What motivated Roger Kerr?

There isn’t anyone I have known who could match the enthusiasm and energy that Roger Kerr brought to his work. I have had the privilege of working with quite a few highly principled individuals involved in public policy work - people who are clearly motivated to a large extent by the belief that they are contributing to the greater good of society. Roger stands out, however, as a person who always seemed to be enthusiastic and optimistic – he seemed to respond to setbacks by increasing his efforts to obtain better outcomes in future. It was obvious to everyone that he had a passion for presenting his views clearly, logically and forcefully, but it would not have been obvious to casual observers what was motivating him.

In his role as executive director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable (NZBR), for the last 25 years, Roger was perceived by some people as a free market ideologue. It is evident from various speeches he gave, however, that he was somewhat bemused (if not annoyed) by that description. In a speech he gave in 2005 he suggested that to characterize policy proposals as either ‘ideological’ or ‘pragmatic’ is at best a confusion and at worst a rhetorical trick that appeals to anti-intellectualism as a substitute for serious argument. He made the point that everyone involved in the debate about public policy argues on the basis of some set of principles or ideas, whether or not they are conscious of them or make them explicit. He also suggested that serious policy debate cannot proceed unless ideas are articulated and tested. His support for free markets was not unbounded. It was based ultimately on pragmatic grounds – evidence that free market outcomes are generally superior to the alternatives. I think Roger viewed himself as a principled empiricist.

In his eulogy to Roger, Bryce Wilkinson, who worked closely with him over many years, mentioned that Roger seldom spoke about his motivations and never wore his heart upon his sleeve. Bryce notes that at some point early in his career as a diplomat - when Britain entered the EEC - Roger decided that New Zealand's economic decline was in fact largely self-inflicted. That prompted him to transfer to the New Zealand Treasury in 1976 and to relaunch his career doing an economics degree part time. Roger’s interest in economic policy was prompted by a desire for New Zealanders to be able to enjoy more prosperous and satisfying lives. Bryce provides evidence that Roger cared particularly about the effects of bad policies on those who are most vulnerable.

Bryce argues that Roger's optimism was based on his belief that ideas actually matter in policy debates. In support, Bryce referred to an essay that Roger wrote on the subject of ideas, interests and policy advice on leaving the Treasury in 1986.

I have just re-read the version of this essay that was published in ‘World Economy’ in June 1987. In this article, Roger argued that economic policy advisors should be aware that they do not have a comparative advantage in making judgements about what courses of action might or might not be politically feasible.

Roger noted:

Perceived political constraints are not always immutable. They can be shifted by reasoned analysis and well-constructed strategies for policy change … . Second-guessing political reactions can lead to a narrowing of policy options and does less than justice, in recent New Zealand circumstances at least, to the intelligence of a number of politicians, on both sides of the political fence, who have been more aware of the gravity of New Zealand’s economic problems and prepared to tell the story like it is than many of their advising bureaucrats’ (pp144-5).

Roger also noted the importance of institutional structures in determining policy outcomes:

‘There is an important role for public information, open government, policy transparency and public inquiry processes in order to expose to critical scrutiny the claims of special interest groups and the performance of bureaucrats (including the propensity of some of the latter to act as taxpayer funded lobbyists for some of the former)’ (p 150).

Roger also made the claim ‘that the emergence of interest groups with broad representation, which are thus forced to take more of an economy-wide view, may be a source of influence which is more coincident with the interests of the community at large’ (p 150). That claim might seem excessively modest in the light of the subsequent performance of the NZBR – but Roger played an important role himself in ensuring that the NZBR maintained an economy-wide focus. A decade ago, New Zealand Institute of Economic Research chairman Michael Walls said of Roger:

‘No single individual has done more over the last 15 years to persuade important parts of the business sector to support economic policies which, though often contrary to the interests of individual firms, were in the interests of the country as a whole.’

Roger was motivated by a desire to play a part in promoting policy reforms – to avoid further economic decline and to enable New Zealanders to enjoy greater economic opportunities. He was enthusiastic because he knew he was fighting the good fight and he was optimistic because he knew that good policy evaluation and advice can make a difference. Above all, Roger was motivated by the impulse to ensure that his life was meaningful.

