Library by Type - Books and reports

View PDF

Power in Employment Relationships: Is there an imbalance?

20 March 2006, Geoff Hogbin

View PDF

Te Oranga o te Iwi Maori Working Paper 1: Maori Economic Development: Glimpses from Statistical Sources

25 January 2006, Dave Maré and Sylvia Dixon of Motu and Andrew Coleman, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Michigan

Provisionally entitled Te Oranga o te Iwi Maori: A Study of Maori Economic and Social Progress, the book will look at factors and institutions that have influenced Maori development and ways of building on past achievements.

The first Working Paper, Maori Economic Development: Glimpses from Statistical Sources, was undertaken by Wellington-based Motu Economic and Public Policy Research. The authors were Dave Maré and Sylvia Dixon of Motu and Andrew Coleman, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Michigan. The paper provides an overview of Maori economic development during the past 150 years, drawing on readily available statistical and historical sources.

Author Dave Maré said, "The path of Maori economic development that we have traced is one of ongoing change and adaptation, as well as one of substantial increase in material standards of living, albeit with periods of significant setback. "The living standards of Maori improved enormously during the 20th century (as did the living standards of non-Maori). One of the most important drivers of that process of improvement was the gradual incorporation of Maori into the market economy, leading to the acquisition of jobs, incomes, new skills and new sets of knowledge. Another driver was the extension of government social services and 'safety net' income support provisions to Maori. A third was the initiative of Maori people themselves: developing new types of business activity and social services, and channelling public funding for social services in directions likely to be of greatest benefit to Maori."

View PDF

The Future of Culture in a Globalised World: The 2005 Sir Ronald Trotter Lecture

15 December 2005, Tyler Cowen

I sometimes describe my cultural and economic point of view as being that of a cultural optimist; that is, I expect the future in a commercial economy to bring us more choices and more diverse choices.

If we put aside the concerns of the current day and look back at world history, it has been the globalising eras that have brought us cultural diversity. If we look at the nineteenth century, which, for Europe, was a time of free trade when countries and regions were drawn closer by using railroads and faster ships, we see a time of remarkable cultural inventiveness. The biggest deglobalisation the West has suffered was the fall of the Roman Empire. Following that fall, there was indeed a dark age for culture; literature declined and many wonderful statues of antiquity were melted down for their bronze content.

This longer-term perspective is often forgotten when we consider the present day. We find cultural pessimists - both on the left and right wings - concerned that we are headed toward a so-called least common denominator, one-world culture. The vision is that everyone eats at McDonald's, we all wear Reeboks, we are all stuck in a Starbucks somewhere, we all watch banal television shows, and have little else to experience. Even in our modern world this is obviously not true.

View PDF

Human Progress - And Collapse?

14 September 2005, Wolfgang Kasper

Abstract

Against the human experience of long-term stagnation and misery, the record of growing prosperity over the past two centuries and, in particular, the last 50 years, is astounding. Economic growth owes much to the mobilisation of resources and structural flexibility, but this depends on the 'software of economic development' - institutions, which change slowly. Now, old fears and growth-impeding policies are being justified on environmental grounds. One example is Jared Diamond's recent book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, which discusses the possibility of a swift descent of the world into social disintegration. To anyone familiar with longterm economic history and the theory of growth, the book is pure millennial pessimism. It could become self-fulfilling if environmentalist doomsayers win the political argument with the doers - the engineers, entrepreneurs and economists.

View PDF

What Do We Mean by the Rule of Law?

