Making sense of the world

Our strengths are data analysis, logic, and frameworks.

Our vision is to lift these to a new level of relevance and usefulness. We do this to help people make sense of the world, their decisions, and decisions of others.

We are rigorous, relevant and useful.

Regulatory economics

Many markets in New Zealand are subject to rules and arrangements to make these markets work better for consumers. Examples include electricity, telecommunications, international trade, and environmental services.

Businesses often need assistance with understanding how government proposals may impact on them, or with identifying sound solutions to market or regulatory failure. This is where we come in.

Cost benefit analysis

Having great ideas is a necessary but not sufficient first step to success. We give you assurance on whether you should act on these ideas, using ‘return on investment’ type tests.

Cost benefit analysis is a systematic and rigorous way to apply data and evidence to your options, so you can decide which one to back.

Our experience spans areas as diverse as evaluating environmental policies, testing different cost recovery and pricing methods, changing building standards, and ‘value for money’ assessments of local and central government services and functions.

These studies almost always involve comparing reasonably easy-to-identify costs with hard-to-value societal benefits. We have the techniques to help you with that.

Economic modelling

We love to use our quantitative tools to give you new insights about your business or sector, and help you understand the impacts and trade-offs of policy and business decision choices.

Our toolkit and experience span nitty-gritty modelling of specific projects, statistical evaluation of policies and regulations, and forecasting of economic and demographic trends.

Testing models and modelling processes is our bread and butter. We test the logic, data and analytical frameworks for government agencies and businesses, to give our customers extra confidence and help them improve.

Talk to us about:

Public policy

Ever-changing technology, population, environment and economic circumstances mean that public policy can never stand still. We provide expert insights on the impact of mega trends on your sector or industry and how to respond to them. We are alert to unintended consequences and other risks.

Our expertise:

  • energy

  • climate change

  • housing and urban development.

As with all our work, we take your challenge and apply logic, data and evidence to see what can make a real difference. This is what makes us tick. We drill down to the root cause, see if there is a market or regulatory failure, and then evaluate the full spectrum of solutions.