National Skills Bulletin 2013

See here.

DEW Conference 2013: Final Call

There are a few unfilled slots remaining for the Dublin Economics Workshop conference at the Castletroy Park Hotel, Limerick, on October 18-20 next. If you would like to present, send a brief outline and title asap to colm.mccarthy@ucd.ie.
Full programme and booking details will be issued early in September. The Dublin Economics Workshop is kindly sponsored this year by Dublin Chamber of Commerce.

Jackson Hole 2013

The symposium papers are here.

IMF on: Fiscal Adjustment; Construction Cycles

Two new IMF studies:

Health and Recessions Again

Cormac O Grada recently blogged here about the link between recessions and health, citing a comment made by Brendan Walsh on an article in the BMJ.  Some more evidence in a couple of recent working papers.  One by Christopher Ruhm, who has written quite a lot on this topic (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2308256) and the other by authors from Georgia State University (http://ftp.iza.org/dp7538.pdf).  Both papers seem to suggest that the link between health (and health behaviours) and the economic cycle has become weaker in recent years, and at a macro level appears to be practically zero, though this masks some links for individual conditions.  This is not inconsistent with some of Brendan’s recent work for Ireland ( http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/WP11_27.pdf) and some recent work which I did ( http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/WP13_05.pdf, see tables 9 and 10 and figures 6 and 7) which indicate that the correlation between income and self-reported health appears to be weakening, particularly below the poverty line.  Following on from another recent post, the weaker link between health and income below the poverty line is not just because older people (who typically have poorer health) have seen their relative position improve during the recent recession.  The results also holds for under-65s.