The Greens Against Nama group have released a number of videos featuring interviews with various people who disagree with the Nama proposals. Link here. It looks like they may have more to upload but thus far there are a number of interesting interviews with people such as Ronan Lyons, Shane Ross and Peter Mathews, a former banker with ICC and currently an independent banking and property consultant.
Month: October 2009
This new paper responds to the recent CSO study and also tackles several new dimensions of this question.
Paper here.
Abstract:
This paper provides a sub-sectoral analysis of changes in the public-private sector pay gap in Ireland between 2003 and 2006. We find that between March 2003 and October 2006 the public sector pay premium increased from 14 to 26 per cent and that there was substantial variation between subsectors of the public service. Within the public service the premium in 2006 was highest in Education and Security Services and lowest in the Civil Service and Local Authorities. In the private sector the pay penalty in 2006, relative to the public sector, was most severe in Hotels & Restaurants and in Wholesale & Retail and least severe in Financial Intermediation and Construction. The paper tests for the sensitivity of the pay gap estimates using a matching framework, which provides a stronger emphasis on job content, and finds the results to be broadly comparable to OLS. Finally, the study highlights the problems associated with controlling for organisational size in any study of the public-private pay gap in Ireland.
Quantitative analysis of science and technology is a growing research area. There are two university rankings based on bibilometric indicators which are worth watching:
Cybermetrics Lab has this university ranking for Top 100 universities in Europe, published in July 2009. TCD is the only Irish university in this list, ranked 49th in Europe and 169th in the world ranking. In the world ranking UC Cork is 393rd and UCD is 457th. The world rank of Irish universities can be found here.
The Centre for Science and Technology Studies of the Leiden University has constructed several university rankings based on scientific output. While based on the same data and methodological background, rankings differ depending on the focus of the impact – indicators. The Leiden ranking results 2008 can be found here.
At Trinity College last night, Joe Stiglitz repeated his criticism of NAMA. The Irish Times reports:
He said Nama is likely to “burden this generation for 25-50 years or more. I am very uncomfortable with a government with such a minority support making such a decision.”
He said the view there is no alternative is “just wrong”.
“There is an alternative. Play by the rules of capitalism – if you can’t pay back your debt, shareholders and bondholders lose. If the Government puts in money, it needs to get control commensurate with the money put in. It also should get a return proportionate to the risk involved – in this case, it’s a big risk.”
The Minister for Finance has responded to Stiglitz’s criticisms. According to Bloomberg:
Lenihan pointed to the U.S. as an example of a rescue package that was attacked before succeeding.
“I simply do not accept his analysis,” Lenihan said. “As far as Professor Stiglitz is concerned, he made the same criticism of the U.S. bank package, which is now proved to be a tremendous success.”
Of course, the US TARP bank package, which Minister Lenihan is referring to as a tremendous success, started life like NAMA as a plan to overpay for troubled assets but was changed to become a plan in which the US government made equity investments in the leading financial institutions.
Stiglitz has argued that the terms of the TARP equity investments were insufficiently generous to the US taxpayer—see here for a report from TARP’s Congressional Oversight Panel which endorses this viewpoint. It would be misleading, however, to characterise the Stiglitz’s criticisms of TARP as being directly related to his views on NAMA. On this issue, see here for an interview with Joe from Feburary in which, among other things, he discusses proposals then being floated for the US government to purchase bad assets—he characterises Paulson’s orginal TARP plan as “cash for trash”.
As far as I know, there has not been a single blog relating to Northern Ireland since The Irish Economy blog began earlier this year. Northern Ireland is having a relatively good recession for various reasons on which I do not wish to dwell. However, it has serious long-term problems which have been addressed in a report commissioned by the devolved economy Minister. The report is available here. What will interest readers of this Blog was that 4 out of the 5 report authors are economists, of which I am one.
In essence, the Northern Ireland economy has operated under wartime conditions for nearly four decades. Public sector output amounts to around 60% of gross value added (the regional equivalent of GDP). More specifically, industrial policy has consisted of providing large scale grants to both inward investors and indigenous firms. This has been partly successful: employment growth has been high in the last decade and at the peak of the recent boom, the unemployment rate was hovering just above 4% as in the Republic of Ireland case. What was different was that productivity growth was low to non-existent. Consequently living standards have not converged on the UK and have diverged markedly from the Republic of Ireland and other successful countries.