Bryce is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative, and also the Director of the Wellington-based economic consultancy firm Capital Economics. Prior to setting this up in 1997 he was a Director of, and shareholder in, First NZ Capital. Before moving into investment banking in 1985, he worked in the New Zealand Treasury, reaching the position of Director. Bryce holds a PhD in economics from the University of Canterbury and was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the Law and Economics Association of New Zealand.
Bryce is available for comment on fiscal issues, our poverty, inequality and welfare research. He also has a strong background in public policy analysis including monetary policy, capital markets research and microeconomic advisory work.
Latest reports:
Walking the path to the next global financial crisis (2021)
Illusions of History: How misunderstanding the past jeopardises our future (2021)
Policy Point: A risky place to do business (2021)
Policy Point: Is climate change a key risk to global financial stability? (2020)
Roadmap for Recovery: Briefing to the Incoming Government (2020)
Pharmac: The right prescription? (2020)
Research Note: Doing whatever it takes with someone else’s money (2020)
Policy Point: FDI: Unjustified Urgency (2020)
Research Note: Deficit spending in a crisis: why there is no such thing as a free lunch (2020)
Research Note: Quantifying the wellbeing costs of Covid-19 (2020)
Research Note: How bad might the lockdown be for jobs and income? (2020)
Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour (2019)
Scroll down to read the rest of Bryce's work.
Phone: +64 4 472 5986
The coalition Government says about 384,000 families will be better off by $75 a week under its families package. It's estimated 88,000 children's lives will be turned around by the flagship policy which will cost $5.5 billion over the next five years. Read more
Government welfare must do a better job of breaking the cycle of disadvantage. That message was common cause amongst the audience at the launch this week of the New Zealand Initiative’s latest report Welfare, Work and Wellbeing: From Benefits to Better Lives. Read more
Government welfare must do a better job of breaking the cycle of disadvantage. That message was common cause amongst the audience at the launch this week of the New Zealand Initiative’s latest report Welfare, Work and Wellbeing: From Benefits to Better Lives. Read more
New Zealanders should be a lot healthier and better off today than they were in 1970. Income per head is almost twice what it was 1970. Read more
Mike Hosking interviews Bryce Wilkinson about his new report 'Welfare, Work and Wellbeing: From Benefits to Better Lives.' The report shows 10 per cent of our working age population are on a main welfare benefit, compared with just two per cent in the 1970's. Bryce Wilkinson explains it is definitely associated with a big growth in sole parent families. Read more
Voltaire's satirical 1759 novella, Candide, contrasted ‘head-in-the-clouds’ complacency about this being the best of all possible worlds, despite its blemishes, with ‘feet-on-the-ground’ realism. Viewed loftily, New Zealand’s regulations look blissfully benign. Read more
New Zealanders do not have a welfare system we can be proud of. Wellbeing research shows that involuntary unemployment is the pits for wellbeing. Read more
In the DC comic story, a flying Superman spies Lois Lane tied across a railroad line. A fast-moving passenger train is but metres away. Read more
A NZIER report released this week discredits a WorkSafe NZ safety programme that started in November 2011. The programme aims to reduce workplace falls from heights of below 3 metres. Read more
In 1936 the much-quoted US journalist HL Mencken wrote“government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods”. So here we are in 2017, preparing to vote in yet another government spending auction of someone else’s money. Read more
Imagine if no one had to pay for anything. Wouldn’t that be nice? Read more
Are Aesop’s fables, such as “The Ant and the Grasshopper” still taught to school children? When winter arrives the industrious and thrifty ant refuses to share its food with the hungry grasshopper who had frivolously spent the summer singing. Read more
Election year budgets are when politicians massage the voters with their own money. Massage can ready a ball player, ballerina or boxer for action, or induce blissful passivity. Read more
On television early yesterday evening I saw a well-known presenter give Budget 2017 an 8 out of 10 for massaging the electorate. A subtitle read “something for everyone”. Read more
The past fortnight has seen more local news stories about scary sea-level rise and earthquake building risks. It seems these days the public is being constantly urged by scientists, engineers and others to take costly action to reduce the potential for loss from natural disasters. Read more