The German Council of Economic Experts – an academic body which advises the German Government and the Parliament on economic policy issues has published last week its Annual Report 2009/2010. The related Press Release can be downloaded from here.
Month: November 2009
As an on-the-record sceptic about job subsidy policies, I found this piece by Paul Krugman interesting. In addition to being in favour of employment subsidy schemes, Krugman also discusses the benefits of employment protection legislation, which I would admit to being even more sceptical of (memories of the phrase Eurosclerosis come to mind). At this point, I’d stick to me original opinions on this issue but I’ll happily admit that Krugman is umpteeen times smarter than me.
Of course, when dealing with these issues in an Irish context, there are practical implementation issues to be dealt with. What I’ve heard so far about the employment subsidy scheme suggests that it’s exactly the kind of bureacratic mess that I expected it would be when it was announced.
Last week the US Treasury invited a number of economics bloggers to meet senior officials. See here, here and here. I note this partially to pass on some interesting accounts of these meetings and partially to point out that, in my humble opinion, pigs would be observed circling Dublin airport before such a meeting would occur at our Department of Finance.
Many observers believe that global imbalances have a lot to do with the economic crisis the world has been experiencing. The non-academics among you may have come across the argument on David McWilliams’ recent TV show, for example. So, the fact that these imbalances have been shrinking rapidly over the past year ought to be good news.
Richard Baldwin and Daria Taglioni have a very nice piece pointing out that these declining imbalances can be mechanically explained by the global trade collapse, and are likely to reemerge as world trade recovers. They also do an excellent job of surveying the reasons why trade fell so rapidly during 2008-9.
The NAMA Bill has passed all stages of the Dail and is on its way to the President. Worth marking with a thread, I think.
What do you think of the final bill? The draft bill was released in August to allow for debate and suggested improvements. Did this process work well? Is the final bill much better than the original draft bill? Will the passage of the bill stabilise the banking system? Will it get credit flowing?