Not one Irish instutution in the world’s top 200 - shock!

The objectivity of this ranking, carried out by the University of Tilburg, is obviously unimpeachable, considering that Tilburg itself is only ranked at number 23.

Perhaps our civil servants are correct that they would have little to gain from studying Economics here?

Perhaps the DoF officials are too busy working to get formal qualifications to match their work experience? Perhaps there are plenty of excellent policies that are being ignored by ideological politicians? Perhaps academic excellence does not translate to administrative adequacy?

glad you watched the Wyatt Earp documentary, I thought it was fabulous.

I felt quite chastened by it though, Earp had been my favourite cowboy hero as a kid.

But the documentary does give a very full, rounded impression of the life of Earp and his times.

BOH.

Good spot on the ‘related disciplines’. One must always study the language when reading statistics!

With the expection of the UK (with whom Ireland, for historic reasons, shares the characteristics of an elected dictatorship and excessive centralisation of power) - and, of course, France - many of the established EU parliamentary democracies have taken steps to reform the balance between the legislature and the executive - and this has impacted on the design, scrutiny, modification, implementation and review of economic policy (with an accompanying impact on the role of economics in this process).

Why have their growth rates been so crap in the past two decades then?

You, inadvertently, may have misunderstood the thust of my comment. Probably my inability to express myself clearly. The “model”, as you label it, which I describe, is simply that of a properly functioning parliamentary democracy. With the expection of the UK (with whom Ireland, for historic reasons, shares the characteristics of an elected dictatorship and excessive centralisation of power) - and, of course, France - many of the established EU parliamentary democracies have taken steps to reform the balance between the legislature and the executive - and this has impacted on the design, scrutiny, modification, implementation and review of economic policy (with an accompanying impact on the role of economics in this process).

The UK Government, self-servingly, has ensured that consideration of a very light-weight package of parliamentary reforms will run out of time to allow implementation. The current Irish Government has absolutely no interest in any reform in this area. And the terms of the banking inquiry have finally confirmed the total emasculation and irrelevance of the Oireachtas.

And as to a new publicy-funded body, I believe the ESRI, already, provides much of what is required, but it relies on external funding to finance a goodly portion of its research. Separating its externally funded activities and beefing up its capability to act as a “clearing house” for the “market-place in policy ideas” that Frank Barry recently advocated would go a long way to place economics in its justifiably central role in the policy making process.

Many, many posts ago, when this topic was discussed, Colm McCarthy rightly pointed out that it was useless to talk about the supply of high-quality economic policy analysis and advice when the demand did not exist. My argument is that major structural reform is required to generate this demand and that economists should be in the forefront of the campaign to force this structural change.

The current economic and financial debacle did not come out of a clear blue sky - it was stewing for a decade in the absence of sensible economic policy input.

Isn’t Stiglitz rated as the top economist in the world?

a notable event given Friedman’s influence on Thatcher, Reagan, the war criminal Pinochet, and many Irish academic economists some of whom advise the government.

Not to mention the Brylcreemed Young Turks of the Irish right wing who were most recently washing up within Declan Ganley’s wholly-owned ‘party’, Libertas.

Let’s see:

* Nepotism (being appointed to Daddy’s old job to get started on the first rung, hiring his own brothers as deputies)
* Fraud (collecting taxes and, well, keeping them)
* Theft (of two horses)
* Brothel-keeper (though he didn’t own a newspaper, to his credit)
* Greatly-inflated claims of what he had achieved (his whole alleged career in hi biography)
* One for seeking media attention while only one step ahead of the law himself at any point

Yes, I see the resemblance too.

All I would say, is to the civil servant(s) out there in NAMA-land and (D)Ireland, tone it down a notch when you find yourself on the town, knocking back those shot glasses. I know those of us in the private sector don’t have real jobs, and never did, but we try to live a life also.

Mother of God - what, you’ve had to give up your second skiing a year, so you now begrudge Mary the money for her mortgage?

The other major advantage I can see with a Time Team strategy, involving economists, is they can jump from one project to another fast.

My observation of the real-life, actual ‘Time Team’ (given some extremely modest knowledge that I have of how the real thing goes) is that they arrive in on someone else’s careful, professional dig with a couple of JCBs and needing a big ‘discovery’ for the ratings. Not something that I’d think would be conducive to the good running of a small business, never mind a country.

I suspect one for an offblog chat so drop me an email colm.harmon@ucd.ie and we can do that. It is a nicely scaled model in my view.

It’s a small world. I sit on that Welsh Economic Advisory panel. If you are interested in any aspect of it I woud be happy to fill you in.

“I wonder how civil servants would feel about, say, a trio of nerds breezing in for a few days, doing-their-business, then leaving? It might work, with careful management, but it would still need in-house expertise.”

