The Irish Economy

In December, I blogged about the gas interconnector, the Shannon LNG terminal, and the need for regulatory reform in the wholesale gas market.

Last week, the European Commission chipped in. It is taking Ireland to court over the lack of competition in the market for gas between Scotland and Northern Ireland, and between Ireland north and south. Intriguingly, the UK is sued as well, although most of this is Irish rules on UK soil.

John Fingleton gave a great presentation at last week’s conference on the Irish economy. Among other things, he argued that competition policy in Ireland exists by virtue of the European Union.

(h/t Paul Hunt)

The concept of “fire sale prices” is a useful one in many contexts – some examples are the October 19th 1987 US stock market crash, the LTCM crisis of 1998, and the 2007-8 US credit-liquidity crisis. In all three of these cases, security prices crashed in a particular sub-market, policymakers stepped in providing extraordinary credit-liquidity support, and eventually (quickly in the first two cases, slowly in the last) the capital market situation normalized. Unfortunately, “fire sale prices” is a useless or even harmful analytical tool for understanding the current Irish financial predicament. A better term for current conditions in Irish asset markets is stagnation prices rather than fire sale prices. Policymakers should look to Japan circa 1991 and the following two decades, rather than the USA, for a useful historical precedent. The fire sale concept gives the wrong policy guidance in the Irish situation; it is metaphorically like trying to use a fire hose to drain a swamp.

Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny have a series of papers exploring the use of the fire sale concept in modelling financial markets. There has been a large outpouring of papers by other authors with similar or related models, but the Shleifer and Vishny model is clear and simple and their survey is particularly good. They provide a definition:

“A fire sale is essentially a forced sale of an asset at a dislocated price…. Assets sold in fire sales can trade at prices far below value in best use, causing severe losses to sellers.”

They discuss how fire sales can cause financial and macroeconomic instability via credit and liquidity channels. In a related paper they laud US policymakers for their prompt and correct response in 2007-9 in injecting massive credit and liquidity into the markets for mortgage-related and credit-related securities caught up in the fire sale environment of 2007-9.

Fire sale mitigation policies are unusual as economic policies in that, as a rule, they should result in a net profit for the policymaker. This follows from the theory of the limits to arbitrage. This certainly seems to apply in the US case – the Federal Reserve made a trading profit of $79.3 billion in 2010 and $76.9 billion in 2011. The Fed vastly outperformed the best-performing hedge fund both years, at U.S. civil service pay rates, and without actually trying to make a profit. TARP was also profitable or near profitable, after an adjustment for the expensive but necessary bail-out of the US automobile industry. This is the nature of fire sale mitigation policies – they are about buying securities slightly below fair value and holding them temporarily on government account while injecting liquidity and credit.

The bad news is that this has near-zero relevance for Ireland. Irish asset markets are not suffering from a fire sale problem but rather from a long-horizon stagnation problem. The appropriate comparison case is not from the USA but rather Japan circa 1990. Japanese policymakers and financial institutions worked endlessly to slow the pace of adjustment, leading to an almost twenty year period of stagnation, suppressing growth and business innovation, and leaving a massive overhang of government debt. Irish asset markets need to be forced to adjust quickly and reach their new (much lower) equilibrium values with un-frozen free trading and clear, public pricing. This applies to banks, collateralized pools of debt, commercial leases, and commercial and residential property. Preventing this from happening is not preventing a “fire sale” rather it is guaranteeing a long stagnation. It could even last twenty years, as in Japan.

Another question – what is it about the US environment that gives rise to fire-sale-induced financial crises of typically short duration? Part of the answer lies in the USA lead in financial innovation. New financial innovations were key to all three fire-sale market crashes mentioned in the first paragraph of this post (portfolio insurance, statistical arbitrage, and numerous CDO innovations, respectively). High-frequency trading (the most recent big innovation) will be the likely cause of the next fire-sale-related crash, if one comes in the USA.* Ireland seems to avoid these fire-sale crashes, but is plagued instead by long-lasting periods of stagnation. Let us hope the current one is not dragged out for a decade.

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*A post-script on HFT and the Tobin tax. After my last blogpost, Frank Barry asked me to give more details about Tobin’s use of the term “sand in the wheels” and its application in old-fashioned engineering. I do not know that much about the engineering use of sand in the wheels – I only heard Tobin discussing it in an interview. I now know that historically the sand in the wheels technique was used in the case of a metal (steel or iron) wheel aligned on a track and needing better grip, such as an old-fashioned railway wheel on a wet track. It is used for wheel-type mechanisms and not for gears with teeth. See Wikipedia for some details for those with an interest. I remember Tobin saying he was annoyed that many commentators mistook him as suggesting sabotage, and I remembered that key idea correctly. Sand in the wheels is a technique to improve, not hinder, performance.

