Dr Eric Crampton: The troubling gaps in Treasury’s performance.....

...and in its knowledge of how it might tackle them

New Zealand’s Treasury has two big jobs that nobody else can do.

They’re both highlighted in the first line of Treasury’s ‘Who we are’ website. Treasury is “the Government’s lead economic and financial adviser and steward of the public sector financial management systems.”

June’s Performance Improvement Review for Treasury did not go well at all on one of those big jobs. It may point to issues in staff capabilities.

Dr Eric Crampton: Be careful what you wish for – new cost-benefit analysis paves paradise

Sometimes, policy work is like wishing on a cursed wish-granting monkey’s paw. Like the one in the old Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode, later parodied in The Simpsons. Wish on the paw, one of the paw’s extended fingers will curl, and your wish will come true.

But not in the way you’d wanted. You may even wish that you’d never wished at all.

Ryan Bridge: the treasury's told us what we knew all along

The $66-billion question hanging over Labour's head has been answered.

This new Treasury report tells us what we all already knew about Labour's Covid response.

They went too far. Spent like a drunken sailor. Made it rain dollar bills.

When Treasury advised them to pull back, they didn't they kept going.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: The School Lunch Fiasco is not our Politicians' fault.....

The School Lunch Fiasco is not our Politicians' fault. It stems from the NZ Treasury's wrong economic advice.

To be fair to our politicians regards the controversies swirling over the quality and reliability of school lunches, the guilty party which started the fiasco was certainly not Labour, nor National, nor ACT. It was NZ Treasury false and misleading "advice".

Dr Eric Crampton: Undue restrictions on restricted briefings

This week, the Treasury barred representatives from the Council of Trade Unions and the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union from attending its restricted briefing for the Half-Year Economic and Fiscal Update.

They had been invited to register their intent to attend the briefing. For organisations that typically attend restricted briefings, registration has largely been a formality – though the number of analysts allowed to attend might vary. But this year, Treasury changed its guidelines. And their applications to attend were rejected.

Damien Grant: Nicola Willis needs to make drastic course corrections to tackle rising debt

It’s been a busy week. We lost a navy boat off the coast of Samoa, the Americans merged their election and hurricane season and Adrian Orr over-corrected a change in the OCR to correct for his previous overcorrection.

Meanwhile, our fiscal affairs are beginning to look a bit like HMNZS Manawanui. Underwater.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: The NZ Treasury's Lack of Imagination Threatens our Future...

The NZ Treasury's Lack of Imagination Threatens our Future. It has no faith in Economic Magic (Einstein did).

Our Treasury is at it again. Telling Kiwis a bleak future awaits them, especially in retirement. Its latest report about how NZ Demographic Change will affect the Country's Finances is enough make the PM's eyes glaze over, Finance Minister Willis fall asleep, NZ First leader Peters to press Delete on his laptop & everyone else to take anti-depressants. Though NZ won the Americas Cup with a boat called Black Magic & we've a radio station called Magic FM, Treasury's having none of it.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: The Treasury Doesn't Have a Clue why Productivity is falling in NZ

The Treasury's latest report, The Productivity Slowdown: Implications for the Treasury’s Forecasts and Projections states that, "There appears to be no one factor driving NZ’s productivity slowdown, but a range of drivers contributing to the trend". It mentions pretty much everything in the kitchen sink, including "falling educational attainment, our relatively low managerial capability and low, albeit growing, levels of research and development", not to mention "uncertainty from geopolitical and climate risks, leading to reduced risk-taking" as well as "mismeasurement, weak investment, lower productivity benefits from innovation, the slowdown in trade and slowing dispersion of innovation and new practices across firms".

Robert MacCulloch: The NZ Treasury has Misled the New Government....

....& failed National Cert. of Educ. Achievement Economics

Today the new government has started the process of changing the law so the Reserve Bank's single focus will be on price stability, rather than both price stability and higher employment. Why? Because those advocating for a single mandate emphasize the costs of inflation over time.