"So let's look at three explanations for NZ's secular stagnation that the big media outlets refuse to blame."

"The country does not appear to [just] be in a cyclical down-turn. ... The evidence ... points more to a long-lasting slow-down ... which has turned [New Zealand's economy] into one of worst performing in the world. ... [The reasons] remain unaccounted for. The 'experts' quoted in the mainstream media, who work for the Big Banks and NZX 50 firms, don't have a clue, though not the modesty to admit it. ...
    "So let's look at three explanations for NZ's secular stagnation that the big media outlets refuse to blame.
    "First, the vast number of New Zealanders who now 'work' from home. ... An article published in the National Bureau of Economic Research is being quoted world-wide which estimates falls in productivity of around 18% once a person works from home. ...This outbreak of collective laziness is more than able to explain why the country has stagnated. ...
     "Second, many of the Board members and CEOs of our largest corporations are nothing short of useless. Many are accountants & lawyers who know little about the core business. ... The higher echelons of NZ corporates have descended into an inbred club of status-seeking social climbers who aren't the real deal. ...
    "Third, our national energy has been increasingly sucked up by [endless] Treaty debates. ... spawning industries of academics, lawyers, politicians and media types who do nothing productive, other than argue with one another. ... It has emerged that property rights, the fundamental driver of economic growth, are thereby insecure in NZ, making it a terrible place to keep your money and invest. ...
    "[I]t is [therefore] entirely plausible that [all of our economic stagnation is due to] the vast numbers of Kiwis who are now pretending to work from home, hiring and promotion policies not based on merit, ... along with endless going-nowhere Treaty debates which have consumed the energy of the country ..."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'Should NZ's secular stagnation be due to working-from-home, lack-of-meritocracy & endless Treaty debates, then we can forget economic growth.'

Tweedledum, and Tweedledumber

"My reading of NZ Treasury's Half Year Economics & Fiscal Update 2024 is that little has changed since the government changed. ...
    "The average of [the fiscal deficit (excess of government spending over taxes)], which comprise the Coalition's first term in office, is -3.4%. ... How does it compare to when former PM Jacinda Ardern & Finance Minister Grant Robertson governed? ... The[ir] average is -1.6%. So National, ACT & NZ First are on course to more than double the size of fiscal deficits that were run during the Ardern-Robertson years.
    "What's more, the year when the deficit really blew out, being 2020, was due entirely to the wage subsidy scheme expansion [for which] National lobbied hard ... to make it of unlimited size ... Before the wage subsidy cap was lifted, the maximum any one firm could take was $250,000. After the cap came off, firms like Fletcher Building scooped over $50 million each.
    'What's the moral of the story? That National and Labour are essentially the same party, just run by different actors, sales folks and marketing directors who are pretending their two products are different, because they use different branding & colors. They're like Coke and Pepsi Cola. ... Same old. Same old."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'Its Official: Behind all the Hot Air from the PM & Finance Minister, National is Running a Bigger Borrow-and-Spend Government than 6 years of Ardern & Robertson.' 

Little Nicola's report card after one year: 'Not Achieved'

 

"National was elected on the promise of fixing the economy. Not talking about it; but to deliver the goods. ... How is Finance Minister Willis doing? [Answer:] She has not yet proved herself. ...
    "[T]he Kiwi economy is stagnant ... experiencing one of the lowest GDP growth rates in the world. [I]nflation is lower, [but] it has been coming down in most nations. ... [W]e held out hope there would be a drastic reduction in red tape and regulation. However the new Department of Regulation has done next to nothing yet, other than hire managers. ... Willis has sent no clear message to the markets that hers is a government of low taxes. Quite the opposite, she has kept top tax rates the same, as well as corporate taxes. ... [yet] the fiscal deficit will [still] worsen under Willis, unless the economy starts to rapidly pick up. The trimming of civil servants, whilst necessary, is not on a scale that will greatly shift the dial. ...
    "[O]n healthcare, Willis pretends that hiring Lester Levy is a reform. Parachuting in a cost cutting manager does not constitute a health-care policy. ... [O]n housing, once the propaganda is stripped away, National's reforms offer less of an increase in supply than was going to happen under the bi-partisan accord that the Party signed up to with Labour years ago. ... National's trumpeted Fast-Track Approvals is nothing more than a rejig of the Fast-Track Approvals process Labour enacted when in office, although with a lessening of environmental checks. ...
    "Willis ... represents ... a Sir Bill English-type, a steady-as- she-goes, status-quo, old-style, conservative Nat. Maybe it worked for him. It won’t for her. It won’t for the nation. ... New thinking is required."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'Finance Minister Nicola Willis: A First Year Economic Report Card'

"When Parliament can't do its job and pass clear, intelligible laws, then the courts & people are left with no choice but to make rules & laws on their own."