In the comments on my piece on Irish Water, Paul Hunt reports back from his attempt to get the costings for water metering etc from the PWC report. This request was refused as it would be “commercially sensitive”.

To cite Paul, this is balderdash.

Irish Water will be 100% state-owned. Citizens of Ireland (of two of which I am the legal guardian) have the right to know what is going on in a company they (will) own.

Ireland is an unwilling party to the Aarhus Convention, which grants access to data except “where such confidentiality [of commercial and industrial information] is protected by law in order to protect a legitimate economic interest”. As Irish Water will be a monopoly, I do not think there is a “legitimate” economic interest in hiding data.

Unfortunately, state-owned companies have made a habit of hiding behind “commercial sensitivity” when there is none.

The most recent Final Conference to Save the Euro ended in disarray when the UK refused to sign up to a proposed set of EU treaty changes. The UK’s veto was due to the inclusion of an EU-wide Tobin Tax on security transactions in the set of proposals. The justification for an international Tobin Tax is quite strong. Hypercompetitive securities markets with excessively-large trading volumes and hyper-fast price changes are a serious danger to global financial stability. A Tobin Tax would eliminate these dangerous trading excesses without impinging much on underlying market efficiency. On other hand, the UK government’s refusal to sign up to an EU-only Tobin Tax, imposed on the City of London while the US and Asian global financial centres remain outside the tax net, was an obvious and sensible policy decision for the UK.

After the proposed EU treaty changes were restricted to a coalition of the willing, the Irish government fretted that a Tobin Tax might particularly disadvantage the Irish financial services industry, given that the UK will be outside the tax net.

What should be Ireland’s policy stance toward an international Tobin Tax? Should Ireland do the right thing as a global citizen by supporting such a tax within the Eurozone, or should it protect its international financial services industry from UK (and non-EU) predation and therefore veto any such tax proposal? It would be much better for all concerned if the Tobin Tax could be imposed at a global rather than EU level.

Sometime in the future, May 6th 2010 might rank with August 9th 2007 as a “warning date” for a subsequent financial market disaster. Recall that starting on August 9th 2007, quant-trading hedge funds experienced an extremely turbulent, credit-market-related meltdown. Although the quant-trading markets calmed down after about two weeks, many analysts now recognize this as an early warning signal of the subsequent global credit crisis. In an interesting parallel, on May 6th 2010, high-frequency trading systems generated a “flash crash” of US equity markets, causing a 9% fall and 9% rise of the US stock market within a 20 minute period. Some individual stock prices went bananas; completed trades at crazy prices during this short “flash crash” period were annulled that evening by the NYSE board. Since the markets righted themselves within a day or two, many analysts have forgotten about this incident. But could this “flash crash” be an early warning sign of a subsequent “permo-crash”? High frequency trading (HFT), using entirely computerized systems to trade at hyper-second frequency, now constitutes 70% of US equity and equity-related (equity baskets, futures, options) trading volume, and 30% in the UK. If HFT generates a flash-crash at the end of the trading day, rather than mid-day as on May 6th, and something else goes wrong at the same time, it could lead to an enormous disaster.

Tobin originally proposed his tax for the foreign exchange market, which was the first financial market to have hyper-competitive trading costs. He saw that most of the trading volume in forex markets provided very little economic value. A small tax would have a big influence on trading volume, rendering purely speculative and potentially destabilizing trading strategies unprofitable, while having little or no impact on the real economic value of these markets. Tobin called it “throwing sand in the wheels” of securities market trading. Nowadays, Tobin’s “sand in the wheels” metaphor is widely misunderstood. Tobin was a World War Two naval officer and throwing sand in the wheels was an accepted way to improve machine performance in his day. For mid-twentieth century machinery a little sand in the wheels would slow down the mechanism (think of something like a navy ship’s water pumps) and make for more reliable performance with less chance of overheating. With modern precision engineering the notion of “sand in the wheels” as a repair method seems ridiculous, so commentators assume Tobin is advocating sabotage of securities markets. That was not what he meant – “sand in the wheels” is an old-fashioned procedure to slow down machinery so that performance improves, not a means of sabotage. Oddly, the tax is designed to generate minimum revenue – it relies on the elasticity of trading volume to net costs, and tries to drive out destabilizing short-term trading strategies while collecting minimal tax revenue.

