Budget 2013 confirms the government's determination to achieve fiscal surpluses by 2014/15 by stopping the growth in government spending. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, projected government spending in 2014/15 will be 6% lower than in 2008/9, the year in which John Key's government took office. Read more

If I were a cynic, I would now be predicting the next European bailout recipient. And the winner is… Slovenia! Read more

Standing atop Mount Victoria last Sunday, looking over Wellington basked in glorious sunshine, I was quietly confirming to myself that I really wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Not in Germany where I grew up. Read more

Last week, I gave a speech to Auckland University’s economics club called The never-ending Euro crisis – Anatomy of an economic policy disaster. It was a wide-ranging presentation in which I covered the history and pre-history of European monetary union, Europe’s fiscal and monetary problems, the eurozone’s governance issues and their political implications. Read more

In September last year, I wrote about the German constitutional court’s preliminary ruling on the legality of the European Stability Mechanism (Has Germany’s court set the stage for an exit? 20 September 2012). Read more

The economics of the opposition’s plan to introduce a single-buyer model for wholesale electricity is highly dubious, as I explain in my column in The National Business Review today. But that’s not the only questionable thing about it. Read more

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As a great Monty Python fan, one of my favourite scenes is from their movie Life of Brian. As a group of Judean conspirators against the Roman occupation gather, the rhetorical question is asked what those awful Romans had ever done for them. Read more

In early March, we were worried about Italy after the Italians had elected a parliament with no clear majorities. In late March, we got concerned about Cyprus because the European Union’s misguided crisis management undermined confidence in the safety of bank deposits across the eurozone. Read more

Last week, considerations to raise the speed limit on some of New Zealand’s open roads made headlines. The current speed limit of 100 km/h has not changed for about half a century – a period that has seen improvements to both cars and roads. Read more

Manufacturers and exporters have been complaining about the high Kiwi dollar for a long time. Opposition politicians are openly toying with the idea of changing the Reserve Bank’s mandate to manipulate the exchange rate downwards. Read more

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The election of Argentinian Cardinal Jose Mario Bergoglio to the papacy may not matter much to non-Catholics. But the public’s reaction to Pope Francis’ display of humility has a lot to say about our times. Read more