"Having said that, the Justice Minister is right. When Parliament can't do its job and pass clear, intelligible laws, then the courts & people are left with no choice but to make rules & laws on their own. So schools & universities have decided how to interpret the Treaty their way, including how pupils are taught in this regard. Government departments have ruled on how employees must act, as have Councils, and private firms. Real estate authorities have ruled on obligations of agents regards the Treaty. Meanwhile judges have gone & done their own thing. And maybe you & me, next time we swim near the foreshore, or stand on a sea bed, should make our own rules & judgements, in negotiation with others, as to what we can, or can't, do. Maybe it should be sorted out by private bargains.
    "After all, Parliament has failed to lead. Perhaps it doesn't deserve to be called "sovereign", when it can't pass proper laws anymore. Maybe its best to leave things up to the people & their organizations to make their own laws. Parliament is looking inept, embedded in a City where water pipes burst around it, red cones block streets, broken ferries are berthed nearby & few people want to go into work anymore. Maybe power should go back to the people."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'Maybe NZ's Minister of Justice is Right. When Parliament Can't Make Laws, the people have no choice but to take the Law into their Own Hands.'

We're just not very productive ...

 ... or maybe we're short of capital, and over-endowed with regulation?

If there is one graph that symbolises the relative economic decline of NZ [says Robert MacCulloch], then I believe it is the one below. It measures NZ GDP per capita from 1990 to 2022, and compares it with all other nations in our Asia-Pacific region. ...

The scale is logarithmic for a reason. It gives you a measure of the percentage increases in GDP per capita in NZ compared to other nations. Every single year over this 35 year period, as far I can see from eye-balling the graph, with the exception of 1998-99, NZ's percentage rise in GDP per capita has been way lower than the average. When I was in my 20s in the 1990s, NZ's GDP per capita was about 6 times the average in the Asia-Pacific region. As of 2024, our GDP per capita is only about 2 times the Asia-Pacific average. Give it another decade or two, and there won't be much difference - the rest of Asia will be richer than us.

 

NZ's govt health 'system': "delivering equally awful health-care to everyone"

"Enough is enough. Former PMs Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern should come clean about how they were the Chief Architects of the omni-shambles that has become our health system. ... for the folks who suffer from long waiting lists and declining health-care quality, some of whom didn't make it. 

    "The person who wrote the report [that is] the inspiration behind the disaster that is Health NZ was Heather Simpson, Clark's Chief of Staff for 9 years ... reincarnated by Labour to advise Ardern and Hipkins on health-care. ... The report was the inspiration behind the [disastrous] centralisation of NZ's health system. ...
    "I read the report. No intellectual basis is built for its suggested re-design of health-care delivery. No wonder our system is failing. 

    "It keeps repeating the word 'equity,' seemingly in the hope that by writing that word on paper is enough to deliver it in practice. The report bizarrely repeats 'equity' 219 times (!?) By contrast, the word 'competition,' which is a requirement to ensure quality and efficiency in nearly every economic system, is not mentioned one time. The report thereby seeks to deliver equally awful health-care to everyone."

    "... [The report's] half-baked idea is that the monolithic super-structure it invents ... would create 'economies of scale.' It uses the jargon, 'scaling up.' Health NZ has succeeded only at being a large scale disaster."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Former Labour PM's Clark and Ardern wrecked NZ's Health System: they should be held accountable for the lives that have been lost'

 

