
With the trans-Tasman travel bubble about to open, how much should the tourism industry get its hopes up?
www.shutterstock.comBy this time next week flights between New Zealand and Australia will have been taking off and landing for roughly 48 hours. The quarantine-free trans-Tasman travel bubbl...
Home prices are climbing alright, but not for the reason you might think
It’s tempting to think home prices are soaring because there aren’t enough homes.But that can’t explain the sudden takeoff from about the year 2000, the sudden takeoff from...

Not wiped out. Even after the collapse of Greensill, there's time to save Whyalla
Tudoran Andrei/ShutterstockWiping off Whyalla has become something of a macabre sport.All manner of things have been said to be about to destroy the steelworks town, including (briefly) the ...
Resistance to raising the minimum wage reflects obsolete economic thinking
Fewer than 2% of Australian employees work for the minimum wage (now $19.84 an hour). But the federal Fair Work Commission’s annual decision on how much to increase the minimum wage al...

New Zealand’s new housing policy is really just a new tax package — and it’s a shambles
GettyImagesEconomists like to talk about “optimal policy instruments” — essentially, policies that achieve their objectives more effectively or efficiently than the alterna...
Housing affordability is a problem. Here's why super-for-housing isn’t a solution
The idea that young Australians should be able to dip into their super to help buy their first home keeps going round and round. The most recent iteration put forward by the Coalition’...

Vital signs: to fix Australia's housing affordability crisis, negative gearing must go
Dan Himbrechts/AAPHouse prices are back in the news, and out of control.In the past three months the median house price in Sydney has risen by more than A$100,000 to A$1.12 million. Sydney&r...
Company directors can't serve two masters: what went wrong at Australia Post
Shareholder primacy is often said to be the guiding principle of corporations. The idea is that they exist to benefit their shareholders by providing dividends and capital gains, the more th...
JobKeeper and JobMaker have left too many young people on the dole queue
Of the more than 870,000 Australians who lost their jobs in the first few months of the COVID-19 crisis, 332,200 – or 38% – were young Australians aged 15-24.By June 2020, as the...

The successor to JobKeeper can't do its job. There's an urgent need for JobMaker II
workskil/ShutterstockUntil the end of last month one million workers were paid by JobKeeper.This month there are none. Treasury thinks up to 150,000 will lose their jobs. Credible estimates ...

The paradox of going contactless is that we're more in love with cash than ever
Ann Kosolapova/ShutterstockCOVID has changed you, right? You use less cash, perhaps a lot less.In the first two months of the pandemic, cash withdrawals from automatic teller machines halved...
Hostage to fortune: why Westpac could struggle to find the right buyer for its NZ subsidiary
www.shutterstock.comThe recent announcement that Westpac is “reviewing” ownership of its…
Please, no more questions about how we are going to pay off the COVID debt
Brian A Jackson/ShutterstockThere are many uncertainties about the next federal election, but there …
Curbs on press freedom come with a cost, new research reveals
The importance of a free press to a thriving democracy is well-known. But what is its importance to …
Is that a good egg? How chocolate makers rate on social and environmental measures
Pixelbliss/ShutterstockEaster is the biggest chocolate-buying time of the year. But who’s real…
Vital Signs: swaps, options and other derivatives aren't just for the financial elite
Paulus van Dorsten/ShutterstockOne of the biggest trends in economics over the past 40 years has bee…
How To Make Money on St. Patrick’s Day
Every year people around the globe prepare for St. Patrick's Day by planning epic parades, festi…
A shocking statistical fact that will change the way you think about the gender pay gap
ShotPrime Studio/ShutterstockDomestic violence committed on female partners in heterosexual couples …
Prince Harry’s critics have a point: woke capitalism is no solution
Jeremy Selwyn/APPrince Harry has copped a pasting in the British media for his new job as “chi…
Now they want to charge households for exporting solar electricity to the grid — it'll send the system backwards
zstock/ShutterstockIt’s come to this. The Australian Energy Markets Commission has produced a…
The true cost of the government's changes to JobSeeker is incalculable. It's as if it didn't learn from Robodebt
Poor people are different to rich people, and not only in the amount of money they’ve got. The…
A better deal for Uber drivers in UK, but Australia's ‘gig workers' must wait
Uber’s announcement earlier this month it will now treat its drivers in the United Kingdom as …
Already badly off, single parents went dramatically backwards during COVID. They are raising our future adults
LightField Studios/ShutterstockSingle parents with dependent children — eight out of ten of th…
For many military veterans, leaving the force is the biggest battle
SherSS/ShutterstockSince the beginning of the Afghanistan War in 2001, 41 Australian military person…
New Zealand businesses must adapt to a fragmented post-COVID global economy
Steven Bostock/ShutterstockAs recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic continues, there are strong ground…