10 Years On – How Ireland has Changed Since the Financial Crisis – Highlights from the Conference

Videos of the keynote speeches by former Central Bank of Ireland governor Patrick Honohan and playwright and author Colin Murphy at last Friday’s conference at NUI Galway to mark the 1oth anniversary of the financial crisis can be found here on the website of the Whitaker Institute. I strongly recommend both. Audio podcasts of the two associated panel discussions will be posted shortly.

Sharon Donnery (Deputy Governor, Central Bank of Ireland) speech on macroprudential policy

The Department of Economics, Finance & Accounting at Maynooth University welcomes Sharon Donnery, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, who will deliver a talk on “Building resilience in the face of uncertainty – what role for policy?”, followed by a panel discussion, chaired by Bridget McNally (Maynooth University) with panelists Robert Kelly (Central Bank, Head of Macro-Finance Division), Dermot O’Leary (Chief Economist at Goodbody Stockbrokers), and Gregory Connor (Maynooth University), on Thursday 31st May 2018,  at 11am – 12:15 pm, Renehan Hall, Maynooth University. R.S.V.P. EconFinAcc@mu.ie. For further information tel: 01-7083728 / 7083681

Conniffe and Norvartis Prizes

The annual conference of the Irish Economic Association was held on the 10th and 11th of May at the Central Bank. More than 160 people attended the conference.

Alejandra Ramos (TCD) was awarded the Conniffe Prize for best paper by a young economist at the conference. Alejandra received the prize for her paper titled “Household Decision Making with Violence: Implications for Transfer Programs”.

Benjamin Elsner (UCD) and Florin Wozny (IZA) won the Novartis prize for the best paper in Health Economics at the conference. The winning paper was titled ” The human capital cost of radiation: Long run evidence from exposure outside the womb”

Prof Wendy Carlin (UCL) and CORE gave the ESR lecture “The Econ 101 paradigm is broken – what is the alternative?” Her slides from the talk

IEA Dublin ESR Guest Lecture 2018

Prof Olivier Blanchard (Peterson Institute) gave the Edgeworth lecture “Should we reject the natural rate hypothesis” His slides from the talk

Edgeworth Lecture IEA 2018

On the IEA website there are plenty of pictures from the conference

http://www.iea.ie/category/latest-news/

Gerard O’Reilly

Macroprudential Regulation Conference: Change of Date

The conference on macroprudential regulation originally scheduled for September 4th has been postponed to Friday, January 29th, 2016. See here for all details on the conference. A full programme will be provided closer to the date.

Canada Day

Yesterday, the First of July, was Canada Day.

Discussing  the crisis in the Eurozone with some visiting Canadian relatives led to the question How stable is the Canadian currency union?

At first sight it seems to be much more stable than its European counterpart. The Canadian banking system is renowned for its solidness. It is dominated by five national banks that operate coast to coast, supervised by the much-admired Bank of Canada.  There is a large national budget that includes important elements of inter-provincial fiscal equalization. Internal labour mobility is relatively high.

But on the other hand the provincial governments are not constrained in their borrowing, there are enormous differences between the economic structures of the provinces, and there is always the Quebec question.

In fact, to a surprising extent, the stability of the Canadian union appears to depend on the fact that, as the author of this article puts it,”there are no Greeces here”.  He draws attention to flaws in the design of the Canadian currency union that could come home to roost some day.