Still a fast-track to cronysim

"To deal with the proliferation of regulation & red-tape in NZ, which means you can barely go to the bathroom without getting permission, National's Chris Bishop & NZ First's Shane Jones told us they would 'fast track' a bunch of selected projects. ... So its a shame to see that on the fast-tracking issue, Bishop and Jones went and took a good idea and stuffed it up. They sadly politicised the whole thing by wanting to give Ministers the power to make decisions about which projects would be accepted. ...
    "They couldn't help themselves. They wanted to be big men, holding big power, deciding who got what. Now in an embarrassing back-down, they've reversed themselves. ... changing the Fast-track Approvals Bill so 'Final decisions on projects will not sit with Ministers but with an expert panel.' This is the same as the previous Labour government’s 'fast-track' process.
    "But they've got it wrong again. Why revert to yet another layer of bureaucracy ... staffed with the usual assortment of [cronies,] in-bred Wellington nobodies, or dubious Kiwi 'business leaders' with political connections? ...
    "What should they have done instead? [Ed: Well, obviously they should get rid of the proliferation of regulation & red-tape. But in the meantime ...] the 384 projects should simply be referred to the NZ Treasury / Infrastructure Commission for evaluation, & ranked highest to lowest in terms of benefit-to-cost ratios. Those institutions should send their ranking / recommendations to Cabinet for ultimate sign off. The rankings should be publicly available. Should Cabinet accept a project low on Treasury's rankings, then we'd know it was because they wanted their mates to get the job, unless some very good reason otherwise was presented.
    "For National to adopt Labour's same fast-track process with an expert panel of nobodies tells us one thing. Both National & Labour have failed to deliver for NZ and they still don't know how."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Fast Track Approvals Bill: Chris Bishop & Shane Jones Took a Good Idea & Turned it into a Dog's Breakfast.' To which Labour's David Parker replied here.

"The National Party's Monty Python health (non) reform is a comedy. In order to cut layers of management, new layers are being introduced."

"The National Party's Monty Python health (non) reform is a comedy. In order to cut layers of management, new layers are being introduced. ...
    "First, old man Levy ... has been brought back to be the super-duper CEO boss of existing Health NZ CEO boss ... Four new 'Deputy CEOs' have just been appointed below [that] to manage each of four regions NZ has been divvied into. ... The funniest part of National's Health Minister Reti's 'plan' to get health back on track is that [not one] is a doctor. ...
    "What's most amusing is how Minister Reti is trying to portray these moves as a profound reform in which more power is being returned to regions. Bollocks. Both National & Labour supported abolishing the 20 District Health Boards that existed in 2020 to 'centralise' health-care. The only difference is National argues the system should not be quite as centralised as Labour wants. Big Deal.
    "The thrust of the reforms both parties are pushing is to keep our existing single public payer-single public provider system intact (bar a limited role for private provision). Whether one decides to have it administered by 20, 4 or one Board wont change service provision quality. ...
    "Luxon and Reti better get their head around the idea of centralised payment yet decentralised (private) provision fast, or our system will fully implode. The current reforms, based around calling everyone a super CEO, a CEO or a Deputy CEO, titles which are dishonest in the public sector since its a private sector title, will go nowhere."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'More Layers of Management Kick in under National as the Frontline of NZ's Health System is wiped out - Not one Doctor is Appointed to Lead a Region'

"On present form, Luxon is looking like a watered down version of John Key, and Willis a watered down version of Bill English."

"The Prime Minister was elected on the basis that his previous career as CEO meant he had a much greater business acumen than Labour's leaders. ... However, yesterday it was revealed .... that the builder of the now cancelled new ferries ... has put in a claim stemming from the terminated $551 million contract ... [and] KiwRail don't know what will be the size of the claim that the NZ taxpayer will ultimately end up paying. ... [I]t's not up to Kiwi Rail's lawyers to decide what is "fair" - it depends on what HMD's lawyers also believe what is fair - and should the two not agree, it ultimately must be decided in court. Furthermore, the government cannot tell anyone what will be the cost of smaller, scaled-down ferries.
    "The crux of the matter is ... the question ... how could PM Luxon & Finance Minister Willis pull out of a billion dollar deal with no idea of the legal consequences?
    "With no idea of the costs of the claims that will arise?
    "With no idea of the price of a replacement deal?
    "PM Luxon talks a big game but has he ever done a three-billion dollar deal before? No. Has he ever pulled out of a billion dollar deal before? No. Elon Musk tried pulling out of a multi-billion dollar deal to buy Twitter. It was a nightmare - so costly that he ended up going ahead with it.
    "If Luxon and Willis don't smarten up and prove they know how to do deals ... show they know [for example] how to do a quality-enhancing health-care reform (rather than pretending abolishing the Māori Health Authority is a reform plan) then we will know in quick order that both are not the real deal.
    "On present form, Luxon is looking like a watered down version of John Key, and Willis a watered down version of Bill English. Labour were so bad that anything is an improvement. But these two are so far looking like not much of one."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'Who, with an ounce of business sense, pulls out of a deal with no idea of what legal claims will arise, and with no idea of the price of a replacement deal? PM Luxon and Finance Minister Willis.'

