Updates, both trivial and important

The blog has gotten some updates to its backend and theme, but more importantly, the blog has a new editor, UCC’s Seamus Coffey. Welcome Seamus!

Fiscal Council Webinar

The Fiscal Council’s latest Fiscal Assessment Report, May 2020: “The Fiscal Impact of Covid-19” is out today. This is the Council’s 18th Fiscal Assessment Report, and it comes at a time when the economy is experiencing an unprecedented shock due to the pandemic and very high uncertainty. The Report assesses the economic and fiscal consequences, including a range of possible scenarios to 2025 and an assessment of the policy consequences.

The Council will be hosting a live webinar on the findings of the report on Thursday, 28 May 2020 @ 2pm Dublin time. The Council’s Acting Chairperson, Sebastian Barnes, will give a presentation followed by a Q&A session. The presentation is expected to last 30 minutes.

You can register at: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qDJrpmjcQQ2Aus7BJbK_Wg

Travel and Tourism in a Post Covid Society – TRiSS Summer Series

Trinity Research in Social Science (TRiSS), in partnership with its member schools and disciplines, is organising a weekly series of online events, over the summer, on how covid19 will change society. Each week, experts from Trinity and other leading institutions around the world will be bringing their insights on how covid19 is likely to change our lives – from corporate power and climate change to civil liberties and the future of tourism & travel.

The second event – “Travel and Tourism in a Post Covid Society” – takes place on May 26th at 11am (Irish Standard Time) and is co-hosted with the Trinity Business School. As one of the world’s biggest industries, the tourism sector is facing massive repercussions from the Covid health crisis and the associated lockdown measures. Not only is it one of the hardest hit sectors, it could be the one slowest to recover from the upcoming economic recession. This timely discussion features a range of international experts.

Attendance is free but requires registration via Eventbrite. The webinar will last 75 minutes, with three 15-minute presentations and a moderated discussion afterwards. Participants include:

  • Brian Lucey from Trinity College
  • Denise O’Leary from Technological University Dublin
  • Brent Ritchie from the University of Queensland
  • Jane Ali-Knight from Edinburgh Napier University

Denise O’Leary is Assistant Head of School of Hospitality Management and Tourism in Technological University Dublin. She has extensive experience as a manager, lecturer and researcher in third level institutions in Ireland and the US and over 10 years of experience as a consultant in the private sector. One focus of her academic research is on collaboration at both an organisational and inter-organisational level and she explores collaboration in networks, including food tourism networks. She is also interested in tourism skills development. She is currently involved in the Next Tourism Generation Alliance project, an EU funded project which includes education, training and industry partners from across Europe and is tasked with developing a Blueprint for addressing skills needs in the European tourism sector.

Ritchie Brent has coordinated several research projects including Sustainable Tourism CRC and consultancy work for a number of tourism organisations in the public and private sector in Australia, England, Vietnam and New Zealand. His research interests are associated with tourism risk management. His research has focused on understanding risk from an individual and organisational perspective. His work on organisations explores risk attitudes and response strategies to effectively respond and recover from crises and disasters. He also explores tourist attitudes to risk and their risk reduction behaviour, including beach goers, Australian outbound travellers and potential travellers to the Middle East and in Indonesia.

Jane Ali-Knight is currently leading and developing the festival and event subject group as well as lecturing at Universities internationally and facilitating training and development in the field. She is Course Director of the highly successful ‘Destination Leaders Programme’ delivered with Scottish Enterprise. Her core activities fall into three main areas: event and festival related programmes; research and publications and conferences and professional events. She is currently a board member of BAFA (British Arts and Festivals Association); Without Walls; Women in Tourism; Hidden Door Festival and is a Fellow of the HEA and Royal Society of the Arts.

