Irish Postgraduate and Early Career Economics Workshop 2019

This year’s Irish Postgraduate and Early Career Economics Workshop will be hosted by the Discipline of Economics at NUI Galway on Thursday June 6th and Friday June 7th. The event is aimed at PhD students, PostDocs, early career researchers and advanced Master students based in higher education and research institutions on the island of Ireland. The meeting will feature the work and findings of scholars in economics and related fields, and will provide an excellent opportunity to present research results and work-in-progress in a welcoming and constructive environment. We strongly encourage those working on economics-related research to submit.

Format
This year the workshop will include a range of thematic sessions and training events. For participants with a full paper, thematic sessions with discussants will be available i.e. after your presentation, a discussant will present a brief assessment of your paper with feedback. For participants with early-stage/emerging research findings, thematic sessions with general open discussion of your research will be available. Both will take place on Friday June 7th, along with a short training session on ‘Publishing your Research in Peer-Reviewed Journals – Tips from Journal Editors’. In addition, a workshop on ‘An Introduction to Machine Learning for Economists’ will take place on the afternoon of Thursday June 6th, followed by a social event that evening. A full schedule will be announced in due course.

Submission
As the workshop and associated training events are free to attend, no financial assistance for travel or accommodation can be provided. Researchers wishing to submit their work for consideration are advised to submit a 2-page extended abstract to IPECE2019@gmail.com. Applicants are asked to include their name, institution or affiliation, and current academic status (PhD, PostDoc, Early Career, Masters) when submitting an abstract. Please also indicate if you would like to present at a discussant session. All of the above information should be attached in a single PDF or Word File and the deadline for abstract submission is Monday April 1st. Applicants will receive notification shortly afterwards. Please note that if you wish to be considered for a discussant session, you will be expected to submit a full paper by Monday May 20th.

Contact
The local organising committee consists of Laura Carter, John Cullinan, Jason Harold, Dan Kelleher, Doris Laepple, Shikha Sharma and Michelle Queally at NUI Galway. Please direct inquiries to IPECE2019@gmail.com.

Support
Generous support from the Irish Economic Association (IEA) and the Discipline of Economics at NUI Galway is gratefully acknowledged.

Finally Someone Noticed

I have been puzzled since the withdrawal agreement terms first emerged that the UK is to be credited with no more than its subscribed capital on exit from the European Investment Bank. The EIB makes serious money, has not paid dividends and must be the most solvent bank around, This from the House of Lords Committee yesterday:

https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/eu-financial-affairs-subcommittee/news-parliament-2017/brexit-eib-report-published/

‘The Government failed to provide a satisfactory explanation of its negotiation position on the return of the UK’s capital. As a profitable business, there seems to be a plausible case that the UK should receive some share of that profit. A 16.1 percent share of the EIB’s retained earnings would be €7.6 billion, almost 20 percent of the UK’s financial settlement of £35–39 billion.’

The UK gets just €3.5 billion. The implied price-to-book is a steal for the surviving shareholders.

2019 Monsignor Pádraig de Brún Memorial Lecture – Philip Lane

Central Bank of Ireland Governor Philip Lane will deliver the 2019 Monsignor Pádraig de Brún Memorial Lecture, entitled Climate Change and the Financial System, at NUI Galway on Tuesday, 5 February. All sectors of the economy will be affected by climate change, whether through exposure to weather-related shocks or the economy-wide transition to low-carbon means of production and consumption. These structural changes will require considerable investment by households, firms and the government to retrofit buildings and switch to low-carbon production techniques and transportation methods.

The funding of this investment is just one of the challenges facing the financial system. In addition, it must cope with carbon-related market risks and credit risks, a reduction in the insurability of climate-vulnerable regions and activities and the tail risks of macroeconomic and financial instability. Given the scope and severity of these risks, addressing climate change is now high on the policy agendas of the central banking and regulatory communities. Accordingly, this lecture will outline the climate-related work agenda facing the Central Bank of Ireland.

The biennial public lecture is held in honour of Monsignor de Brún who served as University President from 1945 until 1959. The memorial lectures have been running since the 1960’s with Professor Stephen Hawking giving a lecture in 1994 on “Life in the Universe”.

