Irish Economics and Psychology Annual Workshop

The eight annual one day conference on Economics and Psychology will be held on November 27th at the ESRI in Dublin. The purpose of these sessions is to develop the link between Economics, Psychology and cognate disciplines in Ireland. A special theme of these events is the implications of behavioural economics for public policy (see detailed reading list on this area here) though we welcome submissions across all areas of intersection of Economics and Psychology. We welcome submissions from PhD students as well as faculty and also welcome suggestions for sessions on policy and industry relevance of behavioural economics. Abstracts (200-500 words) should be submitted before September 30th to Liam.Delaney@stir.ac.uk. Suggestions or questions please send to Liam.Delaney@stir.ac.uk and/or Pete.Lunn@esri.ie Further details of wider network activities will be added here shortly. Details of the previous seven workshops are available here.

Mody on Creditor Impunity

I am surprised this has not received more attention.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-21/imf-needs-to-correct-its-big-greek-bailout-mistake

The original sin of Eurozone crisis mismanagement was the May 2010 ‘bail-out’ of Greece. As Karl Otto Pohl noted at the time, the beneficiaries were German banks, even more so French banks (as always, you gotta hand it to the French!), and rich Greeks. Yanis Varoufakis agreed at the time with Pohl, for which he will not be forgiven.

If you subscribe to the view that careless lenders should face haircuts, the official lenders to Greece should take a belated bath.

All of them, including the IMF, which means its shareholders, including us.

The alternative is an international financial order built on a doctrine of official creditor impunity.

Geary Policy Peer Review Series

The Geary Institute at UCD has initiated a Policy Peer Review Series.  This involves members of the Geary Institute reviewing research/evaluation reports which have significant implications for public policy.  The authors of the evaluations/reports are then invited to reply to the review.  The first two such reviews (and responses) are on (a) an evaluation of the School Support System under DEIS and (b) an evaluation of  FAS training programmes where the participants exited in 2012.  The reviews and responses are available here:

http://www.ucd.ie/geary/publications/policypeerreviews/

Dublin Economic Monitor

here.

World Happiness Report 2015

here.