Ireland is not the only country undergoing a sharp contraction in housing and it is interesting to learn about the policy debate in other countries (especially fellow members of the euro area). This new article on VoxEU gives a good overview of the current debate in Spain:
One reply on “Adjusting to the End of a Housing Bubble: Lessons from Spain”
Spain certainly has a human capital problem. The OECD ranks Spain near the bottom for scientific, mathematical and reading literacy. For example, Spain scores 480 points for scientific literacy of 15 year olds, compared with 510 in Ireland and 565 in Finland. Only Italy and Poland score lower than Spain among OECD countries. An eye-popping 50 percent of the Spanish population have primary/lower secondary as their highest education attainment, compared with 34 percent in Ireland and 21 percent in the OECD on average.