That is why I referenced the Clint Eastwood movie Million Dollar Baby above as a useful touch point. Because it describes the situation of the ultimate coal face expert, the old boxing trainer, looking at this girl who shows up at his gym each day. It is a nice movie, with an important story to tell, about much more than just boxing.

I am not the only one saying this by the way. Richard Curran in the Sunday Business Post has commented also, on the trends in Ireland, the way he sees it. We had only just arrived at a stage in Ireland, where it was ‘cool’ for young men and women to think beyond the traditional straight-jacket, of public service or profession(s). Business and innovation was just beginning to bed down and become respectable and established within the Irish culture and psyche. But it now appears as though, that was a flutter-ing illusion, a brief burst of summer, and we will return again to the grey dismal place that Ireland always was.

I watched an interesting documentary on PBS last night, about the famous law man of the west, Wyatt Earp. In a real sense, Wyatt Earp’s story and that of the Irish business person share many, many parallels.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1390089466/

It was unfortunate, that in all the towns that Wyatt worked through in his life time, his attempts at becoming respectable and settled always eluded him. Sometimes it was just within his grasp, only to recede away again, into the distance. In fact, it should be pointed out, that the shoot out at the O.K. Corral in October, 1881, had much to do with Wyatt’s desire to become town sheriff. Like Wyatt, it seems as if, the business man in Ireland, is about to be kicked out of Tombstone.

BOH.

Brian: There is something to be said for getting academic economists closer to the policy process because in general we don’t have a good idea of what its like at the coalface. I wonder how civil servants would feel about, say, a trio of nerds breezing in for a few days, doing-their-business, then leaving? It might work, with careful management, but it would still need in-house expertise.

BTW, this is why government gets to hire someone such as Dr. Peter Clinch, and roll out something new and shiny called the ’smart-er economy’. I applaude this effort, and furthermore, it is nothing short of what a major employer aught to be doing anyway. An employer needs to continually assess its own procedures and processes and find ways to do things, which make the best sense, at a particular point in time. But my question is, while the Oireachtas, associated departments and resources are busy making this smart thing work, what is going to happen to the private sector? Who is covering that base? No one it seems.

“Economics is at the heart of the business of government - spending tax revenue ostensibly to enhance economic prosperity and the well-being of society.”

I have only realised lately, that the Irish government is the largest employer in the state.

By Irish government, of course, nine times out of ten, that translates into joe soap’s language as: Fianna Fail is the largest employer in the state.

My biggest fear, having realised this fact for the first time, is that government has immense responsibilities to take care of. By government in that sense, I mean, whatever minister for trade and employment happens to sit in the house of the Oireachtas.

The Oireachtas is a much slower moving organisation than anything in the private sector. Yet it has to take measures continually to update and modernize itself, as an employer.

I mean, the Oireachtas is to Ireland, what Dell corporation used to be, to Limerick and its surrounding region.

But what I don’t fully understand, perhaps someone here can explain it to me, is how we expect the Oireachtas to even care a damn about the private sector of the economy? When most of its actual time, 24/7/365 has to be devoted towards keeping its own shop in order, namely the civil service and public services.

How is that supposed to work?

I mean, at best, the Oireachtas can only glance over the status and development of the private sector economy. But in 2010, we stand around hoping that the government will intervene in some fashion, in order to set things right again in the private sector. In addition to doing their day job, administer-ing and caring for the public sector.

I don’t understand that logic.

What I do understand is, in Ireland we have something akin to an invisible Berlin Wall. Each day, a number of people in the Irish workforce, go through the invisible Berlin Wall and earn respectable and sustainable incomes working in the public service. While on the other hand, those of us in the private sector, it is like we remain in the Eastern block.

Then in the evenings, as one of George Lee’s interviewees in the Berlin Wall documentary series commented - the east and west Berlin workerforce meet up together in the pubs and saloons. The east German is there counting pennies and realises, I can’t even buy a beer for my girlfriend.

The west German worker comes in waving $100.00 notes and buying drink for everyone.

All I would say, is to the civil servant(s) out there in NAMA-land and (D)Ireland, tone it down a notch when you find yourself on the town, knocking back those shot glasses. I know those of us in the private sector don’t have real jobs, and never did, but we try to live a life also.

BOH.

Where the Time Team concept could be useful, would be to spread the message of economics and its benefit more widely amongst some of the modest, grass roots kinds of projects in the civil service. It could of course be supervised by mature economists, but could be a way to introduce younger inexperienced economists into the workings of the civil service. In order to give them a realistic picture of how the system in Ireland actually works.

The great thing about the Time Team approach, is that ownership of the project doesn’t pass away from the civil servants. But rather, ownership and full responsibility for that project remains as is. But after the Time Team has gone away again, the civil servants do get an opportunity to digest all of what they have learned. This in turn gives them a chance to plan and see, going forward in the future, where exactly a potential hired economist might ‘plug in to’ their operation in the longer term.

