Commentators

Dr Eric Crampton is Chief Economist with The New Zealand Initiative; he previously served as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Canterbury, where he maintains an Adjunct affiliation.

With the Initiative, Dr Crampton has worked in a range of economic policy areas, from cap-and-trade systems for environmental management to local government funding and financing, and from competition policy to urban economics. Dr Crampton has led the Initiative’s submissions in response to Commerce Commission market studies, noting how zoning and consenting processes have worked to stymie new entry. The Initiative’s Briefing to the Incoming Government suggested that Commerce Commission take on a larger number of smaller market studies focused on regulatory and legislative barriers to entry and their effects on competition. He has recently been considering stronger competition in regulatory spaces, including unilateral recognition of certification by trusted overseas approval agencies.

His policy commentary appears regularly in New Zealand’s major media outlets.

Catherine manages the Competition Policy team at the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. She has considerable experience in competition and economic regulation. Before joining MBIE in 2018, Catherine worked in the Commerce Commission’s competition branch. Catherine previously spent over ten years with competition and consumer regulators in the United Kingdom where she gained experience in merger enforcement, market investigations and competition law reform. Catherine holds a Master of Arts in International Relations and a Post Graduate Diploma in EU Competition Law.