IEA 2015 Conference

The 29th Annual Irish Economic Association Conference will be held at the Institute of Banking, IFSC, 1 North Wall Quay, Dublin 1 on Thursday May 7th and Friday May 8th, 2015. The ESR guest lecture will be given by Professor Christopher Udry (Yale University) and the Edgeworth Lecture by Professor Giancarlo Corsetti (University of Cambridge). This year we have a very strong and expanded programme.

Registration for the conference is through the exordo site. Early registration costs 100 euros and includes dinner on the 7th. There is a much lower price for student delegates at 35 euros.

Bookings for accommodation should be made directly. We have negotiated some discounted hotel rooms at the Maldron Hotel, Cardiff Lane, which is close to the conference venue (mention the “IEA2015″).

I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

International Investment Position & External Debt – Q4 2014

The CSO have published the Q4 2014 update for these data.  As pointed out 12 months ago there is a lot of noise in the figures.

Ireland’s gross external debt was estimated to be €1,721.6 billion at the end of 2014.  On the other side of the ledger there are €2,623.8 billion of external assets in debt instruments.  This means we have a net position of -€902.2bn, i.e. assets exceed liabilities.  Of course, these figures are close to meaningless in any real sense as they are polluted by financial services sector.

Under the heading “IFSC” the CSO records total foreign assets of €2,757.5 billion and total foreign liabilities of €2,790.4 billion.  The gross totals are immense but the net position is small by comparison.  Here are the net international investment positions by sector excluding the impact of the IFSC.

Looking at the NIIP by sector is not the end of the story.  We equally have to account for the MNC effect that will impact the figures for non-financial companies.  For example in debt instruments alone there is €168 billion of external debt and €242 billion of external assets in debt associated with direct investment (outside the IFSC).  This is further muddied by foreign direct investment into Ireland and investment abroad by Irish domiciled (and sometimes foreign-owned) companies.  Part of the impact of this can be seen in the second panel which shows the NIIP by type of investment.

Ireland gross external debt (excluding the IFSC) is around €470 billion.  By factoring for external assets in debt instruments the equivalent net external debt is (just) €55 billion.  However, if we exclude the impact of direct investment in both directions (mainly MNCs but not exclusively foreign-owned MNCs) the situation is:

The gross external debt figure is just over €300 billion and has fallen around €100 billion over the past three years.  As more of the external assets in debt instruments are associated with direct investment the net external debt figure here is €130 billion (higher than the €55 billion figure including direct investment).  This has fallen by around €75 billion over the past three years.

If we look at the overall net international investment position we see the following (the chart begins in Q1 2012 as that is when the new BPM6 series start):

Note the subcategories are not the same.  In the external debt chart we were able to remove assets and liabilities associated with direct investment.  For the NIIP only a division by sectors is available.  Thus we can show the NIIP excluding non-financial companies which in the main will reflect the activities of MNCs but not exclusively so.  Outside of the IFSC and NFCs Ireland has a net external liability of €80 billion which is an improvement of €60 billion on the position at the start of 2012.

When is macroprudential policy effective?

BIS paper here.

Abstract:

Previous studies have shown that limits on loan-to-value (LTV) and debt-to-income (DTI) ratios can stabilise the housing market, and that tightening these limits tends to be more effective than loosening them. This paper examines whether the relative effectiveness of tightening vs. loosening macroprudential measures depends on where in the housing cycle they are implemented. I find that tightening measures have greater effects when credit is expanding quickly and when house prices are high relative to income. Loosening measures seem to have smaller effects than tightening, but the difference is negligible in downturns. Loosening being found to have small effects is consistent with where it occurs in the cycle.

Irish Journalism during the Celtic Tiger period

The Media Show on RTE Radio featured a debate between Harry Browne and Richard Curran –  podcast here.

Mortgage Debt Restructuring

Eamon Quinn writes in The Irish News here.