Year: 2010

Eureka at FIFA!

It is unusual to find ready-to-hand predictor variables which work. After all the revelations about corruption at FIFA, readers might have expected countries with too many scruples about governance and suchlike to fare poorly. The rankings of the four bidders in the recent Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International in Berlin were as follows (a high rank means less corrupt).

Netherlands/Belgium  7 and 22

United Kingdom             20

Spain/Portugal           30 and 32

Russia                            154 

Russia of course won, and the Ireland – Finland grudge game in Vladivostok should be a cracker!

The United Kingdom spent £50 million on its bid, presumably on hairstyles for Beckham, Prince William, Powerpoint presentations, & c. Small-denomination dollar bills are freely available at kiosks in Heathrow….

 

 

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The Red C opinion poll

We are into political economy territory bigtime now, and I don’t think economists can ignore the constraints that this may impose going forward.

So it would be wrong not to have a thread on the latest opinion poll, which shows Sinn Féin leap-frogging Fianna Fáil into third place. Pretty predictable really. Presumably the boffins from Brussels and Frankfurt have factored this sort of thing into their calculations?

Monetary Dialogue Briefing Papers: November 2010

The latest collection of briefing papers for the European Parliament’s Monetary Dialogue with the ECB are available here (click on 30.11.2010). One set of papers (including one by me) discusses a package of proposals put forward by the European Commission involving changes to the Stability and Growth Pact. The other papers discuss the issue of so-called currency wars.

Some moderately good news

The November Live Register SA total shows a drop of 3.5% from the August peak.

The November Exchequer Returns are broadly on target.

Blog is Two

Today is the second birthday of this blog.

The visitor traffic fluctuates with the level of interest in the Irish economy – November was a record with 261,000 visitors (567,000 page views).  The cumulative total over the two years is 1.89 million visitors (4.67 million page views).  You can find out more about the visitor patterns at this site.