8 September 2005, Richard A Epstein

Introduction

'The rule of law' is at once one of the most persistent and mysterious phrases in jurisprudence. I am not aware of anyone who is opposed to the rule of law. Yet at the same time, it is difficult to find out what the cash value of the concept is in helping to understand how best to fashion human relationships. Often, the term operates as a catch-all for other conceptions of which the relevance to political and legal theory is hard to define. One recent effort at an account of the concept gives some idea as to the elusive nature of a ubiquitous phrase. Thus, T R S Allan in Law, Liberty and Justice (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993, p 21) suggests that, "the rule of law is an amalgam of standards, expectations and aspirations: it encompasses traditional ideas about liberty and natural justice, and, more generally, ideas about the requirements of justice and fairness in the relations between government and governed". My objective is to isolate the different senses that can be attached to the term in order to give it some coherence and relevance.

One clue to the meaning of the rule of law is that it requires that there be some sort of rules. These rules are not just generalisations about human nature, but are often specific commands that a sovereign power issues to its subjects, where the breach of a rule could invite the use of the full range of legal sanctions. Accordingly, that concept does not make much sense in a state of anarchy, or in a tribal or customary context. For its origins we have to go back to early systems of sovereignty based on kinship and territorial control, which were top-down systems, with one person at the top. That idea of sovereignty deviates from the current view of political power that is based on a strong belief in a democratic system of elections, a bottom-up view, which is, historically, a relatively modern development.

View PDF

Understanding America

24 August 2005, Richard A Epstein

I have been assigned a fiendishly large topic. How do you deal with so vast a subject? Perhaps I should change the topic. Indeed, I shall - not by eliminating it, but by using my legal skills to turn it into something that is more digestible and coherent.

It is, of course, impossible, in talking about a sprawling country like the United States, to touch on every divisive issue that arises in its popular culture. Instead, I want to identify a single fault line that will allow us to see and understand some of the perennial splits in American society. To put this in the context of Paul Johnson's reference to the problem-solving nature of Americans, I will talk not about the way in which the United States has solved its past problems, but rather about a set of problems it faces today - problems that in many ways have had Americans growing further apart rather than coming closer together.

Tradition and liberty

As a way of approaching this large theme, I want to back off to address a strong theme in America political thought, which has shown a deep attachment and respect to our 'traditional liberties'. Rather than praise this sensible and sonorous notion, I want to address the implicit tension that resides within it. No matter how hard we tug and pull, the twin concepts 'tradition' and 'liberty' do not work in harmony in all areas of social life. Indeed, at some points they are profoundly opposed, and it is that opposition between them - where the forces of tradition and liberty collide in strange fashions - that is the source of so much political tension in the United States today.

View PDF

Fairness in a Liberal Society

14 July 2005, Richard Epstein

A paper by Professor Richard Epstein, James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.

View PDF

Behavioural Economics

13 June 2005, Richard A Epstein

'We are all behaviouralists now'

There is a natural cycle in intellectual development. New ideas begin as isolated and idiosyncratic attacks from without. At first, the establishment treats them with scorn. But, as the ideas persist, it is forced to confront the pesky intruders on their merits, which the establishment does with ingenuity and determination. But then the tide of battle turns, and the former outsiders become the new orthodoxy.

View PDF

How Big Should Government Be?

13 June 2005, Richard A Epstein

How Big Should Government Be? was delivered as a lecture in Christchurch on 4 August 2004 at the Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce.

View PDF

The Uses and Limits of Constitutional Arrangements

13 June 2005, Richard A Epstein

A risky comparison

The study of constitutional law often begins with a dispute between two different versions of the relationship of the individual to the state. There are those who think that atomistic individuals come together by a set of voluntary contracts, and those who think that societies should be treated as though they are complex organisms that cannot be understood simply as the sum of their parts. In general, I think that these organic arguments can lead to heavily collective institutions whose operations and ambitions I discuss. However, in this case I want to examine the problem of the constitution as though it were a study in social biology. I hope therefore to draw out comparisons of the organisation of the human body on the one hand with those of the state on the other. There are always dangers in making this transition, but the insights that are garnered should be useful enough to make the risk worth bearing. I begin with an account of the distribution of functions in the human body in order to provide a template for understanding the organisation of other types of system. From there, it is a simple progression to consider the workings of a family, a business and, finally, a state.