The event is free and open to the public, however those who wish to attend must pre-register at: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/climate-change-and-the-financial-system-tickets-54910693362?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

A Short History of Brexit (Part 2: notes from Chapter 8 on)

CHAPTER 8: BREXIT

  1. Young (1999), p. 483.
  2. The speech is available at https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/113686.
  3. Young (1999), p. 479.
  4. Grob-Fitzgibbon (2016), pp. 438–9.
  5. The speech itself, as well as a superbly useful range of accompanying documents, is available at https://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/Bruges.asp.
  6. Young (1999), p. 423.
  7. Grob-Fitzgibbon (2016), p. 451.
  8. Grob-Fitzgibbon (2016), p. 453; https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/09/27/the-chequers-affair/.
  9. A reference presumably to the European Commission’s Commissioners.
  10. Cited in Seldon and Collings (2000).
  11. Young (1999), p. 362.
  12. https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108234.
  13. http://www.britpolitics.co.uk/speeches-sir-geoffrey-howe-resignation.
  14. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1701003.stm.
  15. Young (1999), p. 433.
  16. I have put the word ‘victory’ in inverted commas to highlight the way in which much of the British political class and media have traditionally portrayed EU negotiations in terms of victory and defeat, rather than compromise and mutual benefit.
  17. The origins of these numbers, which seem arbitrary, are murky. On one account the 3 per cent figure is, like VAT, a gift from France to the world: see https://www.latribune.fr/opinions/tribunes/20101001trib000554871/ a-l-origine-du-deficit-a-3-du-pib-une-invention-100-francaise.html.
  18. Which is why I and 38 other Irish citizens were able to stand for election in the French municipal elections of 2014. And it should be noted that there were also 389 British candidates; see http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/decryptages/2014/03/19/25003-20140319ARTFIG00358-d-o-viennent-les-candidats-etrangers-aux-municipales.php.
  19. See Eichengreen and Wyplosz (1993) for a detailed account of the EMS crisis of 1992–3. Like all the Brookings Papers it is freely available online at https://www.brookings.edu/project/brookings-papers-on-economic-activity/.
  20. Young (1999), p. 369.
  21. Both statements are equally true of the Clinton years.
  22. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37550629. 23. Shipman (2017), p. 6.
  23. Kenny and Pearce (2018). 25. Ibid., pp. 131, 145.
  24. Shipman (2017), p. 7.
  25. Ibid., p. 8.
  26. Delors’s statement is available at https://core.ac.uk/display/76794060; the quotations in the text are taken from pp. 17–18.
  27.   Gstöhl (1994).
  28. Shipman (2017), p. 15.
  29. Available at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/21787/0216-euco-conclusions.pdf.
  30. Shipman (2017), pp. 588–9.
  31. See O’Toole (2018).
  32. See for example https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/boris-johnson-european-union-hitler-1.3583108.
  33. Although I was a member of the Centre for European Reform’s Commission on the UK and the Single Market, I declined to sign a resultant letter to the newspapers on what the UK ought to do, as well as similar subsequent efforts, for two reasons. First, I’m not British, and I know from the Irish experience how irritating it is to have foreigners telling you what to do at times like this. And second, it wasn’t at all clear to me that economists’ letters were particularly helpful. On that score at least, I think I was (unfortunately) right.
  34. The statement led to a sharp rise in the British pound and a bigger subsequent collapse, all of which helped certain lucky investors to make a lot of money (Shipman 2017, pp. 432–4).

Potential Output and Output Gaps

 

Happy new year to all. In case some of you missed it, the Department of Finance published two working papers (by Gavin Murphy, Martina Nacheva and Luke Daly) just prior to Christmas looking at the ever topical issue of Ireland’s output gap. Both papers can be accessed at this link. The first paper takes a detailed look and review of the main methods used to estimate the cyclical position of an economy. The authors highlight the diversity of modelling approaches used across institutions both within Ireland and abroad. The second paper outlines in detail the methodology used by the Department to produce estimates of the output gap for Ireland. To date, the Department has used the European Commission’s harmonised approach (i.e. common to all EU Member States), which has at times resulted in counterintuitive estimates of Ireland’s cyclical position. This research seeks to develop more plausible estimates taking better account of the nature of Ireland’s small open economy. Such work will enable the Department to better evaluate the appropriate fiscal stance and the sustainability of public finances over the medium term.  For those with an interest in macroeconomic modelling and forecasting as well as fiscal policy related issues, the papers offer an invaluable source of information into what can be a complex area.