Dr Oliver Hartwich: Tall poppy syndrome leaves Kiwis working harder not smarter

Later this month, our organisation, The New Zealand Initiative, will take a large delegation of top New Zealand business leaders to the Netherlands. It is not a trade mission but an ideas exploration. We want to see what makes the Dutch tick and what makes the Netherlands successful.

As I was preparing materials for our delegation, one graph caught my attention. It tracked capital intensity and labour productivity for both countries from 1890.