I urge readers to take a look at the many personal tributes to Roger that can be found on his blog.

Does anything rhyme with Ngapartji?

No. ‘Nothing Rhymes with Ngapartji’ is the title of a documentary to be shown on ABC television (when that august organisation gets around to it). It was produced by Alex Kelly and directed by Suzy Bates, my daughter.


Suzy’s involvement explains how I know about the documentary, but not why I am writing about it now. I am writing about it largely because of something I read last week:

‘Conservatism makes the case for continued existence in a deep sense – not just the trivial sense of having biological descendants.

Too many Australian conservatives still don’t understand this crucial point. They believe Aboriginal Australians will be content to survive physically and become prosperous and culturally assimilate into the great global English-speaking tradition. We will not’ - Noel Pearson, ‘Pathways to prosperity for indigenous people’ 2010.

I took notice not because I consider myself to be a conservative, but because Noel Pearson is an aboriginal leader who is better known for quoting Adam Smith and presenting strong views about the importance of economic incentives. I was surprised by the passion of his defence of traditional culture and language. I will quote another few sentences to help make the point:

‘Individuals have the right to choose the course of their lives; my hypothesis, however, is that the cultural and spiritual side of human nature is suppressed. Aboriginal Australian traditional culture is evidence that when human behaviour is at equilibrium, people build structures of tradition tied to language and land and pass these traditions to the next generation’.

Noel Pearson argues that indigenous Australians have to meet the challenge of preserving the parts of their cultural heritage that are most important to them while dispensing with elements of cultural heritage that prevent them from taking advantage of the opportunities that a market economy provides.

‘Nothing Rhymes with Ngapartji’ highlights an aspect of the challenge that traditional law can pose even to those aboriginal people trying hard to preserve culture, language and the history of communities and families. The film tells the story of how the award winning theatre show ‘Ngapartji Ngapartji’ - which had previously been performed in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Alice Springs – was taken to the remote aboriginal community of Ernabella in South Australia. The show ‘Ngapartji Ngapartji’ told the story of Trevor Jamieson’s family, while teaching the big city audiences a few words of Pitjantjatjara. Trevor Jamieson, a professional actor, was the star of the show.

The logistics of taking the show to Ernabella were difficult enough, but Trevor had to risk offending his audience by breaking the traditional law against mentioning the name of a deceased person. His father, a central character in the show, had died a few weeks before the Ernabella performance. Trevor had to decide whether he could still act the part of his father and show footage of him. (Further information about the film and a preview is available here.)

When Suzy first explained to me that ‘Ngapartji Ngapartji’ means ‘I give you something, you give me something’, I said something to the effect that it must be about the benefits of trade i.e. the concept of mutually beneficial exchange. Since then I can remember reading somewhere that the meaning of the concept is closer to an exchange of gifts, involving an element of bonding rather than a commercial transaction. When I attended the show in Sydney I certainly felt as though I was being given a valuable gift.

Postscript:
'Nothing Rhymes with Ngapartji' is to be screened on ABC1 at 3pm, 3 July 2011 and on ABC2 at 8.50 pm, 10 July 2011.

Are some questions just too difficult? Part I: Should I blog about DIP?

The other day I was talking to Ruth about this blog. Ruth is a nurse who has worked in psych wards and prisons. So she has an interesting range of experiences to talk about and she's interested in economics.


I mentioned that there were some issues that I steered clear of in my blog because they were just too difficult. Ruth objected strongly to this approach on the grounds that ‘someone should be writing about the difficult issues’. I’m not sure why that someone should be me, but I can see the point she was making.

The first example that Ruth gave of what she was talking about was the high incidence of mental illness among young people that has been linked to drug use. She said that this had increased to a huge extent, since the 1990's. We talked around the problem for a while and later exchanged emails about it. The story that Ruth tells below is one of the saddest stories I have ever read.

