New Zealand

If you have not noticed it yet, 2013 is the International Year of Statistics. To celebrate this momentous occasion, Statistics New Zealand invited me to speak at a breakfast event on the trustworthiness of statistics.

The idea of copying the Norwegian example of an SWF in New Zealand is simple, tempting, attractive – and wrong.

At least in principle, there is widespread agreement that New Zealand should aim to increase its exports – whether you subscribe to the government’s target of 40% of GDP by 2025 or not. There is less agreement on how such an exports boost could be realistically achieved and which sectors are most likely to drive it. This holds especially true for New Zealand’s second largest exports industry (after dairy): tourism.

Far from demonising Chinese immigration in populist fear campaigns, New Zealand should be celebrating the opportunities and potential that Asian migrants bring to this country.

If you really can’t help yourself and desperately yearn for a currency union between Australia and New Zealand against all odds, then at least you should also include Papua New Guinea. Simply because every failing monetary union deserves its Greece.

Predictably, but regrettably, the Budget does little to defuse the fiscal time bomb that an ageing population poses for future spending on health care and retirement incomes. There is much still to be done after this still-laudable budget.

It is often said that nobody voluntarily moves to Wellington, but after a few weeks here hardly anyone wants to leave it. It certainly was like this for me.

As economists are aware, regulating network industries is fiendishly difficult. No matter where you stand on the single-buyer model and whether it could be made to work, shocking markets and investors with populist proposals (provoking equally populist responses) is not the way to go about it.