I have a very minor quibble with today’s article in the herald titled “Higher rates the flipside of soaring house prices“. The crux of the article is this redacted quote If you live in Auckland and neighbouring houses have sold for unheard-of prices in the past two months, you can expect your home’s official value […]
Here at TVHE our two favorite things are beer and economics. Some of our most insightful discussions of economics often occur over a beer or two…I might even go as far as saying the beer consumption of TVHE authors should be subsidised given the large, un-priced public benefits that occur when we drink. But that’s […]
Auckland Transport Blog have put up a post today discussing the costs and benefits of the planned transport projects in Auckland that the government is backing. I’ll discuss that in a second, but first there is something I want to get off my back regarding the assessment of transport projects. BCR ratios (aka CBA by […]
So another hot topic in the debate around the Auckland Unitary Plan is whether there should be minimum parking restrictions for new developments. I.e. when a new dwelling is built, developers will be required to build a certain number of car parks depending on the size of the dwelling. I’m not that familiar with the […]
The Commerce Commission recently updated it Mergers & Acquisitions guidelines for the first time in 10 years (read them here). They also updated the Authorisation guidelines, which is the mechanism available to the Commission to approve mergers that lesson competition but have an offsetting public benefit (available here). In Auckland on 10 September (just under […]
I’m quite interested in the debate going on in Auckland at the moment about whether population growth should be accommodated by more “sprawl” or increased density. In particular, people claim Auckland currently has quite a lot of sprawl and the vision set out in the Auckland Plan (and implemented in the unitary plan) is that […]