Ruth says that the most prevalent mental health diagnosis in acute mental heath facilities these days is a relatively new one - Drug Induced Psychosis (DIP). People are only admitted to acute mental health facilities if they are in danger to themselves or someone else (not simply suffering extreme effects of illness as was the case prior to the onset of the drug problem). DIP is now recognized in the DSM4 manual - the diagnosis tool used by all western mental health medics. A major difference between DIP and schizophrenia is the level of associated violence and treatability. Schizophrenia is treated reasonably well with psychotropic medications as the primary treatment regime whereas DIP is treated mostly through drying out and containment (of extreme violence) with medications used as secondary measures.

Ruth tells me that she has chosen not to study a great deal of the theory about the relationship between drug use and mental illness because she wants to stay in touch with the reality on the wards. She writes:

Can I tell a story? It's the story of a young man, well, a boy about to be a man. He was out with his friends celebrating early, his 18th birthday which was to fall during the next week. So this weekend he and his friends went partying to celebrate. During the night one of his friends slipped him a tablet - slyly into his drink. The young man woke the next day still tripping. He was happy as can be, but by the Tuesday, his parents were very worried and took him to the doctor; he was still tripping - having a laugh. He celebrated his 18th birthday in an acute mental health ward, thinking he was still tripping, but was now fed up with being unable to tie his shoe laces, unable to get the fork into his mouth and having to eat with his hands. He was now hating this experience and getting angry with himself for not 'straightening out'. He began to cry in desperation. He cried over and over again, day in day out, while the medics tried in vain to help. After a couple of weeks, his parents wanted to take him home - they wanted to get him out of hospital thinking that maybe it was the hospital causing their son's problem. They took him home and he stopped crying. He still could not tie his shoe laces, or dress himself if there were buttons to be managed. But his parents were happy he'd stopped crying. After all, this fine young man was looking down the barrel of a great career as expected dux of his school, and a fine life. They were devastated at this turn of events. After a few days they brought him back to the hospital. They had not helped him and were even more devastated than they were before. This young man spent nearly a year in hospital, unable to 'get off his trip' as he so beautifully put it.

I was one of his nurses at the time. I was 22 years old, just 4 years his senior. Eventually both he and I left that hospital. But our paths met again in another hospital, another city even, about 6 years later. He told me he had never had a job for more than a few days, he still couldn't do up his buttons - he didn't wear buttoned garments - and that he was still having his 18th birthday trip. He still wanted to study economics (ironically enough) at university. He could still quote and discuss GDP / inflation / employment figures, monetary and fiscal policies, but old figures, those he'd learned for the HSC he still wanted to sit. And yet that young man has no mental health issues in his family, had all the academic potential in the world and a caring, present family. His parents had never divorced, his siblings all got along ok, his relationship with his girlfriend was going well. And there were no identifiable early warning signs of a mental illness about to strike. This man has DIP. He has never been diagnosed with schizophrenia, or any other mental illness.

Ruth concluded:

I wish I was telling the story of just one man, but I'm not. I've seen this same story and similar others so many times. Are some questions too difficult? Yes Winton, absolutely some questions are too difficult and too costly to avoid asking AND finding answers for.

The discussion continues in the next post.

Does history give undue prominence to scribblers?

I imagine that history does tend to give excessive prominence to writers because historians have to rely heavily on written material. Historians probably spend a lot of time discussing this subject but, not being an historian, I don’t claim to know much about it. What this post is actually about is a minor historical incident in which I think undue prominence has been given to my role because I was editor of a student newspaper. I’m not objecting to the way I have been portrayed. I just think that other people deserve more credit for the contributions they made.


‘A Spirit of True Learning, the Jubilee History of the University of New England’ by Matthew Jordan, was published by UNSW Press in 2004. I confess that I have only just now read the book at the urging of Jim Belshaw, a fellow student at UNE in the 1960s, and now a fellow blogger. Jim referred me, in particular, to a few pages about the history of the room visiting issue (pp 187-191).

At the beginning of the 1960s nearly all students at UNE lived in single-sex residential colleges on the university campus. As Matthew Jordan records, in 1963 the University Council decided to cut back room-visiting between the sexes and then to abolish it altogether from the beginning of 1964. The decision to ban room visiting was taken against the advice of the heads of colleges (which were supposed to be largely self-governing) and was, of course, strongly opposed by students.

