to that, he wrote for BusinessDesk, New Zealand’s only dedicated business news agency. Jason has a degree in journalism from Rhodes University, and has previously lived in Hong Kong and South Africa.
With Auckland’s housing crisis now a permanent feature on the Herald’s front page, it is worth restating how this problem started: not enough homes were built to keep up with natural demand. When too many buyers chase too few goods, prices have to rise. Read more
With the dust on the failed Wellington mega-merger process having only just settled, it is a disappointing turn of events to see a new merger proposal back on the agenda, albeit in a smaller form. That is because the previous merger - which would have amalgamated the Greater Wellington Regional Council with district councils in Wellington, Porirua, Kapiti Coast, Hutt, Lower Hutt, South Wairarapa, Carterton and Masterton into a unitary authority - offered so few benefits and such high costs that it never got out the gate. Read more
Last month Local Government Minister Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga provided the first peek at the latest round of Local Government Act reforms, dubbed the Better Local Services package. The announcement was not a surprise, particularly as it came in the wake of failed council amalgamation proposals in Wellington, Northland and Hawke’s Bay. Read more
Our Research Fellow, Jason Krupp, talks to Jesse Mulligan from Radio New Zealand about how other vibrant cities throughout the world deal with the inevitable tension between nightlight and community concerns. Read more
We should laud, not vilify, the actions of a Wairarapa school that has taken the brave step to ban students (and presumably staff too) from climbing trees on school grounds. Management have quite correctly noted that trees pose a health and safety risk to those playing in them, and have acted wisely to shut down any possibility of this risk eventuating on their watch. Read more
It would take a world champion wowser to declare last weekend’s CubaDupa festival anything but an outstanding success, replete with two days of street food, live music, street artists, and throngs of happy attendees. If such a po-faced complaint were to be made it would probably focus on the number of drunk people wandering the streets late at night, and the menace they represent (noise, fights, minor crime and so on). Read more
Left-wing blog The Standard veered beyond its usual polemic last week with a guest post that painstakingly laid out how Auckland Council had spent $1.24 billion on a new IT system with little to show for it so far. The piece, written in response to Bernard Orsman’s scoop in the New Zealand Herald, was notable for its familiarity with major IT project processes, and how far Auckland Council had strayed from industry best practice. Read more
Left-wing blog The Standard veered beyond its usual polemic last week with a guest post that painstakingly laid out how Auckland Council had spent $1.24 billion on a new IT system with little to show for it so far. The piece, written in response to Bernard Orsman’s scoop in the New Zealand Herald, was notable for its familiarity with major IT project processes, and how far Auckland Council had strayed from industry best practice. Read more
Research Fellow Jason Krupp sheds some light on the economics of trophy hunting, following the recent uproar of an American tourist shooting Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe. Read more
Recently a group of business people gathered to discuss what exactly is stopping Wellington from reaching its full economic potential (whatever that means) as part of a Trans-Tasman Business Circle event. As you would expect from a panel discussion featuring a bank economist, a major Wellington developer, and the newly appointed head of the Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency (WREDA), the conversation rested heavily on modern MBA speak. Read more
If you have been living under a rock, you may not have realised there is a war going on in Auckland. There are no guns and bombs involved (at least not yet) but, based on the headlines, the tensions seem to be equivalent to those of a real conflict. Read more
Economics provides us with a useful toolbox with which to analyse the world. From Pareto efficiency, to perfect competition and rational irrationality, there is an economic theory that will just about explain anything. Read more
While traffic-bound Aucklanders celebrated the announcement last week that central government was bringing its funding for the City Rail Link (CRL) forward by two years, I could not help but feel that New Zealand has lost the infrastructure plot. Politically, this was a savvy move by Prime Minister John Key. Read more
There is nothing wrong with being an old grump. With a lifetime of disappointments to reflect on, old grumps have earned the right to grouse about how things used to be back in their day. Read more
Writing a regular column can occasionally be hard work. It is not enough just to know a topic in detail; it also requires insight and an angle to make any piece of writing meaningful. Read more