It is a bit like the problem I faced years back, before ‘property’ became sexy. There was no point in telling local authorities about the value of architects, and what they do, because they had no concept of what an architect might do. Indeed, over 90% of individuals in Ireland had no clue as to what an architect is.

The other major advantage I can see with a Time Team strategy, involving economists, is they can jump from one project to another fast. They don’t have a chance to settle in and form opposing trench warfare-like positions in relation to a single topic. Because in 3 no. days (or whatever length of time) the entire show breaks up and moves back on the road again.

In other words, it would be an opportunity to combine economists of many different viewpoints, and their differ-ing views on economics, would for the duration of the 3 no. days, be a benefit rather than a liability. It would mean for the owner of the project, the group of civil servants, they would find themselves exposed to a broad range of ideas from the Time Team.

I suppose, what I am getting at too, is a kind of end-of-aisle display, in marketing and super-market terms. A quick sample of the product and what it does. A test drive.

BOH.

I take your point about the benefit of assembling an ad hoc group of international experts to assist in addressing a profound financial and economic crisis, but surely the best way is to organise things to avoid these largely self-inflicted crises arising - or, at least, to minimise the self-inflicted severity. We’ve had two in the last quarter of a century.

Economics is at the heart of the business of government - spending tax revenue ostensibly to enhance economic prosperity and the well-being of society. In my view this is a matter of structure and process. Separating the executive and the legislature and empowering and resourcing the legislature, in particular, with an economic analysis and scrutiny capability, will compel the executive to up its game in terms of the economic analysis underpinning its policy proposals. In addition, there is a requirement for a separate completely public-funded body to identify and conduct research on key policy issues, to present policy options and to scrutinise and to propose modifications to policy proposals generated by the executive. (The ESRI could be re-structured to perform this role.)

In addition, there may be a requirement to constitute a fiscal stability council (comprised of the best-qualified domestic academic talent with, perhaps, some international input).

This would be most effective way of ensuring demand for high-quality economic expertise in the entire process of public policy design, scrutiny, modification, implementation and review.

“I’d agree with the sentiment you’re expressing there, but whether you think DSGE models are nonsense or not, you’ve got to admit that a group of punters capable of high quality data analysis and able to talk at the same level with colleagues abroad is a good thing.

Having people who could spot those gaps, and be the kind of insiders to prosecute the collection of new data, would be of immense benefit, IMHO.”

I quote Stephen’s contribution here again, for no better reason, than it is worth quote-ing, and fits nicely into the idea I suggested of a Time Team kind of group of individuals, composed of economists amongst others, who might travel around to different ’sites’ within the Irish civil service.

A useful method to overcome the reluctance of an artistic right-brain culture such as the Irish, to engage in measurement, rigourous analysis and evidence collection, might be, to have access, even for a brief period to the best-of-the-best, all at once. As suggested by the Time Team experiment in the UK, it might lift some projects off the ground, which have long awaited such a stimulus to get them started.

BOH.

“The bottom line is this:if you don’t have your own economists, you cannot hope to interpret the evidence that exists on policy. Therefore your policy cannot be based on evidence. What then is it to be based on?”

In order to have evidence, one has to collect it. The fact I tried to highlight above I suppose, is the reluctance of an artistic right-brain culture such as the Irish, to engage in measurement, rigourous analysis and evidence collection.

There is more than a bit of crystal ball polishing that must go on, by experts such as Dr. Peter Bacon, when they are commissioned by government to charge into some study. One wonders what, if any evidence we provide policy makers, when we do consult with them.

It is highly possible, as suggested by others above, that economists may form part of a very effective evidence-gathering team. I would refer people here, to a simple analogy, the sucessful TV program Time Team, where a collection of various experts are invited onto a site over a period of 3 no. days. In order to gather what they can about the site.

It is a blitzkrieg style of team work, where they hit the problem with absolutely every tool of investigation, in a short compressed period of time. The real lasting value of that exercise, is that it sets up the framework, for much later work organised in the longer term by vanilla archaeological teams.

BOH.

“If Economics is a skill that is useful the next question is how to deploy it. Economics degree does not make you an economist for example - the post I believe does not exist in the civil service anymore in any real sense.”

Allow me to chat briefly about ‘de-ploy-ment.’

I watched The Frontline episode on the housing stock overhang on the RTE website a second time. It really is excellent TV viewing and Pat Kenny does a huge job of cover-ing so many bases in the duration of the program. He did accomodate a huge range of opinions. Well done.

But what the program does highlight well, is the absense of real input of experts in the debate.