The Governor who printed $50 billion of inflation ...

"Yesterday the Reserve Bank ... released a statement saying, 'The NZ economy continues to evolve as anticipated by the Monetary Policy Committee.' What a line coming from a Governor who told 'Bloomberg News' in the US in 2021, whilst he was busy printing $50 billion in cash, which is the primary cause of our current high inflation, that "The fear of the 70s, the 80s, stagflation, it is such a different world [now]." How amusing, given that stagnation, recession & inflation is exactly what we are now experiencing. How amusing that the RBNZ says our economy continues to evolve as anticipated when its forecasts could not have been proved more wrong.
    "It gets worse. ..."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'When will the Reserve Bank of NZ Stop Spinning and Stop Misleading Parliament and the Nation?'

"What stupendously depressing words, declaring the only way a human can be fulfilled is dependence on politicians."

"Although Ardern tried hard to divide Kiwis along every imaginable line for her own political benefit, an inescapable fact is that a profound cultural factor, way bigger than her, unites us all together. We have our roots in making our way through our own industry. 

    "When people started to migrate to NZ, whether indigenous or not, they had to depend on themselves, friends and family for survival. There was no welfare state back then. Out of this history, an important part of our culture became the 'can-do' attitude — Kiwi ingenuity, the number 8 fencing-wire, practicality —the taking calculated risks that many in the Old World had lost. Cut to modern times however, and this is the current philosophy of the NZ Labour Party, as espoused by its current and former leaders:

Ardern: 'People ... look for light, hope, a fulfilment of their own ambition and they will either find that in political leadership or they will seek out reasons why they have been failed.'

Hipkins: 'Governing is about choices — choosing subsidies ... '

"What stupendously depressing words, declaring the only way a human can be fulfilled - can achieve their dreams & ambitions - is dependence on politicians..."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'A brighter Future for NZ'ers involves the outright rejection of Labour's Make-the-People-Dependent Doctrine' 

"While Grant Robertson was talking himself up the result of his past six years as Finance Minister were clear for all to see."

"While Grant Robertson was talking himself up in Parliament [this week] about his wonderful political career and how proud he was of his achievements, the result of his past six years as Finance Minister were clear for all to see.
    "We've just fallen out of the world's top ten 'happiest' countries and are in recession, practically to the day he gave his farewell speech.
    "Our problems are largely due to Robertson's excessive fiscal expansion, done on borrowed money, during the pandemic, which amazingly was one of the largest in the world in spite of us having the least number of cases during that time of Covid compared to others. Why did Robertson not figure that our 2020 success in keeping the virus out meant that far less government borrowing & spending was required? ...
    "On top of one of the world's largest fiscal expansion, the Reserve Bank went mad & printed more money than virtually any other Central Bank. Those two decisions by Robertson & Orr threw NZ into the recession we are now experiencing today. By my account, we are one of only a tiny handful of nations on the planet in recession. Unbelievable. Robertson & Orr snatched economic defeat from the jaws of a Covid victory."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'The Day our Worst Finance Minister Ever Leaves Parliament, NZ falls into recession & drops out of the world's top 10 highest well-being countries.'

Fletcher Building: "NZ's most useless company"

"Is [Fletcher Building] the only Private Monopoly in the World that can't make a buck? It is time to break up NZ's most useless company. ... 

    "It is time to break up Fletcher Building & end the dubious Fletcher legacy on this country. ... My grandfather ... joked how there was a time when Sir James Fletcher was a National Party supporter but then 'tore his pants climbing through the fence' when Labour came to power and he wanted building contracts from that government. The company has always enjoyed huge monopoly powers. These days, it has shown a special skill at wielding those powers but struggling to make a buck. ...
    "It's not the low paid workers in this country who are responsible for our appalling productivity growth. It is the bosses - the management - the CEOs and the Directors of many of the our largest companies - who are failing us due to their ineptitude. When the boss is the wrong person, nothing else works no matter how good the workers on the ground. The Empire State building took just over one year to build - starting in 1930 and opening for business in 1931 (that includes the digging of the foundations). Nearly a century later, how long has it taken Fletcher Building to build the piddly-little Convention Centre? Nearly 10 years and counting."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Fletcher Building: is it the only Private Monopoly in the World that can't make a buck? It is time to break up NZ's most useless company.'

