Perhaps the defining global economic issue of this decade has been inequality. The notion that a free market economy promotes inequality is having an impact on the political climate. Read more
Our Executive Director, Dr Oliver Hartwich, joins Paul Henry to discuss the Government's announced Housing Policy Statement. Read more
‘Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll steal your fish’. Read more
Auckland’s housing crisis produces some strange side effects. One of them is that the word ‘boarding school’ might acquire a new meaning. Read more
In the mid-2000s, when inflation was running hot and the Reserve Bank was having a tough time keeping things under control, the former Business Roundtable’s Roger Kerr warned that monetary policy needed mates. Government made the Reserve Bank’s job even harder by running expansionary fiscal policy when labour markets were tight and inflation was a problem. Read more
Wellington (2 June 2016): The government’s draft national policy statement (NPS) on urban development, while a step in the right direction, will not fix Auckland’s housing crisis because it ignores infrastructure, according to The New Zealand Initiative. Building and Housing Minister Nick Smith today launched draft policy guidance under the Resource Management Act, which looks to force councils to zone more land for development when house prices breach a certain affordability threshold. Read more
This joint report by Deloitte New Zealand and The New Zealand Initiative looks for ways that Wellington can balance earthquake readiness and sensitivity to the city’s heritage character. Read more
Heritage buildings provide real value. They are often cherished by their owners, who bought them for their character. Read more
If there is one art Prime Minister John Key’s New Zealand government has mastered, it is expectation management. So for its eighth budget, delivered yesterday, expectations were low. Read more
It has now been a couple of weeks since we found out that the Overseas Investment Office was not being as thorough in its background character checks on investors as some might have wanted. Every day, I’ve been scanning the newspaper headlines, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Read more
Last week saw a rare conjunction. Almost all the political parties agreed that Auckland’s artificial rural urban boundary had to be lifted to free up land for housing development. Read more
It is a journalistic sin to come up with headlines such as “Small earthquake in Chile, not many dead”. With that in mind, you have to pity journalists trying to write about yesterday’s budget. Read more
Our Head of Research, Dr Eric Crampton, talks to Radio New Zealand about the housing crisis, and why Auckland Council needs to release more land for development. Read more
Amid the rancorous debate about whether a land tax should be imposed on non-resident property buyers it is vital to remember what caused New Zealand’s housing crisis in the first place: a sustained lack of land supply. Far too often in the discussion on how to cool Auckland’s white-hot housing market the focus strays from this fundamental fact, and falls on demand-side factors. Read more