Greg Mankiw links to an interesting article by Chicago Economist Steven J Davis on policies to foster job creation in the US. The article is short and to the point, and is for the most part relevant to the Irish debate. It is mostly sceptical of employer subsidies and puts forward, among other things, reduction in the minimum wage and vigorous experiments with back-to-work programmes.
Author: Liam Delaney
The Sunday Business Post reports that the sentence in the programme for government referring to individual debt likely refers to the potential introduction of individual voluntary insolvency arrangements in Ireland. Worth some discussion of this in the context of the ongoing concern about negative equity in Ireland.
Joseph Stiglitz appeared on PrimeTime last night and RTE have also made the extended interview available. He made extremely strong statements arguing against the NAMA approach, as well as advocating mortgage mitigation, and better measurement of societal well-being.
An important contribution to the economic debate by David Duffy of the ESRI. The paper estimates approximately 196,000 households in negative equity consequent on anticipated house price declines next year. Its main policy conclusion is the advocacy of policies that allow delaying of mortgage payments rather than write-downs.
What Should Be Done About Rising Unemployment in the OECD?
by David N.F. Bell, David G. Blanchflower
(September 2009)
Abstract:
There is a growing belief that the recession has run its course and that the goods market has started a period of slow, but sustainable, recovery. Improvement in the labor market may take some time, but many believe that unemployment will return to its 2007 level in the medium term. In this paper, we argue that recovery is by no means guaranteed and that the consequences for unemployment may be worse than anticipated.