New SSISI journal (170th!) published

The proceedings of the 170th session of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland can now be accessed online. Links to the articles are listed below. The hard copy of the publication will be available from Spring 2018.

·         Dublin House Prices: A History of Booms and Busts from 1708-1949

Deeter, Karl; Quinn, Frank; Duffy, David (SSISI, 2017)

·         Towards an Irish Recorded Crime Index

Linehan, Timothy (SSISI, 2017)

·         Barrington Lecture – Seventy Years of Personal Disposable Income and Consumption in Ireland

Stuart, Rebecca (SSISI, 2017)

·         The Irish Single-Currency Debate of the 1990s in Retrospect

Barry, Frank (SSISI, 2017)

·         Income-Tested Health Entitlements: Microsimulation Modelling Using SILC

Callan, T.; Colgan, B.; Keane, C.; Logue, C.; Walsh, J.R.(SSISI, 2017)

·         Symposium – Globalisation, Inequality and Populism

Nolan, Brian (SSISI, 2017)

·         Symposium – Who is the Populist Irish Voter?

Reidy, Theresa; Suiter, Jane (SSISI, 2017)

·         Symposium – Globalisation, Inequality and Populism

Layte, Richard; Landy, David (SSISI, 2017)

·         The Recovery in the Public Finances in Ireland following the Financial Crisis

Smyth, Diarmaid (SSISI, 2017)

·         Using Administrative Data to Change Perception about Caregiving and Improve the Evidence Base Related to Volunteering

O’Reilly, Dermot; Rosato, Michael (SSISI, 2017)

·         Memoriam: Thomas Kenneth Whitaker

·         Proceedings of the Statistical and Social Inquiry of Ireland One Hundred and Seventieth Session: 2016/2017

 

One reply on “New SSISI journal (170th!) published”

A veritable feast of analysis and insight. Many thanks for posting this.

Just a few quibbles. We have 3 papers looking at inequality and populism, but the facts that the pre-tax, pre-transfer distribution of income in Ireland is the most unequal among OECD members and that Actual Individual Consumption per capita is just above the southern European PIGS among the EU15 doesn’t seem to factor in the analysis. As a result there is a huge redistribution of income and expenditure to generate a post-tax, post transfer measure of inequality that is close to the OECD average. This absorbs enormous amounts of fiscal, administrative, political and civic resources and effort – with often chaotic and unintended outcomes and inevitable and large inefficiencies.

There just seems to be a lack of curiosity about distinctive Irish patterns of behaviour, a determination to look at Ireland through the lenses of analyses conducted in jurisdictions with very different features and politcial and economic topographies and a desire to end with reassuring and “safe” conclusions.

For example, in the Reidy paper, there is something close to self-congratulation and a supercilious smugness at the apparent absence in Ireland of populism as exhibited in the US or in other jurisdictions in Europe. The possibility that Irish politicians are long-practised masters of the dark art of “dog-whistling” does not attract any attention. In the Layte and Landy paper much is made of the impact of the public protests about water charges on 11 October and 1 November 2014, but there appears to be no consideration of the impact of the local election results in May 2014 (which reflected widespread public unease about many things including water charges – and led to the resignation of the leader of the Labour party). Nor is their consideration of the impact of the 10 October Dublin SW by-election (the result was declared on the 11th) – which very much revolved around water charges. In February 2011, in total FG, FF and Labour candidates received 35,000 votes out of a turnout of almost 47,000. In October 2014 they received a little over 6,000 out of a turnout of 24,000. This was a loss of almost 30,000 votes out of a total electorate of 70,000. It was this, in addition to the public protests, which put the “fear of god” in to the then government and prompted panicked and badly thought-through changes to policy and regulation announced on 19 November. It wasn’t the headbangers on the left wot won it. The more they tried to hijack the protests the more ordinary voters were repelled. It was multitudes of ordinary citizens on the streets and in the polling booths – or, more significantly, refusing to go to the booths to vote for the mainstream party candidates they normally supported.

As with so much else that is worthy of consideration in Ireland, this seems to have passed the academics by.

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