The (merchandise) trade statistics released by the CSO today showed that exports fell in December (here). “From a November high of €8,252m, seasonally adjusted exports decreased by 9% to €7,503m in December… A substantial part of the decline in the value of exports was due to a high value product in the Chemicals and related products sector coming off patent in December”.
This is the beginning of the “bad news (for Ireland) from big pharma” that I posted on back in December.
Anthony Murphy, now at the Dallas Fed, is a renowned Irish econometrician with a strong research interest in housing markets. Back in 2004 he was commissioned by the National Competitiveness Council to study the competitiveness implications of the housing boom.
The first paragraph of his report read: “Ireland’s booming housing market has attracted and continues to attract a considerable amount of attention, both domestically and internationally. Irish house prices are extremely high by historic and international standards, both in absolute terms and relative to incomes. The strength and duration of the house price boom is unique. Many other countries and regions have experienced large house prices booms. However, at least in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, most of these booms have ended in a house price bust.”
The report, which is here, was obviously written in very judicious language but was highly critical of the fiscal contribution to the boom. (His demolition in Section 3.5 of many of the research papers written on the boom is also well worth reading). The NCC declined to publish it. Though I have a good deal of respect for Forfás and the NCC in general, I am forced to ask: how much attention might it have received, and might it have made any difference, if it had been published?
As part of its fortieth anniversary celebrations, the Department of Geography at NUI Maynooth is organising a one-day conference on Networks and Flows in Economic Space. National and international academics will present papers on export flows, spin-off networks, innovation networks, finance networks, multinational global production networks and regional development. The keynote speaker is Henry Wai-Chung Yeung, Professor of Economic Geography at the National University of Singapore.
Free Registration at: geography.department@nuim.ie
Conference details and list of speakers here.
For further information, contact: chris.vanegeraat@nuim.ie
We have reached the long-awaited “patent cliff”. Lipitor, which Pfizer produces in Ireland, has just gone off patent and others are set to follow shortly. Big Pharma’s new product pipelines are sparse. Bloomberg reported on this a few weeks ago here.
I don’t think Chris Van Egeraat is quite as pessimistic as he appears to be in the article, and he tells me that the figures quoted come from Bloomberg’s database rather than from him.
Furthermore, Big Pharma is fighting back. And we know that mergers and acquisitions in the sector have increased in recent years, against trend, as the pharma companies diversify into biotech, from which the new innovations are likely to emerge. (See the section on pharmaceuticals, pps. 16-17, here).
But worrying all the same!
My take on it went out as an op-ed on Bloomberg today. (I’m not responsible for the headline!). It’s quite similar to KOR’s and CMcC’s, which is hardly surprising since we have been ad idem on this for more than a decade, though my repeat of the phrase I used some months ago – coup d’etat – might strike some as excessive (though it came from paying attention to Garret FitzGerald). By the way, I see that Ciaran O’Hagan asked, in a comment on KOR’s piece, about the decision to sever the link with sterling. Patrick Honohan and Gavin Murphy have written on this. The final sentence of the abstract shows how prevalent was the mindset displayed by Stephen Collins in his article in last Saturday’s Irish Times. (I agree with Karl that this must be one of the least insightful articles to appear over the current debate). I emphasised to Kevin Myers on some radio show at the time of the single currency debate that there was no clash between my nationalism and my recognition of the continuing importance to Ireland of our economic links with the UK. In fact I argued that this was an indication of the maturity of political attitudes on our side of the debate.