My recollection is that before I became editor of ‘Neucleus’, the student paper, the stage had been set for the first issue of 1964 to protest against Council’s decision on the room visiting issue. I was more than happy to go along with that idea and to accept editing responsibility, but at the time (November 1963) I was just completing my first year at UNE and would not have been viewed by other students as a leader of the protest movement. (I can’t recall why the editorship of Neucleus became vacant at the end of 1963. I agreed to edit just one issue to be published at the beginning of 1964 with help from the previous editor and other students who had more experience working on the paper. As it happened, early in 1964, I became joint editor with Jim Belshaw, but that is another story.)

Matthew Jordan writes:
‘Winston Bates led the way. On the one hand, he said, Council talked of moulding students into responsible adults, while on the other, by “imposing blanket restrictions on everyone”, it issued “an insult to the maturity of students and an utter denial of personal freedom”.

The quoted words are (almost) correctly attributed to me but in suggesting that I ‘led the way’ I think Matthew is under the impression that I was also the ‘special correspondent’ responsible for the page one article. Since I was defending the anonymity of the ‘special correspondent’ it isn’t surprising that people might think I was responsible, but the special correspondent knew a lot more than me about Council deliberations. Among other things, the special correspondent wrote:

‘It would seem that the real reason for Council’s action was the fear that certain rumours circulating in North-Eastern N.S.W. about the immorality supposedly rife in the university would lead to a decline in student enrolments’.

My recollection is that the special correspondent was only using the words ‘it would seem’ to further hide his identity.

While I think Matthew’s history gives me undue prominence, 47 years later I am still rather proud of one of the passages in my editorial:

‘Perhaps the concept of freedom in a university needs further explanation. It is not a freedom to do what you want to, full stop; nor is it a relentless search after personal happiness. The college regulations in the “free” university would be framed by members of college with a view to restricting violation of the rights of others.

Surely this is an ideal worth working for. ...’

That could have done with some further editing, but it wasn’t too bad. I hope regulations applying in residential colleges at UNE today have been framed with a view to restricting individual freedom only to the extent necessary to protect the rights of other residents.

What determines whether we have successful lives?

Your chances of success in life depend on your intelligence, your family background and your temperament, don’t they? Yes, to some extent. But over the last few days I have read about research findings which suggest that beyond a threshold IQ doesn’t make much difference, the important aspects of family background are only superficially related to wealth and the predictive importance of childhood temperament tends to diminish over time.

In “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of research conducted by Lewis Terman who identified 1,470 Californian children with very high IQs (over 130) in the 1920s. Terman believed initially that members of this group were destined to be among the future elite of the U.S. When they grew up, however, the majority had careers that could only be considered ordinary. It turns out that the relationship between IQ and success works only up to a point. Additional points of IQ beyond about 120 (remember the population average equals 100) don’t seem to have much impact on success.

Further analysis divided these genius subjects into three groups and looked for reasons for differences between the achievements of the most successful and least successful groups. The main difference seemed to be that the most successful performers came from the middle and upper class – the most successful group contained almost none of the children from the lowest socioeconomic class. Later in his book Gladwell points to evidence which suggests that the link to socioeconomic class has little to do with things that are directly associated with wealth or even with the quality of schooling. Research by Karl Alexander shows, for example, that the main difference between reading scores between elementary school children emerge during the summer vacation period while they are not at school. The wealthier parents tend to cultivate the interests of their children in reading etc. even during the summer vacation period. The difference seems to have more to do with culture than with income.

Gladwell’s main point is that it is impossible for superstars in any field to look down from their lofty perches and say with truthfulness, “I did this all by myself”. Gladwell argues: “They are the products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. ... The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all” (p 285).

Something else I have read recently that relates to the determinants of successful lives is Joshua Wolf Shenk’s article “What Makes Us Happy” (The Atlantic Online, June 2009). Shenk’s article discusses George Vaillant’s research, based on the Harvard Study of Adult Development. This study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard students began in 1937 and followed its subjects for more than 70 years. As with Terman’s study, the leading researcher originally involved in the Harvard study thought he would be studying a group of people who would have successful lives. Many did in fact achieve dramatic success, but by age 50 almost a third of the subjects had at one time or another met Vaillant’s criteria for mental illness.

