Brian Lucey and I conducted a survey of all university teachers of economics and finance in December 2013. A presentation of our findings is here (.pdf). Brian’s thoughts are here.
The main results from the sample of respondents are:
Author: Stephen Kinsella
Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Limerick.
Organised jointly by the ESRI, Dublin Economic Workshop, UL, and UCD’s Geary Institute, this year’s policy conference (see previous years here and here) will be on the theme of economic policy after the bailout. This conference brings policy makers, politicians, civil servants and academics together to address this question of national importance. The venue will be the Institute of Bankers in the IFSC. (Click here for a map).
Date: 31st January 2013
Venue: Institute of Bankers, IFSC
Programme
9:15 – 10:45: Plenary: The Impact of the Crisis on Industrial Relations
Chair: Aedín Doris (NUI Maynooth)
- Kieran Mulvey (Labour Relations Commission) Prospects for Pay and Industrial Relations in the Irish Economy
- Shay Cody (IMPACT Trade Union) “The impact of the crisis on industrial relations – a public service focus”
- Michelle O’Sullivan/Tom Turner (University of Limerick) “The Crisis and Implications for Precarious Employment’”
10.45-11.15: Coffee Break
11:15 – 12:45: 2A. Migration and the Labour Market
Chair: Philip O’Connell (UCD Geary Institute)
- Piaras MacÉinrí (UCC) ‘Beyond the choice v constraint debate: some key findings from a recent representative survey on emigration’
- Peter Muhlau (TCD) “Social ties and the labour market integration of Polish migrants in Ireland and Germany”
- Alan Barrett (ESRI & TCD) and Irene Mosca (TCD) “The impact of an adult child’s emigration on the mental health of an older parent”
2B. Economics: Teaching and Practice
Chair: Ronan Gallagher (Dept of Public Expenditure and Reform)
- Brian Lucey (TCD): “Finance Education Before and After the Crash”
- Liam Delaney (Stirling): “Graduate Economics Education”
- Jeffrey Egan (McGraw-Hill Education) “The commercial interest in Third Level Education”
12:45 – 1:45: Lunch Break
1:45 – 3:15: 3A. Health and Recovery
Chair: Alex White, TD, Minister of State
- David Madden (UCD) “Health and Wealth on the Roller-Coaster: Ireland 2003-2011”
- Charles Normand TCD) and Anne Nolan (TCD & ESRI) “The impact of the economic crisis on health and the health system in Ireland”
- Paul Gorecki (ESRI) ‘Pricing Pharmaceuticals: Has Public Policy Delivered?”
3B. Fiscal Policy
Chair: Stephen Donnelly TD
- Seamus Coffey (UCC) “The continuing constraints on Irish fiscal policy”
- Diarmuid Smyth (IFAC) ‘IFAC: Formative years and the future’
- Rory O’Farrell, (NERI) “Supplying solutions in demanding times: the effects of various fiscal measures”
3:15 – 3:30: Coffee Break
3:30 – 5:00: Plenary: Debt, Default and Banking System Design
Chair: Fiona Muldoon (Central Bank of Ireland)
- Gregory Connor (NUI Maynooth) “An Economist’s Perspective on the Quality of Irish Bank Assets”
- Kieran McQuinn and Yvonne McCarthy (Central Bank of Ireland) “Credit conditions in a boom and bust property market”
- Colm McCarthy “Designing a Banking System for Economic Recovery”
- Ronan Lyons (TCD) “Household expectations and the housing market: from bust to boom???”
This conference receives no funding, so we have to charge to cover expenses like room hire, tea and coffee. The registration fee is €20, but free for students. Please click here or on the link below to pay the fee, then register by attaching your payment confirmation to an e-mail with your name and affiliation to emma.barron@ucd.ie. [Block bookings can be made by purchasing the required number of registrations and then sending the list of names to emma.barron@ucd.ie]
This Christmas, along with the usual socks, ties, and shoe polishing kits (no, not really), my presents given and received included quite a few economics books, and book vouchers. Here are the ones I got as presents–which ones do you think we should all look at in the next few months? Put a link (and just one link, as comments with more than one link need to be approved) in the comments.
The Battle of Bretton Woods. This book by Benn Steil shows us the story of how Bretton Woods negotiations evolved, how Keynes and US bureaucrat Harry Dexter White fought over the design of the post war international economy, and how White turned out, in the end, to be a Soviet spy. The book is riveting so far.
Political Arithmetic: Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics. This book is a scientific biography of Nobellist Simon Kuznets and a trip through the development of national income accounting. The writing is somewhat turgid in places, but in fairness, it is hard to make the NIPA sexy.
The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value. This is an attempt to understand why prizes proliferate in modern society, and why they are so important as signalling devices. The writing is great and it is an ambitious work of sociology.
The 28th annual Irish Economic Association Conference will be held at the Castletroy Park Hotel, Limerick on Thursday May 8th and Friday May 9th, 2014. The ESR guest lecture will be given by Rachel Griffith (Manchester) and the Edgeworth Lecture by Jordi Gali (CREI). Submissions can be made through this site, the deadline for submitted articles is February 7th, 2014.
Today’s CSO readings are good news and should be seen in their recent historical context.
News headlines are pointing to the ‘domestic’ part of the economy experiencing an uptick. Let’s look at final domestic demand as one measure of this. The two figures below bear this out, with the latest data coloured in red, and the series indexed to 2008 Q1, the peak of final domestic demand. The first plots out the movement from 2002 until 2013 Q3, the second from 2010.
The clear uptick can be seen, but the economy is obviously still fragile and the uptick, in the context of a rather demand-depressed economy, shouldn’t be overstated.