Constantin Gurdgiev’s observation, was the many billions of euro the deflation in price of homes, has taken out of the Irish economy. The loss in value of the 1.9 million homes, is equivalent to one full years GDP of the Irish nation. Gurdgiev also made a suggestion, of working with the mortgages we have in Ireland, putting €10 billion plus towards that problem, and it could do a lot better than NAMA as a solution.

Those are wonderful ideas, which in that raw state alone, are more than enough for politicians, civil servants and policy makers to run with. Certainly, I could never have conceptualised the problem, in the manner in which Gurdgiev could do, with his brief contributions.

Allow me to apply a soccer sport analogy to this. It strikes me, that as well as the long range pile-driver shot specialists, such as Gurdgiev on the team. We also need those kinds of players who can hoover up the easy opportunities as they present themselves. Something closer to Dr. Garret Fitzgerald’s style.

What I mean is that, given Pat Kenny spoke so much about ‘development levies’ in the course of the TV show, it is interesting, no one offer-ed any kind of explanation, of where the ideas for development levies had come from. How they fit into the overall bigger framework to do with land values etc.

The point I am making I suppose, if I were the Alex Ferguson of the economics skill-set, to put the ball in the net as many times as possible, over the course of 90 minutes, you would have to arrange your team with players who have different strengths. What Karl Whelan or others suggested above, with up to 12-15 economists working together in a special inter-department-al unit in the Irish government - with Alan Ahearne as team captain - there are things one can achieve with a team, that may be less feasible with mere individuals, in one’s and two’s.

While Gurdgiev was wheel-ed onto The Frontline TV show as the token, expert economist, he covered the long range chances (to use the soccer sport analogy). It would be interesting to see how much more penetration the economics point of view could achieve, was there someone scoop-ing up the short-er range opportunities also.

BOH.

Actually not going to even bother to debate ‘Chicago School’ stuff any longer. I will tell them you said hi, @calan, when I give my
seminar on the ultra right wing issue of how we
can improve social mobility between generations through investment in parental education. Sounds like I will be talking to myself as the
faculty will be too busy addressing how to bump off
banking regulators. All I know is that the thing
that really characterised the ‘chicago school’
of the era of Friedman and Stigler has passed
itself through into an institution where as
the campus bookshop tshirt says ‘UChicago - where
fun comes to die’ - you will spot it next to the tshirt outlining how many Nobel prizes Chicago has won in all disciplines.

@kevin - it is an interesting model - there are lots. Having a Chief Economist and a review panel of folks - including non Irish economists - would be a start. You know well the US system, UK has the PM strategy unit structure. An economically literate and trained civil service and strong links with the academic world (wherever that is - see Sarko’s committee led by Stiglitz, or
the UK one I served on had folks from Harvard and Columbia too) would be great.

Indeed, all very useful and valid points. I am glad you brought them to bear in our discussion.

Although, your theory, as robust and fortress-like as it may appear to be, does not help to explain certain things. Take Garret Fitzgerald for example.

I referred above to Constantin Gurdgiev’s failure to capital-ise on an opportunity to straighten out Pat Kenny on an economic issue regarding ‘development levies’ charged by local authorities.

There are certain issues, which are like an open goal, as far as economists are concerned, all they have to do is put a shoe to the football.

Garret Fitzgerald is not one of those people who would waste a chance at an open goal. Fitzgerald even demonstrated that to none other than Mr. Karl Whelan himself, on a certain occasion on Newstalk 106 radio, where they both discussed the charter as written by Brian Lucey signed by the 46 economists last summer.

Dr. Fitzgerald administer-ed quite a profound lesson in political economics to the younger intellectual on that occasion. But there is not reason, why economists such as Gurdgiev could not offer the same assistance to guys such as Pat Kenny once in a while.

There is an opportunity for economists to improve their ’shooting skills’ so to speak, by placing themselves in front of the goal mouth more often. Dr. Fitzgerald is a very decent example of a person who combined economics and politics seemlessly. He could still, stand, as an example to many.

Dr. Fitzgerald is still a fast thinker on-the-ball, at a time, when many are still trying to find the ball.

BOH.

But Colm is right, that is not what this thread was supposed to be about. The Welsh example is something that sounds very interesting Colm..

-”academic economists and their research is not
the point of this thread. Economics training is”- (Colm Harmon, above)
To believe that one can separate academic economists and their research’ from ‘economics training’ is a truly bizarre notion.
Most economics training is done by academic economists. And their ideology and philosophy, their obsolete neo-classical theory, their unrealistic models and their resulting trained inability to grasp reality are imparted to their students in economics departments throughout the world.

Why any rational person would want to inflict this dysfunctional neo-classical syndrome on government is surely a mystery.
Perhaps its a psychological defense mechanism, a reaction formation, to the disturbing empirical reality that the currrent economic debacle has effectively refuted the pseudo-scientific neo-classical doctrine.