Tales From Absurdistan

The New Zealand Initiative will be hosting one of Germany’s top economists on 13 February who will talk about the lessons from bad policy making.

Germany is Europe’s model economy. It is a prosperous, well-governed, and efficient country. Or is it?

Professor Justus Haucap has a different story to tell. In his jobs at the federal government’s Monopoly Commission and as Founding Director of the Düsseldorf Institute of Competition Economics, Justus has come across plenty of examples of Germany’s silly economic policies.

“At this Initiative@home event I will explain why German consumers sometimes get paid to use electricity, why harbour pilots are luckier in Germany than elsewhere, and how the German government once killed the market for cheap cars,” Haucap says.

But according to Professor Haucap there is method in all this economic policy madness, and there are important lessons to be learnt for New Zealand policy-makers.

The event will be held at The New Zealand Initiative’s Wellington offices from 5.30pm on 13 February. It is part of the think tank’s Initiative@home series which aims to encourage public policy debate.

About the speaker:
Professor Haucap started his career as an economist at the New Zealand Treasury in the late 1990s. He is now a Professor of Economics at the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf and Founding Director of the Düsseldorf Institute of Competition Economics (DICE), Germany. He is also a member of the German government’s Monopolies Commission, and was the Commission’s chairman from 2008 to 2012.

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