The Dismal Science

Smokefree 2025

Eric Crampton • Jun 15, 2021

• black market,
• New Zealand stories,
• Smokefree Aotearoa 2025,
• tobacco

The Government’s proposed approach for achieving SmokeFree 2025 is a bit over-the-top. The proposals would restrict tobacco sales to a smaller number of to-be-licenced R18 outlets, which could then be subject to a sinking lid; impose an annual one-year increase in the purchase age for tobacco until full prohibition were achieved; restrict nicotine content in cigarettes to very low levels; … Read More

Border tech

Eric Crampton • May 13, 2021

• COVID-19,
• MIQ,
• New Zealand stories,
• saliva testing

Marc Daalder tallies a few of the failures in getting better tech rolled out at the border. On Sunday, National Party Covid-19 Response spokesperson Chris Bishop revealed that a voluntary rollout of saliva-based testing of border workers had seen just 339 saliva tests performed since it began in January. “Public health experts have recommended introducing regular saliva testing across … Read More

Vaccine patents

Eric Crampton • May 12, 2021

• COVID-19,
• New Zealand stories,
• patents,
• vaccines

This week’s Newsroom column covered some of the arguments around increasing vaccination rates in poor countries by voiding patents. It won’t work. A snippet: Fundamentally, voiding patents is an unserious way of dealing with a serious problem. The world needs substantial expansions in vaccine manufacturing capabilities as quickly as possible. Replicating the processes used by successful manufacturers is not … Read More

Pandemic priorities

Eric Crampton • Apr 28, 2021

• COVID-19,
• healthcare,
• New Zealand stories

Prior to Covid, successive governments’ approaches to public health meant that we had central government ready and able to command District Health Boards to stop the sale of soda at hospital cafeterias, but unable to tell whether hospital staff were vaccinated during a measles outbreak caused by failure to make sure everyone was getting their measles shots. I worry that … Read More

The cost of a rolling omnishambles

Eric Crampton • Apr 15, 2021

• border,
• COVID-19,
• MIQ,
• New Zealand stories

The travel bubble with Australia has not brought room for others to come into the MIQ system from overseas. Instead, spaces are being decommissioned. Why? The system is leaky. The government cannot afford to let riskier people into those spaces, because the system can’t handle them. My column in Insights last week went through the problem. Maintaining quarantine-free travel … Read More

Getting to Net Zero

Eric Crampton • Apr 12, 2021

• climate change commission,
• emissions trading scheme,
• Environment,
• New Zealand stories

We have not been fans of the Climate Change Commission’s draft report. New Zealand has an Emissions Trading Scheme with a binding cap, and a declining path for net emissions in the covered sector. Measures taken within the covered sector cannot reduce net emissions. NZU not purchased by one sector get purchased and used by another. Regulatory measures around coal boilers … Read More

Important vaccination stats to keep in mind

Eric Crampton • Mar 13, 2021

• COVID-19,
• herd immunity,
• vaccination,
• vaccine hesitancy

Thomas Lumley runs the numbers on herd immunity and vaccination: Cutting transmission by 90% would need nearly everyone to be vaccinated. What if only 50% were vaccinated? Well, suppose someone with the virus would have passed it on to two people, but one of them is vaccinated. Instead of two new cases, we get one new case. Or, in … Read More

Vaccination priorities

Eric Crampton • Mar 10, 2021

• COVID-19,
• immunisation,
• vaccination

Chris Hipkins announced some of the government’s prioritisation for the coming vaccination campaign.  I don’t quite get it, given the situation here differs considerably from the situation abroad. Here and abroad, there’s been priority on those at most risk. But who’s at most risk differs. Here, it’s people working in the border system, and the government has been entirely correct … Read More

Border Costs

Eric Crampton • Mar 02, 2021

• America's Cup,
• COVID-19,
• immigration,
• MIQ,
• pcr testing

Cecile Meier walks us through some of the costs of a border system that has neither been able to safely scale up to meet need, nor able to find any reasonable way of prioritising entry into those scarce MIQ spaces. When Zane Gillbee hugged his family goodbye in South Africa before moving to Wellington, his daughter Lyla was still … Read More

Blessed are they that have not seen the model, and yet have believed

Eric Crampton • Mar 02, 2021

• climate change,
• Climate Commission,
• emissions trading scheme,
• government policy,
• New Zealand economy

The Climate Change Commission’s recommendations span the breadth of the economy. They are required to come up with sector-by-sector climate budgets consistent with getting New Zealand with net zero emissions under the Zero Carbon Act. The sector-by-sector budgets rest on underlying models. The models build predictions about what will happen as ETS prices rise, and what will happen when some … Read More