Month: October 2009

Debate on Wage Cuts

The Irish Times features a debate on wage cuts between representatives of IBEC and ICTU: you can find it here.

It is open to question whether framing the policy issue as involving adversarial conflict between employers and workers is especially useful. Rather, it involves primarily a trade-off between lower current average incomes for higher future average incomes.  If the ‘debate’ format is to be followed, a more interesting lineup might be to include a representative of those not currently working (today’s unemployed, emigrants, students and others not participating in the labour force).

The Science of Spending Stimulus Money Wisely

The New York Times carries an interesting article on the role of spending on science projects as part of a stimulus package.

Steven Davis on Job Creation

Greg Mankiw links to an interesting article by Chicago Economist Steven J Davis on policies to foster job creation in the US. The article is short and to the point, and is for the most part relevant to the Irish debate. It is mostly sceptical of employer subsidies and puts forward, among other things, reduction in the minimum wage and vigorous experiments with back-to-work programmes.

Energy Policy Issues for Ireland

The ESRI held a conference on this topic this week: you can download the presentations here.

Talent and the crisis

Courtesy of Paul Krugman, here is a lovely little piece by Calvin Trillin.

It inspires the question of which percentile the regulators have been drawn from, and how this may have changed over time.