Policymakers often suffer from a cognitive blind spot, intuitively thinking like consumers rather than producers. When it comes to housing, this leads governments to reach for demand-side levers—like First Home Owner Grants—that often inflate prices, rather than addressing the fundamental constraints on building new homes.
In this episode of the Inflection Points Podcast, Matthew Maltman, Senior Research Economist at the e61 Institute, joins Jonathan O’Brien to discuss his landmark essay, “Best Practice for Supply Side Reform”. Drawing on the empirical evidence from Auckland’s 2016 Unitary Plan, Maltman explains how broad-based upzoning successfully lowered rents and boosted construction productivity where other measures failed.
Matthew and Jonathan unpack Maltman’s three principles for effective reform: focusing on removing “bans” (prohibitions on density) rather than just reducing “burdens” (red tape), prioritising market health over the specific concerns of incumbent firms, and controlling policy inputs while monitoring outputs. Matt argues that while cutting paperwork is popular, it is ultimately ineffective if policies that ban the things we need remain in effect.
Read Matthew Maltman’s essay “Best Practice for Supply-Side Reform” here.
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Matthew is a Research Economist at e61 Institute and runs One Final Effort, a supply-side economics blog.