View PDF

A Country is not a Company

1 June 2005, Richard A Epstein

Features of a company

One of the most famous statements about the relationship between a company and a state is contained in a remark by Charles E Wilson ('Engine Charlie' of General Motors) when he was being questioned for his appointment as Secretary of Defence in 1953, the early days of the Eisenhower administration. He said that, "for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa". The clear intention of this statement was that the social policies that worked to preserve the long-term success of the nation were also those policies that worked on behalf of General Motors, at that time (but no longer) the dominant corporate firm in the United States.

One obvious virtue of the proposition is that it began with the view that sound national policies started with the nation, and then reverberated to the benefit of the firm. The obvious criticism of the remark centred about the words "vice versa", which clearly overstated the case: corporate welfare could benefit the firm and hurt the nation, for example.

View PDF

Dissecting the Working For Families Package

16 May 2005, Greg E Dwyer

Introduction

Most families with dependent children will qualify for additional family, childcare or housing assistance under the government's Working For Families (WFF) policy which was announced in the 2004 budget. WFF is being introduced in stages between October 2004 and April 2007, and will cost an estimated $1.1 billion a year or 0.7 percent of forecast GDP when fully implemented.

The analysis that follows draws on published information, including papers released under the Official Information Act and answers to parliamentary questions. The data are not always consistent. Joint family income, for instance, comprises taxable income in some cases and includes certain non-taxable income, such as child support, in other instances. Similarly, some data are based on after-tax income whereas most are gross of tax. Official data are also incomplete. Some policy measures, such as changes in the Accommodation Supplement, were often omitted from analyses prepared in response to parliamentary questions, apparently because of the complexity involved.

The structure of the paper is as follows. The objectives of WFF and its components and cost are summarised. An international comparison of family income assistance is presented. The implications for economic efficiency of WFF are then examined. The impact on child poverty and the distribution of income of WFF are discussed. The paper concludes by outlining an alternative and more desirable direction for policy.

View PDF

Affirmative Action: The US Experience and Implications for New Zealand

20 April 2005, Richard A Epstein

This lecture, Affirmative Action: The US Experience and Implications for New Zealand, was delivered on 3 August 2004 at the offices of Russell McVeagh, Wellington.

View PDF

Personal Income Tax in New Zealand: Who Pays and is Progressive Taxation Justified?

12 April 2005, Sinclair Davidson

View PDF

The Foreshore and Seabed

29 March 2005, Richard A Epstein

Natural law and property

On my last visit to New Zealand in 1999 I spoke as an outsider to a sceptical audience on how best to interpret the Treaty of Waitangi.1 I said that one of the great challenges facing a country formed by successive waves of immigrants is to put together disparate norms from rival cultures, each of which has its own distinctive legal understandings as to how the world does or should work.

On that occasion I said that I would like to start from a neutral corner, and then proceeded to address several Roman law analogues to the question of prescriptive rights, largely on the basis that the great Roman authors were not influenced by the future events that unfolded in New Zealand. On this occasion, I plan to do likewise in discussing the foreshore and seabed. Rather than trying to deal with this topic from the point of view of English law on the one hand or Maori customary law on the other, I want to locate some kind of tertiam quid - a third point - from which to begin the analysis. So for yet another time I find an unexpected use of my training as a Roman property lawyer, which has long augmented the English property law that I learned as a student at Oxford many years ago. I also begin with the confession that, even after the advent of law and economics, I remain much influenced by the writings of Gaius and Justinian on the creation and organisation of property rights.

View PDF

Is There Unequal Bargaining Power in the Labour Market?

8 February 2005, Richard Epstein

This lecture, Is There Unequal Bargaining Power in the Labour Market?, was delivered in Wellington on 2 August 2004 at the offices of Chapman Tripp Sheffield Young, Wellington.

