I'll keep this brief...ha ha ha.
Long before Eric Crampton arrived on the scene in New Zealand in 2004 - a teen in the USA named Tyler Cowen read material from the oldest free market think tank in the United States - and avidly consumed the "The Incredible Bread Machine" a text of political commentary written by R.W Grant in 1966, which discussed free market enterprise and Capitalism.
Wow Tyler's Dad had put him onto some Libertarian guff and his Dad wanted 17 year old Tyler to come out to dinner to meet George Cother from the Mont Pelerin Society.
Well George told young Tyler magical things about the trickle down and his eyes opened wide in the thrall of Austrian economics and soon Tyler had met Walter Grinder who read a lot and - in turn Walter connected Tyler to Richard Fink.
“Richard Fink, president of the Charles G. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable foundations…argued that the translation of ideas into action requires the development of intellectual raw materials, their conversion into specific policy products, and the marketing and distribution of these products to citizen-consumers." - History of Mont Pelerin Society
Fink was wrapped up with Charles and David Koch and had $1.5 Million in Big Oil money to promote flat taxes and in 1980, Richard Fink, then a professor at Rutgers University, brought the Center for the Study of Market Processes to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
Fink relocated to George Mason University as a member of the faculty in the department of economics. The Center for the Study of Market Processes originally supported a class consisting of four of Fink’s undergraduate students, one of whom was Tyler Cowen.
In 1999, the center was renamed the Mercatus Center under the new leadership of Tyler Cowen. Today, Cowen is the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and faculty director of the Mercatus Center.
While Tyler was busy doing that Libertarian academic and blogging thing a very young Eric Crampton had graduated from the University of Manitoba Winnipeg and needed to get a Phd in economics which Crampton did under Tyler Cowen's wing.
In 2002 they co-published a book - "Market Success or Failure" involving trusters and promisers and assurances and how market forces produce bread better than any other...it was pretty boring stuff ( sure to rise - Not ) plus Eric wrote another paper or two with Tyler.
He also wrote other papers about how "You Get What You Vote For: Electoral Determinants of Economic Freedom" where he argued economic freedom correlates with desirable outcomes on several dimensions, including per capita GDP, economic growth, poverty abatement, human development, literacy and life expectancy. It was all too boring as Eric waffled on about change in voter preferences effecting it all - while we all went to the pub.
Eric published a paper about expressive voters who may want to express who they are, and who they are not - but if secrecy falls off at "the constitutional phase" well that's oligarchy.
Clearly this was pure tedium and nobody cared - and it was time Eric buggered off to New Zealand - in 2003 with his wife who was into art - ha ha well that's not surprising.
Anyway - as you know Eric ended up at Canterbury University and wrote a few more boring papers but by 2009 he was partnered up with a researcher named Matt Burgess ( Luxon's economic adviser ) and together they started becoming useful for industry shaping policy - The Price of Everything, The Value of Nothing: A (truly) external review of BERL's study of harmful alcohol and drug use for example was their first work.
Then Eric and Matt did it again in 2012 - when they teamed up to write - What's in a cost? Comparing economic and public health measures of alcohol's social costs - a study funded by the National Alcohol Beverage Industries Council.
Wow these two aye - the NZ Institute was formed in 2012 about the same time Luxon was rising to CE of Air NZ and Tony Carter Chair of Air NZ was wanted to scale things up - and around 2014 Eric joined up with Atlas Network Think tank The NZ initiative and as you know Matt joined as a Senior Economist too - and eventually left in mid March 2022 to become Luxon's economic advisor.
Eric got into shaping policy gaffing on about how we should bottle and sell more water and remove the middle cow - while others lamented the filthy rivers in Canterbury - and Eric even wrote about being in the zone: Creating a toolbox for regional prosperity - while Matt delighted Act with his paper criticising climate emissions reduction.
Eric started getting heaps of media coverage - and regular spots at night on RNZ and had lots to say about the pandemic and three waters ...
On December 8 2022, Eric tweeted it was damn shame we don't see Tremain's racist cartoons anymore ...showing Nanaia chopping down democracy in New Zealand.
Eric's been busy shaping thinking around the shift in focus from prohibition to harm reduction when it comes to smoking, and toward regulation and taxation that is proportionate to actual risk.
Eric says that should be welcome - as you do when you count beans and not 8,000 dead people.
Eric's still at the NZ Initiative and doing lots of opinion shaping just like Richard Fink suggested he should if the right wing Libertarian goals of the Atlas Network are to be realised.
Recently Eric has been seeing Oliver Sean Plunket a lot to laugh and scoff at the left wing conspiracy theory about the Atlas Network and the Mont Pelerin Society...
I said I'd keep it brief
Getting to know Eric
G
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