Sources:

• Fletcher Building chief executive Ross Taylor confirms he's retiring as company posts $120 million half-year loss
• Gib shortage: Call for change in leadership at Fletcher Building

"It may sound stark, but Wellington city no longer adds up."

The Aro Street Geyser. [Pic from Stuff]

"The Coalition Agreement between National and ACT states as a 'principle' that decisions now will be 'based on sound public policy principles, including problem definition, rigorous cost benefit analysis and economic efficiency.'
    "So what is cost-benefit analysis? It is not simply calculating the ratio of the benefits to costs of a decision and choosing to spend money when the benefits exceed costs. No, it involves calculating those ratios for all prospective projects and ranking them from highest to lowest. 

    "Given a limited budget, one must select projects with the highest ratios until the budget is spent. On such a basis, Wellington should be left to fail. Why? Because its vast infrastructure needs, ranging from Mount Victoria Tunnel to port facilities to shambolic water leakage problems involve relatively limited benefits & massive costs that make no sense when compared to the urgent needs of Auckland....

    "It may sound stark, but Wellington city no longer adds up. It is built on subsidies and the backs of others. The costs of running it are no longer justified. An unshakeable implication of the Coalition Agreement is that Wellington should be left to fail and many of its Ministries moved elsewhere.'

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'If the Coalition Agreement Stands, Wellington Will Cease to Exist as a City and become a Town, maybe a Village'

RELATED:

• 'Whatever happened to the idea that building and maintaining infrastructure is council's core business?' - NOT PC
• 'How Wellington has become a NZ tragicomedy' - Oliver Hartwich, NZ Initiative

"Forget the cost-of-living-crisis. That's not something experienced in Wellington by public sector executives."

 

No wonder they're smiling: These ten people you see above above are given $5.2 million between them every year. Isn't that nice. Averaged out, that's a pretty tidy sum. What do they do for that money? They're on the Executive Leadership Team at NZ's Reserve Bank, aka Te Putea Matua (which my dictionary translates as "important basket.") Which doesn't really answer the question. (But might describe some of these people.)

The Reserve Bank, as I'm sure you know, has a coercive monopoly on the central price in the economic system. Only two of the Reserve Bank's "leadership team" however (Orr and Hawkesby) have any training in economics at all beyond high school. If that. "So," says economics professor Robert MacCulloch, "so I'm not clear what it is they do that's associated with NZ having better economic (monetary & banking) policies." 

They're posssibly not too clear about that themselves either -- although one does admit that "Sustainability has been a key focus," and another is a "recognised thought leader on digital and data innovation." Which clearly doesn't come cheap.

Overseeing this "team" is the Reserve Bank's Board of Directors (below)-- about whom, observes McCulloch, "it's even less clear what they do - again most have little to no expertise in central banking. [Quigley at least is an exception.] Nevertheless that 7 member Board took $662,000 for what-ever-it-is-they-do."

As McCulloch wryly notes, "Forget the cost-of-living-crisis. That's not something experienced in Wellington by public sector executives." No. But it should be.

"Journalists in this election campaign have got suckered into arguing with politicians about trivial, pathetic issues"

"Journalists [in this election campaign have] got suckered into arguing with politicians about trivial, pathetic issues ... The big issues were never debated which has made the reporting of this election campaign the worst ever in our history. ...
    "[T]his election campaign ... comes at a time which marks a turning point for our nation -- and not one thing National nor Labour have proposed has struck me as profound and thoughtful and designed to bring a greater long-term prosperity for all to this nation."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'NZ's Media got conned by Labour & National's election campaigns & ended up chasing red herrings'

Hipkin's five economic priorities: "Run for the hills"

"The odd thing is that there's nothing in [Hipkin's five stated economic] priorities for ordinary men or women. The PM may like to pretend he's on the side of bread-and-butter working-class folk concerned about things being affordable, however, at least in the US, such folks would read his five economic priorities as something concocted by Hollywood producers, Silicon valley weirdos & Prince Harry types, with help from Hilary Clinton. And run for the hills."