View PDF

Corporate Social Responsiblity

17 December 2004, Martin Wolf

Nobody would wish to defend corporate irresponsibility or suggest that businesses should behave antisocially. It is little wonder therefore that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a popular notion. To attack it is like assailing motherhood. Yet the idea is not merely problematic but, in some respects, dangerous.

Hostility to markets is sour old wine. What changes are the bottles into which it is put. The collapse of communism destroyed the illusion that abolition of private property would create a paradise. However, this failure barely touched the enemies of the market. What it has changed is their means. Today's aim is not to eliminate private business but to transform the way it behaves. This, argued David Henderson, former chief economist of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, in a thoughtprovoking study for the New Zealand Business Roundtable and the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs, lies behind the vogue for corporate social responsibility. This increasingly accepted idea represents a response to critics, many in activist groups, who are "... with few exceptions ... hostile to, or highly critical of, multinational enterprises, capitalism, freedom of cross-border trade and capital flows and the idea of a market economy. One might expect, and indeed hope, that the business community would effectively contest such anti-business views. But ... the emphasis is on concessions and accommodation".

Mr Henderson argues that the idea of corporate social responsibility is today more than a merely defensive one. It is positive and broadly focused, amounting to a transformation of the objectives of the company and so of the market system. It is not enough, in this view, for companies to pursue profits within the constraints of law and the principles of honest dealing. Companies are seen as having a leading role as agents of social, environmental and economic progress. Business should enthusiastically embrace and adopt the notion of 'corporate citizenship'.

View PDF

Family Matters: Family Breakdown and its Consequences

17 December 2004, Patricia Morgan

All Western nations have seen a decline in the institution of the traditional family. Marriage rates and overall fertility are falling while divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births are rising. In New Zealand these trends have been remarkable in their intensity: the family is in a worse state here than almost anywhere else. In some quarters the decline of the family has been celebrated rather than mourned. The traditional family based on marriage is seen as oppressive; "new family forms" offer the opportunity for free expression. In fact, these family forms are not new - there have always been broken and incomplete families. What is new is the scale of their occurrence.

View PDF

In Defence of the Corporation

17 December 2004, Richard A Epstein

In this modern age of global commerce, it seems odd that I have been asked to address the topic 'In defence of the corporation'. Even the most ardent critic of the corporation would not take the position that the corporate form should be dismissed as an ill-conceived venture of modernity so that it would be for the better to be rid of it and return to being a nation of artisans. As a first approximation, the success of the corporation can be measured by the extent of the assets that are controlled through that form of business entity. Here, and everywhere else in the world, the corporation has been enormously successful in attracting and retaining capital investment. The survival of the fittest in economic affairs is not a test to be lightly ignored.

How did this come about? One answer lies in the expansion of the number of enterprises that are entitled to assume the corporate form. The corporation is, as a legal entity, a business that only the state can create. Originally, when corporations were specially chartered institutions, the state conferred corporate status only on select individuals. It was necessary to appeal to the Crown or a branch of the state to obtain a charter. One of the great liberalisations of the nineteenth century was that anybody who could file the appropriate papers could get the benefits of the corporate form as a matter of right. What started as an exercise of political intrigue became a routine ministerial act. This process of democratisation tended to eliminate many of the monopoly elements associated with using the corporate form, because all businesses could then get the key advantages of limited liability and easily alienable interests. The decline of the special charter was a comprehensive legal reform that has produced enormous benefits.

View PDF

Private and Political Markets Both Fail: A Cautionary Tale About Government Intervention

17 December 2004, David Friedman

One problem in any technical field is that some technical terms sound like ordinary language, and people outside the field, familiar with their ordinary meaning, mistakenly assume they understand them. Consider all the people who think they really understand the theory of relativity - except for the details. "Everything is relative. That makes sense." The term 'market failure' raises the same problem because it sounds as though it means the failure of markets. Market failure is a real phenomenon, a real problem in the organisation of human societies, but it has nothing in particular to do with markets - or at least, it has no more to do with markets than it has to do with governments, battles, families and much else.