One of Vaillant’s findings is that the predictive importance of childhood temperament diminishes over time: shy, anxious kids tend to do poorly in young adulthood, but by age 70 they are just as likely as the outgoing kids to be happy and well. One of the factors that he found to predict healthy aging is “employing mature adaptations” to life’s troubles. Mature adaptations include altruism, humour, anticipation (planning for future discomfort) and delaying attention to an impulse or conflict. The second most important factor that he found to predict healthy aging was the quality of relationships, including with siblings, friends and mentors.

Will Wilkinson comments on his blog: “What I liked so much about this essay, and about Vaillant, is the recognition that the complexity of human psychology, the complexity of coping and adapting to the challenges life throws up, makes relationships or “social aptitude” no simple thing.” I agree.

This brings me back to Gladwell’s book. One of the things from “Outliers” that will stick in my mind is Gladwell’s account of the Roseto mystery. In brief, in the 1950s the inhabitants of Roseto (Pennsylvania), whose ancestors came from a town of the same name in Italy, had a very low incidence of heart disease and their death rate from all causes was 30 to 35 percent lower than expected. Researchers ruled out all the obvious causes such as diet, exercise, genes and location. Their explanation was that Rosetans had created a powerful, protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world. In Gladwell’s words, it was about “the mysterious and magical benefits of people stopping to talk to one another on the street and of having three generations under one roof” (p 10).

This is very interesting and very complex. I find myself reacting in three different ways. First, in statistical terms “outliers” are chance events; before getting too excited about sociological implications we should establish whether there is evidence that other communities which share similar characteristics to Roseto in the 1950s have similar health outcomes. Second, leaving aside the “mysterious and magical” factors, the most useful place to look for an explanation would be in the links between happiness (emotional health) and physical health. Third, perhaps it is time I had a closer look at the research findings behind those headlines a few months ago which claimed that scientists now have evidence that happiness is contagious.

What was Sandy Cuthbertson like?

Most people who knew Sandy would say that he was outgoing, witty and courageous. He was a good-humoured person. He had the knack of getting people to laugh along with him within moments of meeting them. Above all, he was a good family man, a wise economist and a loyal friend.

I expect that everyone who knew Sandy would have a slightly different view of what he was like. I first met him in 1963 when we were both studying agricultural economics at the University of New England (Armidale, NSW, Australia). Apart from our studies I don’t think we had a great deal in common at that time. I can remember him giving me some critical feedback – probably appropriate – about something I had written for the student newspaper. He wasn’t backward in saying what he thought even then, but he had a pleasant personality and a well-deserved reputation for his sense of humour.

After Sandy graduated from the UNE he went to the U.S. to do a Ph. D. in economics at North Carolina State University. I went to Canberra to work in the Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE) and then back to the UNE to do a masters degree. By the time I got back to the BAE, at the end of 1971, Sandy was also working there.

Sandy came back to Australia with a mission to over-turn the prevailing mind-set that the role of economists was to find market failures and to propose remedial government regulation. He presented the then innovative view that additional regulation often made matters worse. For example, the beneficiaries of regulation were often able to use political muscle to ensure that regulatory experiments were continued long after it was clear that the costs of regulation far exceeded the benefits.

Sandy would not have found the BAE to be a particularly fertile place to spread such wisdom. He soon moved to the Industries Assistance Commission (which later became the Industry Commission and then the Productivity Commission). I followed in 1975, joining a different research division of the Commission. There was a fair amount of creative tension – usually friendly – between the different divisions of the IAC, resulting from overlapping responsibilities. Sandy thrived in that environment and established a reputation for being a hard-working and innovative researcher, an entertaining writer and a talented team leader. He certainly brought out the best in the people in his team.

Sandy left the IAC in 1986 to become a founding director and managing director of the Centre for International Economics.