~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'There's not one thing in PM Chippy's "Five Economic Priorities" for Chippies in the Hutt'

"The NZ Reserve Bank is now in panic mode...."

 

"After keeping the cash rate so low for so long, and embarking on a $53 billion quantitative easing programme, the [NZ Reserve] Bank is now in panic mode. Those having trouble paying back their mortgages in the next few years can blame our RBNZ Governor [Adrian Orr] and Finance Minister [Grant Robertson]. They encouraged a borrowing binge to buy [and borrow against] houses at wildly inflated prices, financed by dirt-cheap credit, turning a blind eye to the breach of the target to which they mutually agreed, and not learning the lessons of the global financial crisis in 2008.

    "The RBNZ was once lauded around the world for making NZ exceptional. It pioneered inflation targeting. We became the gold standard [sic] of monetary credibility.

    "Now, our hard-fought success and huge reputation built up over thirty years lie in ruins.... our RBNZ Governor and Finance Minister have driven a truck through the single most important agreement underpinning our economic security since 1989."

~ Auckland Uni economics professor Robert MacCulloch, from his op-ed 'The case against the Reserve Bank & Finance Minister'

 

'Has Aoteanomics Become Labour's Plan for NZ?'

"The Head of the Productivity Commission has just announced his disdain for GDP. He says it 'is not a great measure of anything useful' and blames the profit-oriented shareholder model for our society’s ills. Even though it forms the basis of wealth creation in this nation.
    "The Reserve Bank is backing him. As for the Climate Change Commission, had it cared about both the environment and economic growth, it would’ve advocated for carbon taxes with the revenues being used to cut other tax rates. But it didn’t. Furthermore, the keynote address at the NZ Association of Economists 2021 Conference by the Ministry of Primary Industries’ Chief Economist called for a 'systemic transition' to a new 'holistic,' 'post-growth,' 'doughnut' approach to management of the country’s affairs.
    "The keynote gave this new approach a name. Aoteanomics. What is it? A full blown rejection of the idea that [economic] growth is desirable. And it is way more radical and experimental than Rogernomics ever was. So why won’t the PM and Finance Minister come clean to the nation about the new post-growth agenda that’s the talk of the Wellington elite?"

          ~ Robert MacCulloch, from his post 'Has Aoteanomics Become Labour's Plan for NZ?'

Economics for Real People: The role of beliefs in economics

So you were wondering what our friends at the Auckland Uni Economics Group would be presenting for you tomorrow night? Then here you go:

The role of culture on economic performance has been largely swept aside by economists. Indeed, those who study the fictitious species of homo economicus, the (ideal) economic human, assume away the very possibility of such a role for culture. Is this approach justified?

About the Seminar:

This week we are excited to be joined by Professor Robert MacCulloch, who will present on the topic: The role that beliefs of economic agents plays in economic decision and policy making.
In the seminar, Professor MacCulloch will argue that the prevailing view regarding economic beliefs is erroneous. A leading thinker on the topic, Robert discusses how economic beliefs of agents do impact on economic outcomes. Robert also discusses how cultural histories and past economic experiences can inform these beliefs of market participants. Further, he will explain the implications of such beliefs, and how beliefs can help to explain why certain economic beliefs are incompatible with certain institutions.

    Date: Thursday, March 19
    Time: 6-7pm
    Location: Case Room One, Level Zero, Auckland Uni Business School, Owen G. Glenn Building
                         (plenty of parking in the basement, entrance off Grafton Rd)

We look forward to seeing you there!

About the Speaker:
Robert is widely published, with his papers are ranked as being in the top 1% of most highly cited papers ever in economics worldwide. Robert received a BSc in maths and MCom from the University of Auckland. He then worked at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand before completing a PhD in Economics at Oxford University where he was awarded a Royal Economic Society Junior Fellowship. He taught at Oxford University and then pursued research interests at the London School of Economics and Princeton University before joining Imperial College London Business School as Director of its doctoral programme. Robert was awarded the Rector’s Award for Distinguished Research Excellence at Imperial College London Business School and won their Prize for top overall teacher in consecutive years.
He returned to New Zealand in 2013 to take up the MSA Charitable Trust Chair of Macroeconomics at The University of Auckland Business School.

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