Cormac O’Grada provides an analysis of the Irish economy here (and advertises this blog!).
I liked this insight:
“But no economy is an island, even an island economy.”
Not surprisingly, he wants an end to Ireland’s ‘dumping fiscal’. He makes another, more neutral point: if such an thing were to come about, it would be easier for Ireland if it were ended everywhere in Europe simultaneously.
The IMF has just released the ‘analytical’ chapters of its April 2009 World Economic Outlook report. You can download these here.
Chapter 3. From Recession to Recovery: How Soon and How Strong?
Chapter 4. How Linkages Fuel the Fire: The Transmission of Financial Stress from Advanced to Emerging Economies
I linked last weekend to former Swedish Finance Minister’s Bo Lundgren’s appearance on the Marian Finucane show.
Lundgren also appeared recently before the TARP Congressional Oversight Committee, chaired by Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren and his written testimony was the basis for the section on Sweden in the committee’s latest report. Here’s a webpage containing the written testimony of Lundgren and three other experts on other banking crises (Great Depression, 1980s S&L and 1990’s Japan) who all appeared before the committee at the same time.
The webpage also has full video of this meeting. The experts delivered short verbal testimony (Lundgren’s starts about 14 minutes in) and about 40 minutes in there is a question and answer session. Prof. Warren’s opening line of questioning about arguments against nationalisation was of particular interest to yours truly but the whole session is really useful.
This year’s conference has a record number of submitted papers covering a wide variety of topics.
The conference Programme is now available http://www.iea.ie/conferences/iea2009programme.pdf: the booking form may be downloaded http://www.iea.ie/conferences/iea2009booking.doc. There is now very limited accommodation at the conference hotel: further information from the local organisation: ieaconference@ucc.ie
There will be two plenary guest lectures:
The Edgeworth Lecture (sponsored by the Central Bank of Ireland and Financial Services Authority of Ireland): Professor Paul Collier (University of Oxford): The Political Economy of State Failure.
The DEW/ESR Lecture: Professor James Heckman (University of Chicago and UCD Geary Institute. The Economics and Psychology of Personality .
As can be seen from the programme, there are eight sessions on macroeconomics, money and finance. As usual the conference is strong on labour economics with three sessions on the topic. In all there will be 27 sessions with 80 papers. In most cases four sessions will run in parallel.