Month: May 2010

Maturity of Irish Bank Debt

Following on from John McHale’s post over the weekend, here‘s an expanded version of the document I sent to John. There seems to be some confusion out there about the extent of Irish bank bond debt, about the various types and about how much is covered by the September 2008 guarantee. The document draws together the relevant information on maturity of bank debt from the annual reports of Anglo, AIB, BoI, INBS and Irish Life and Permanent.

This information isn’t completely timely or perfect: A full Bloomberg trawl is perhaps the best way to do this. Importantly, none of the banks list September 2010, the end of the guarantee, as a maturity date in their tables. Instead, they list debt maturing up to the end of this year. It is well known, though, that the vast majority of the debt of Irish banks matures prior to the fourth quarter. An advantage of these calculations is that they come from publicly available sources and we can be clear about what it is we’re discussing.

The bottom line. By my calculations based on the annual reports showing the state of play at the end of last year—and feel free to correct me if I’ve got this wrong—these five banks had €71.7 billion in bonds due by December of this year with only €0.7 billion of this being subordinated. They then had a further €51.8 billion due after 2010, €14.4 billion of which are subordinated.

The very significant figure for bonds due this year shows that conjectures that the need to roll over bank debt could lead to a serious problem for the Irish government are essentially correct. Whether this scenario will actually happen, we don’t know, but one should be careful to dismiss those who say it could.

Update: The document had tables splitting debt securities into subordinated and senior debt. Because the total includes commercial paper and certificate of deposits, this might cause some confusion. I’ve edited the document to list the split as subordinated and other.

Learning to Say No

The IMF has released a new Staff Position Note that addresses the challenges in establishing a financial supervisory system that is capable of saying ‘No’.  You can download it here.

As Science Evolves, How Can Science Policy?

Benjamin Jones of Northwestern University has written an interesting article on how the changes in the nature of scientific research pose challenges for science policy.  You can read it here.

Summary:

Getting science policy right is a core objective of government that bears on scientific advance, economic growth, health, and longevity. Yet the process of science is changing. As science advances and knowledge accumulates, ensuing generations of innovators spend longer in training and become more narrowly expert, shifting key innovations (i) later in the life cycle and (ii) from solo researchers toward teams. This paper summarizes the evidence that science has evolved – and continues to evolve – on both dimensions. The paper then considers science policy. The ongoing shift away from younger scholars and toward teamwork raises serious policy challenges. Central issues involve (a) maintaining incentives for entry into scientific careers as the training phase extends, (b) ensuring effective evaluation of ideas (including decisions on patent rights and research grants) as evaluator expertise narrows, and (c) providing appropriate effort incentives as scientists increasingly work in teams. Institutions such as government grant agencies, the patent office, the science education system, and the Nobel Prize come under a unified focus in this paper. In all cases, the question is how these institutions can change. As science evolves, science policy may become increasingly misaligned with science itself – unless science policy evolves in tandem.

Kevin Denny: The Effect of Abolishing University Fees

Kevin Denny’s working paper on the effect of abolishing university fees in Ireland is available on this link

Abstract

University tuition fees for undergraduates were abolished in Ireland in 1996. This paper examines the effect of this reform on the socioeconomic gradient (SES) to determine whether the reform was successful in achieving its objective of promoting educational equality. It finds that the reform clearly did not have that effect. It is also shown that the university/SES gradient can be explained by differential performance at second level which also explains the gap between the sexes. Students from white collar backgrounds do significantly better in their final second level exams than the children of blue-collar workers. The results are very similar to recent findings for the UK. I also find that certain demographic characteristics have large negative effects on school performance i.e. having a disabled or deceased parent. The results show that the effect of SES on school performance is generally stronger for those at the lower end of the conditional distribution of academic attainment.

Coleman: Obsession with PhD Economists

Marc Coleman continues to fight the good fight against the evil that is economists with PhDs. Coleman seems to be taking his campaign to a new level with his latest claim:

Academia must also change. The obsession with producing only PhDs is the main reason the crisis happened.

I read the last sentence and then started thinking of the number of ways in which it seemed to be wrong. I lost count at about five and then decided to go back to plotting the downfall of the Irish economy along with my other PhD-qualified co-conspirators.