Chairing the session will be Brian Lucey. He is Professor of Finance at the School of Business, Trinity College Dublin. A graduate of TCD with a First Class degree in Economics in 1984, Professor Lucey has worked as a statistician in the Department of Health and as an Economist in the Central Bank, prior to joining TCD. He has studied at graduate level in Canada, Ireland and Scotland, and holds a PhD from University of Stirling.

Covid19 and a Changing Society – TRiSS summer series

Trinity Research in Social Science (TRiSS), in partnership with its member schools and disciplines, is organising a weekly series of online events, over the summer, on how covid19 will change society. Each week, experts from Trinity and other leading institutions around the world will be bringing their insights on how covid19 is likely to change our lives – from corporate power and climate change to civil liberties and the future of tourism & travel.

The first event – “COVID-19 and the Future of Cities” – takes place on May 18th at 3pm Irish Standard Time and is co-hosted with the Department of Economics at Trinity College Dublin. Attendance is free but requires registration via Eventbrite. The webinar will last 75 minutes, with three 15-minute presentations and a moderated discussion afterwards. Participants include:

  • Prof. Edward Glaeser, Harvard University
  • Prof. Jessie Handbury, University of Pennsylvania
  • Prof. Diego Puga, CEMFI
  • Prof. Martina Kirchberger, Trinity College Dublin, as chair

Edward Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1992. He has published dozens of papers on cities economic growth, law, and economics. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1992. Some of his recent work examines how COVID-19 has affected small businesses.

Jessie Handbury is an Assistant Professor of Real Estate at the Wharton School in the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her BA and PhD at Columbia University and was selected as a NBER Faculty Research Fellow, International Trade and Investment. Her research interests lie at the intersection of urban economics, trade, and industrial organization. She has developed an exposure index based on smartphone app location data to help analysis during the current pandemic.

Martina Kirchberger is an Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin. She is a development economist with a particular interest in urbanization, infrastructure, the construction sector, labor markets, and spatial mobility. Previously, she was an Earth Institute Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Columbia University. She received her DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford in 2014. Some of her ongoing research examines the labor market effects of COVID-19 on low-skilled urban workers.

Diego Puga is Professor of Economics at CEMFI, in Madrid, Spain. His research interests include urban economics, economic geography and international trade. Born in Spain, where he completed his undergraduate degree in Economics, he obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics in 1997. He is member of the Multidisciplinary Workgroup advising the Spanish government on scientific issues related to COVID-19 and its future consequences.

Understanding the Covid19 pandemic and its consequences [SSISI online event, May 21]

The Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland invites you to attend a special Symposium on the covid19 pandemic, at the seventh and final Ordinary Meeting of its 173rd session. The meeting takes place online, at 4.30pm on Thursday May 21st.

The theme for the special symposium is “Understanding the Covid19 pandemic and its consequences” and its aim is to provide views from a number of different perspectives on the covid19 pandemic and what it means for policymakers and wider society. The symposium will be chaired by Society President Danny McCoy and will comprise six short contributions of no more than ten minutes, followed by a general discussion:

  1. Catherine Comiskey (Trinity College Dublin), “The epidemiology of Covid-19: Learning from the past and modelling for the future”
  2. Jean Acheson (Revenue Commissioners), “The impact of covid19 on income and employment: early evidence from administrative data”
  3. Reamonn Lydon (Central Bank of Ireland), “Measuring the economic impact of covid19 in real time”
  4. Conor Lambe (Danske Bank), “Covid19 and the Northern Irish economy: initial insights”
  5. Shana Cohen (TASC), “What has Covid-19 told us about inequality in Ireland?”
  6. Gerard Brady (Ibec), “Business in a compressed economy”

We are hosting the Syposium on the Zoom platform, which allows logging in through the Zoom app, through a web browser or by phone. To attend the event, please register here on Eventbrite, and the specific details for attending will be sent to you by email on Tuesday May 19th and again on the day of the event.

As always, non-members are welcome to attend and participate in the discussion. Given the format, you are encouraged to circulate this link to others who may be interested so that they may also register their interest and attend on the day.