My purpose is to explain what market failure means, why its existence is commonly employed as an argument for government regulation of markets, and finally why, while it is an argument against free markets, it is a stronger argument against the alternatives. As we will see, the problem described by 'market failure' occurs both in private markets and in the political and regulatory systems that are the usual alternatives to the private market, but is very much more common in the latter.

View PDF

The Case for a Flat Tax

17 December 2004, Richard A Epstein

Originally, I intended to take a non-economic approach to this topic and examine how a concept of fairness would lead one to support a flat or proportional tax. I have deviated from that path and instead will start the analysis with an explanation of how a flat tax derives from a constitutional norm. The non-economic issues, however, never recede entirely from view, for there turns out to be a latent connection between ideas of economic efficiency and certain bedrock instincts that lie beneath that elusive notion of 'fairness'. However, here there is a paradox, because in dealing with fairness our instincts often provide us with a tremendously reliable mechanism to govern human affairs, precisely because they depend on snap judgments that have proved themselves reliable over time. When people try to rethink their instincts case by case, they are apt to stress the refinements and ignore the basics, and come up with conclusions that are wrong. There is little doubt that in dealing with one-on-one personal interactions first impressions really do matter. It is more difficult to show that these impressions work as well for large-scale social issues like taxation. But it is equally wrong to disregard them entirely. As a working approximation, policymakers will often do better if they follow a hard, intuitive rule, unless there is powerful evidence to take a different path. Often, many arguments about fairness amount to intuitive judgments that are dressed up in some grander moral form.

View PDF

The Role of the State in an era of Globalisation: The 2004 Sir Ronald Trotter Lecture

15 December 2004, Martin Wolf

Martin Wolf was the guest speaker for the 2004 Sir Ronald Trotter Lecture held in Wellington earlier this year.

View PDF

Restraining Leviathan: A Review of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994

23 November 2004, Bryce Wilkinson

Restraining Leviathan: A Review of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994 by Wellington economist and director of Capital Economics, Dr Bryce Wilkinson:

- reviews fiscal policy and its outcomes over the past decade and in a longer-term perspective;

- discusses the relationship between the size and quality of government spending and economic growth;

- makes the case for introducing explicit tax and spending limitations into the FRA; and

- explores other options for constraining government spending.

View PDF

Lecture Takings, Givings and Bargains: Multiple Challenges to Limited Government

1 October 2004, Richard A Epstein

This lecture was given in Wellington on 2 August 2004, under the auspices of the Law and Economics Association of New Zealand.

View PDF

The Role of Business in the Modern World: Progress, Pressures, and Prospects for the Market Economy

30 August 2004, David Henderson

Preview

The twin related subjects of this book are, first, the role and conduct of business enterprises, and second, the status and prospects of capitalism and the market economy, in the world of today.

It is now widely held that a new era has just dawned, in which businesses need to adopt a new conception of their mission, purposes and conduct, by endorsing and putting into effect the doctrine of 'Corporate Social Responsibility' (CSR). They are urged to embrace 'corporate citizenship', and to conduct themselves, in conjunction with an array of 'stakeholders', so as to further the cause of 'sustainable development' by pursuing on their own account a range of social and environmental goals.

I have already presented a critique of CSR in Misguided Virtue: False Notions of Corporate Social Responsibility (2001). Here I treat the issues in a broader way, which incorporates but goes well beyond that critique. Against the background of the economic history of the past 50-60 years, I present an alternative conception of the role of business within a market economy. I argue that this primary role is strongly positive, and that there is no good reason either to question or to redefine it in the light of recent events; I set the emergence of CSR in context, where it appears as a new addition to already established collectivist ways of viewing the world; and I discuss more fully questions of enterprise conduct and motivation. In conclusion, I outline ways in which the primary role of business can be reinforced today, chiefly through public policies designed to extend economic freedom. Finally, I consider the situation and prospects of capitalism and the market economy in the light of developments since World War II.

