Month: April 2014

Whether there is enough competition in the New Zealand retail sector, is hard to tell. First of all, you would need to decide on how to measure it. But one thing is clear: a superficial look just at the number of competitors is not enough to accuse them of anti-competitive behaviour.

Knowing something about the development of economics can save you from having to reinvent the wheel. As Hayek once said, “in economics you can never establish a truth once and for all but have always to convince every generation anew.” Economic knowledge easily gets forgotten if one is unaware of its history.

LGNZ’s inquiry into local government funding makes sense. It should not stop there. In fact, what would be needed is an investigation into the role of local government, coupled with the question of how a new local government finance framework could incentivise councils to go for growth and development.

If there was a ranking for the most self-righteous nation in Europe, Germany would have a good chance of topping the list. Sure, without Germany’s support the euro may have already gone under, but the Germans are extremely good at coupling such help to their neighbours with unrequited advice on how to run their countries. As if Germany was some kind of role model that all the rest of the world should follow!

This week, American airlines demonstrate how markets respond to changing scarcity levels. Due to unrest caused by drug cartels and flooding from heavy rains in Mexico and a drought in California, the price of limes had skyrocketed. Passengers would not need to know about these background developments but they might notice that there is something else in their drinks.

In that faraway wonderland that it is the eurozone, nothing is quite what it seems. It is a strange place where half-bankrupt governments can plan a return to capital markets at moderate yields, and a central bank is able to impress analysts by talking about things it cannot do. Both instances are patently absurd, but just because something is absurd has never stopped it from happening in Europe.

Personally, I find it perplexing why any country would import the mixed member proportional electoral system from Germany. Maybe the German political landscape looked superficially stable and efficient around the time New Zealand considered alternatives to its traditional Westminster-style first-past-the-post system.

Published in Business Spectator (Melbourne), 3 April 2014 By all measures, it was a defeat of historic proportions for President François Hollande and his Socialist Party. Last weekend’s French local elections have turned the country upside down, or rather shifted it to the political right. It is also a reminder that of all the time bombs […]