Pages

Showing posts with label Economic Governance Act. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economic Governance Act. Show all posts

Thursday, August 27, 2026

Dr Eric Crampton: An economics without trade-offs


One reasonable definition of economics is the study of choice under conditions of scarcity, or choice under constraint.

When getting more of one good thing requires forgoing some other good thing, what do people do? How do they decide?

Ganesh Ahirao (was Ganesh Nana; last name changed - I think because a historic error in NZ systems was finally more recently corrected) proposes an Economic Governance Act to replace core parts of the Public Finance Act.

Jack Tame asked how part of that would work. If the Minister of Finance were deciding how to spend the last billion dollars of available funding and were choosing between a hospital infrastructure project and a wetland restoration project, how would the Act guide that choice?