View PDF

Free Markets Under Siege: Cartels, Politics and Social Welfare

12 July 2004, Richard A Epstein

Click here to view the summary, buy the publication, or download the PDF. (PDF 226kb)

View PDF

Education Matters: Government, Markets and New Zealand Schools

1 February 2004, Mark Harrison

View PDF

The Real State of the World: The 2003 Sir Ronald Trotter Lecture

8 October 2003, Bjorn Lomborg

Economics has been called the dismal science. But, in modern times at least, it has tended to be environmentalists rather than economists who have put forward a dismal view of the world. Beginning with a sceptical view of his work, I discovered that the late American economist Julian Simon was right. As the first chapter of my book says, things are getting better. Simon emphasised what became a crucial message of The Skeptical Environmentalist: mythmaking prevents us from using our judgment wisely. We will panic and fail to prioritise if we believe that the world is falling apart. If people worry too much about the small problems, they will not worry enough about the big ones. There is only one pot of money, and it must be spent wisely. We need to concentrate on the facts. The myths about the environment have convinced many people that we are headed in the wrong direction. I believed them before I wrote The Skeptical Environmentalist. Then I realised that these myths were like holding a gun to our heads, stopping us from being able to prioritise. The analogy is with a street criminal pointing a gun at you and demanding your money. You would not pause and wonder whether you would prefer to buy a new toaster; you would simply hand over the money.

View PDF

Getting Serious About Economic Growth (a collected volume)

1 December 2002, New Zealand Business Roundtable

A collection of speeches, submissions and articles. It includes a paper by Bryce Wilkinson, consultant to the NZBR, and an article by Phil Barry, author of a NZBR report published in 2002, The Changing Balance Between the Public and Private Sectors.

View PDF

Losing Sight of the Lodestar of Economic Freedom: A Report Card on New Zealand's Economic Reforms

1 December 2002, Wolfgang Kasper

In Losing Sight of the Lodestar of Economic Freedom Wolfgang Kasper looks at New Zealand's economic performance since the reforms of the 1980s and explores why the economy has not produced faster and more sustained growth.

Even though a recent New Zealand Treasury briefing to the incoming government reports that "? New Zealand's growth performance over the 1990s has been significantly better than in the previous two decades" and "good policy foundations and favourable external conditions have lifted New Zealand's growth rate towards the OCED average", living standards in New Zealand remain well below those of more affluent countries.

Losing Sight of the Lodestar of Economic Freedom examines the institutions and policies that govern changes to economic growth and asks, among other things, if they have been universal, consistent, transparent and well explained. Kasper follows this with a series of questions and answers on New Zealand's economic record and, whilst taking into account the level of economic freedom and the social and political aspects of economic reform, rates New Zealand's performance as a bare 'Pass'. He puts this performance into perspective by comparing it with that of Australia, which in its report card for 1980 to 2002 he awards a 'Credit' score.

Kasper concludes that the New Zealand public will have to choose between rapid growth that challenges and changes established structures and requires a willingness to accept the costs and risks of new ideas, or slow growth with the safety of redistribution and protective governmental intervention.

Wolfgang Kasper is emeritus professor of economics, University of New South Wales, and senior fellow, Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney, Australia.

View PDF

The Changing Balance Between the Public and Private Sectors

1 September 2002, Phil Barry

In the early 1990s, the World Bank identified four prerequisites for achieving sustainable economic growth: - sound macroeconomic policies; - competitive domestic markets and openness to international trade; - more and better private and public investment in people; and - achieving the 'right' balance between the roles of the public and private sectors.

View PDF

America and its Allies: Growing Together or Growing Apart? The 2002 Sir Ronald Trotter Lecture

12 August 2002, Dr Francis Fukuyama