Eric Crampton • Mar 02, 2015 •
Here's me at The NBR on Christchurch, 4 years on from February 2011.The government rightly took a lot of criticism for its initial attempts to artificially restrict downtown land supply to force a compact city form and encourage higher-valued development. The planners here exhibited basic cargo-cult thinking: because successful cities have high downtown property prices, they thought they could … Read More
Eric Crampton • Nov 08, 2014 •
In The Matrix, the robots stuck humans in a synthetic 1990s. They could have given us paradise, but they found we rejected it: we couldn't deal with things being too good. And so the 90s it was: Pretty good, but not quite paradise.Nathan Smith's excellent NBR editorial today reminded me of that [$]. He writes:New Zealand is as close to … Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 01, 2014 •
I penned last week's NZ Initiative column in the NBR print edition. Do pick up a copy. Here's an excerpt.The overarching policy priority then, for me, is that New Zealand maintain and enhance its “Outside of the Asylum” status.Parts of the RMA are clearly daft and need to be reformed. The RMA’s role in contributing to housing unaffordability through its … Read More
Eric Crampton • Aug 27, 2014 •
I filled in for Matthew Hooton in the NBR's Opening Salvo this week. It's only in the print edition; here's a taste. [Update: here for subscribers]We can count the costs of apartment stories left unbuilt. In a well-functioning market, developers will build upwards until the cost of an additional storey roughly equals the extra revenue the developer gets from … Read More
Eric Crampton • Sep 30, 2013 •
It seems that the lawyers at Sky didn't like my post on Netflix. They've not been in touch with me about it, nor did they get in touch with the folks at SciBlogs about it when I syndicated it there. But late last week, the National Business Review ask... Read More
Grant Jacobs • May 12, 2013 •
Seeing as my comment has not appeared in response to your opinion piece at the National Business Review and I am not familiar with the moderation approach used there,* I offer it verbatim below. As I do, I’ve left the climate science for others. Even without that your opinion piece has it’s problems, to be polite. Well, it … Read More