Sandy and I managed to collaborate successfully in 1983 on the one major project on which we worked closely together. We jointly led a project team to prepare a report on the structure of industry assistance in New Zealand for Syntec Economic Services and the NZ Treasury. We had no difficulty in agreeing at an early stage on membership of the project team, the analytical framework, the work plan and the report structure. We put a lot of effort into planning the project and didn’t leave a great deal to chance.

I had thought until very recently that the effort we put into planning that project was largely the result of my own insistance. But I now know that Sandy always put a lot of effort into planning of projects. An outside observer, who was not part of his team, might think the process was spontaneous - perhaps even chaotic - but Sandy always had a good idea where he was heading and how he would circumvent the obstacles in his path.

At a more personal level, I recall that Sandy asked me one day whether I had read John Irving’s novel, “The World According to Garp”. He recommended it highly and suggested that I make time to read some of it every day even though I was very busy. I enjoyed the book - and since then I have read just about every novel that John Irving has written. Looking back now, however, I suspect that what Sandy was really telling me was not so much that this was a great novel, but that I needed to get more humour into my life.

What more can I say? It was a privilege to have known Sandy Cuthbertson and to have enjoyed his friendship.

Does a challenge make us happy?

Charles Murray has argued that self-actualization can be viewed as the exercise of competence in the face of challenge (“In pursuit of happiness and good government”, 1988). He based this view largely on the work of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. (See here, here and here for some discussion and references.)

Evidence from narrative research presented by Dan McAdams also supports this view. McAdams has found that the presence of redemption themes in life stories to be correlated with measures of psychological well-being such as life satisfaction and self-esteem (“The redemptive self”, 2006, p 44).

Redemption themes are not just happy themes. One of the characteristics of redemption themes is that the narrator encounters many obstacles and suffers many setbacks but is eventually redeemed and develops toward actualization of an inner destiny. The presence of a redemptive theme person’s story predicted their psychological well-being much more strongly than did a measure of how positive or happy the story was.

These research findings are also revelevant to my speculations about the things we regret most. See here.

What do life stories tell us about human flourishing?

It seems obvious that life stories should contain just about all the information that anyone would want to know about human flourishing. When you ask someone to tell you about their life you get a much more complete picture of how satisfied they are with what life has offered and what they have accomplished than you could ever get by asking them for a numerical rating of their life satisfaction. Actually, asking someone to give you a numerical rating of their satisfaction with life as a whole could even be a good way to stop someone from telling you about those things.

So why don’t researchers ask people about their life stories – the high points, the low points, the turning points etc – rather than the questions asked about happiness, life satisfaction etc in surveys? The reason why little use has been made of life stories in the past, at least in scientific research as opposed to literary works, must have to do with the difficulty of adding different life stories together (or averaging them in some way) to obtain an overall picture of some dimension of human flourishing.

The secret of success in making quantitative analytical use of life stories is to focus on identifying whether or not the stories display particular characteristics of interest to the researcher. For example, in their study of narratives relating to high points, low points and turning points Jack Bauer, Dan McAdams and April Sakaeda coded the paragraphs that participants wrote about each episode according to the presence or absence of integrative and intrinsic memories. Integrative memories were present if there was evidence in the account that the participant had learned from the experience or come to a deeper understanding of self or others as a result of it. Intrinsic memories were present if participants focussed on matters of intrinsic interest, e.g. meaningful relationships, rather than extrinsic interests, e.g. money and status. (See: ‘Interpreting the good life ...’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2005).

Participants in this study were also asked to complete more conventional survey questionnaires to provide measures of happiness, maturity (measuring such things as the degree to which individuals can hold impulses in check and respect others’ standards) and personality traits (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness). The results of study enabled the authors to reach the following conclusions:
People who emphasised what they learned from their experiences tended to be more mature than others.
People who emphasised the effects of experiences on personal growth and relationships tended to be happier than others.
For the most part these results could not be explained by simply knowing the broad personality traits of individuals in the study.

It seems to me that narrative research may be able to play a role in studying the inter-relationships between the rules of the game of society (including both formal institutions and informal rules associated with cultures) and the extent to which people respond positively or negatively to challenging experiences.