Policy makes all the difference in creating wealth.
Roger Kerr
Understanding Profits
“Water services should meet the cost of the capital they employ (that is to say, make normal profits), just like other utilities such as electricity and gas. If they don’t, capital will be misallocated because it could produce more social value in other uses.”
The Global Fiscal Crisis: The future of public spending
The Executive Director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable has some insightful thoughts for the world at large in a new Frontier Centre Backgrounder.
Whatever Happened to the Idea of Progress?
The idea of progress is not utopian; it is about improvement. In a public policy context, for example, the relevant issue is not whether a policy change achieves a perfect solution but whether it is a move in the right direction.
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Canadian Property Rights Index 2023
A Snapshot of Property Rights Protection in Canada After 10 years
Alberta Politics and Empty Promises of Health-care Solutions
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
Financial Turmoil: Market Failure or Government Failure?
Third, we have learned yet again that government regulation often does more harm than good. As the Wall Street Journal observed, the great irony is that the banks that made some of the worst mortgage investments were the most highly regulated. Bank regulators cannot possibly spot all weaknesses. More emphasis must go on caveat emptor – investors and depositors beware.
Let Them Eat Fruit Kebabs
Rather than assuming people are generally fit to make their own decisions and allowing them to bear or enjoy the consequences, good and bad, the paternalist state focuses on diminishing their access or temptation, treating them as weak, impressionable victims, prey to advertisers and retailers, who need to be protected from their own foolishness.
Privatization: New Zealand Swimming Against the Tide
With the National Party’s decision not to move any state-owned enterprises to the private sector in its first term if elected this year, we appear to have a new political consensus between the major parties in New Zealand: privatisation is bad. This contrasts with the earlier consensus that privatisation is good.
Australia Rising
Speaking last week to the Queensland Media Club, Australian prime minister John Howard described the sort of world Australians would be living in a decade from now, and his vision of “an Australia rising to new heights” to meet its challenges. In a speech full of...
It’s Getting Better All the Time
American economist Indur Goklany has collected in one volume the long-term trends in the most significant indicators of human and environmental well-being.