Dublin Kapuscinski Lecture – ‘Climate Change and Development’

The Dublin Kapuscinski Lecture – ‘Climate Change and Development’ on 31st May 2011 at 1700-1900 in the UCD John Hume Global Ireland Institute. R.S.V.P. to Jean.Brennan@ucd.ie 

Website: http://ec.europa.eu/development/services/events/kapuscinski

The series is named after Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish reporter and writer who was a “Voice of the Poor” in his famous reportages and books covering the developing world.  The lecture series is organized jointly by the European Commission, the United Nations Development Programme and partner universities, in this case TCD and UCD.   Ms Barbara Nolan, Director of the European Commission’s Representation in Ireland will open the Dublin Kapuscinski Lecture 2011 on ‘Climate Change and Development’.

 Professor Dirk Messner, German Development Institute, will deliver the keynote lecture.  The global development panorama is changing dramatically. The challenges of security and poverty are more interwoven than ever before. Yet, two thirds of the global poor people are now living in middle income countries like China, India and Brazil. What does this new global poverty map imply for European development policies? Development trends are also embedded in an overall global development challenge: – climate change. The world needs to learn to decouple wealth creation from burning fossil fuels. A great transformation to a global low carbon economy is necessary during the decades to come in order to avoid major and dangerous changes in the Earths system. What do these global shifts imply for Europe s role in the world? Europe needs to define its global interests. And it needs to be part of a global governance strategy to shape global development trends.”

 A panel discussion will follow, chaired by Prof. Patrick Paul Walsh (UCD Chair of International Development Studies). Panellists include Francis Jacobs, (Head of the European Parliament Office in Ireland), Cliona Sharkey,  (Trócaire, Environmental Justice Policy Officer), Tara Shine,  (Head of Research and Development, Mary Robinson Climate Justice Foundation, Joseph K.Assan, (TCD-UCD MDP Lecturer in Development Practice) and  Frank Convery ,  (UCD Earth Sciences Institute).

 The lecture series offers citizens of the European Union an unprecedented opportunity to learn and discuss development, and issues related to development cooperation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ESRI Conference on Pensions

The ESRI held a conference on pensions policy this morning. Presentations from the conference are available here.

Duffy-Walsh Report on JLCs-REAs

The report commission by the government on Joint Labour Committees and Registered Employment Agreements (written by Kevin Duffy, the Chairman of the Labour Court and UCD economist Frank Walsh) is available here. A press release from the government is available here.

Daniel Gros: External versus domestic debt in the euro crisis

In recent articles, Daniel Gros has emphasised the importance of a country’s financial wealth for its solvency.     He further develops his controversial arguments in this VOX piece, with particular emphasis on the distinction between external and domestic debt.  An extract:

In a monetary union, the usual assumption that public debt is riskless is not valid. Countries like Greece don’t have access the ultimate option of printing money. In this sense, the public debt of Eurozone countries resembles that of emerging markets (Corsetti 2010). 

The crux of the importance of external debt lies in the fact that even Eurozone nations retain full sovereignty over the taxation of their citizens. The logic is somewhat subtle and best explained by an extreme example that makes the point extremely clear. Suppose a nation’s entire debt is held by one man and the nation faces a debt crisis. If this bond holder is a resident of the nation, the government could impose a tax on him equal to, say, 50% of the value of his government bond holdings. Using this new tax revenue, the government could pay down its debt by 50%. Of course this would be an outrageous expropriation and make it harder to issue debt in the future, but it would not be a default.

By contrast, suppose the sole bond holder where a foreign citizen living abroad. In this case, the government could no longer freely tax the individual. Governments do not have a free hand in taxing non-citizens; they are bound by existing treaties and international norms. 

The baseline point is that as long as Eurozone members retain full taxing powers, they can always service their domestic debts, even without access to the printing press. For example, governments could reduce the value of public debt held by residents by some form of lump-sum tax, such as a wealth tax. The government could just pass a law that forces every holder of a government bond to pay a tax equivalent to 50% of the face value of the bond.2 The value of public debt would thus be halved, much in the same way as it would be if the government ordered the central bank to double the money supply, which would presumably lead to a doubling of prices. 

This is why, I believe, it is foreign debt that constitutes the underlying problem for the solvency of a sovereign, even in the Eurozone. 

Of course, we have recently seen a tentative move towards wealth taxation with the (temporary) levy on pension assets.   Dominic Coyle does not mince his words in criticising the new tax in this Irish Times piece from Monday.

Your Better Life Index

The OECD has launched a new index with the aim of facilitating comparisons of the quality of life across countries. You can find the country summaries here.

Ireland does quite well in the rankings, although the usual caveat about using GDP in an Irish context applies.  Moreover, the data used are mostly from 2008 and we have undoubtedly slipped towards the relegation zone since then.