Now, after decades of hard-fought liberalization, US and UK equity markets have the same hyper-competitive trading costs as forex markets. HFT has hijacked this and feeds off this market cost improvement (and by earning net profits from “normal” market traders) with trading systems that add little real efficiency improvement for markets. Eliminating their net profits with a small tax would do little harm, and make markets safer. The very bright computer scientists who run these HFT firms could go back to socially useful activities like designing better software.

There is another interesting parallel to the global credit crisis. US housing regulators worked for thirty years to increase access to owner-occupied housing for lower and middle income households and this was a big success. Then, they took that policy too far, and the policy was hijacked by self-interested actors in the US property lending and securities trading sectors. There was too much of a good thing in terms of the too-low-credit-quality US residential property lending market. The same applies now with securities market trading costs and trading access. Regulators have succeeded in driving out bad securities trading practices and greatly lowering trading costs, but this process has gone too far. It has been hijacked by HFT. I call this the Too Much of a Good Thing (TMGT) theory of regulatory capture.

During the credit bubble, Ireland enthusiastically joined the dumb-down contest to impose the minimal possible regulation on the financial services sector. Perhaps now Irish policy leaders could make amends by joining the push for a Tobin Tax.

How would a Tobin tax impact the competitive draw of Dublin for its brand of “off shore” financial services? Perhaps it would be the death knell for the Irish stock exchange since all trading volume might migrate to London. Ireland policymakers should encourage a global solution, bringing the US and UK in particular into the plan. Asian markets (which are not yet competitive for HFT) might be willing to cooperate as well, since there is no great cost for them.

The Examiner has a story on the proposed LNG terminal at Tarbert in the Shannon estuary. This is a privately funded project and a welcome stimulus for North Kerry. As long as the developers play within the rules, public policy analysts should have no opinion on such matters. But as the gas market is so heavily regulated, private actors affect the public good. The LNG terminal would, for instance, improve the security of supply, which is very valuable.

Minister Rabbitte argues that Shannon LNG would increase the price of gas. This is absurd at first sight. Increased competition should reduce the price. The minister is right, though. To see why, we need to consider the gas interconnector from Scotland that lands in Gormanston in Co Meath, or rather the way in which its price is regulated: The annual cost of the pipe is distributed over the gas it carries.

The interconnector is a competitor’s wet dream. If you capture a small part of the gas market, the interconnector will increase its price — because its annual cost is distributed over a smaller volume. You can then increase your price to just below that of the interconnector and gain yet more market share. And the interconnector will raise its price again.

The solution surely is to change the regulation of the interconnector rather than to block the LNG terminal. The current regulation, which may date back to the days of Minister Woods or Fahey, is a neat example of something that makes sense in the short run only.

Note the separation of powers. Minister Rabbitte is the executive branch of government and an influential part of the legislative, he appoints and controls the budget of the regulator, and he is the trustee for the shareholders (us) of the dominant company in the market.

As has already been noted the Government is in the process of implementing a commitment in the EU/IMF aid package to re-regulate aspects of the legal profession in Ireland with a view to enhancing competitiveness in the sector. The Legal Services Regulation Bill has been controversial in some of its aspects and UCD School of Law is hosting a conference, drawing in a variety of overseas and local experts, with a view to locating debates within a wider international context.The keynote speaker will be Lynn Mather, Professor of Law & Political Science, Buffalo University. Other speakers include Isolde Goggin, Chair of the Competition Authority, Julian Webb, Professor of Legal Education, University of Warwick and Ferdinand von Prondzynski, Principal of Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. A full programme and online booking facilities are available at http://www.ucd.ie/reggov/.

The government has announced that it will sell a minority share of the ESB. This is welcome news. Privatization of non-core activities is a matter of principle. The ESB has paid poor dividends. It has frequently been used to bankroll projects of dubious commercial (yet clear electoral) value. Selling a minority share is a low risk strategy for price discovery and much better than a fire sale.

So far so good. However, the government also announced that it would keep the ESB “as an integrated utility”. The ESB is a conglomerate. It generates power, it owns the transmission network, it sells electricity, and it provides consultancy services.

The network is a natural monopoly, and should probably not be sold. The rest of the ESB can be safely left to the market (if properly regulated).

As an integrated utility with a natural monopoly, The ESB enjoys considerably market power. The nominally independent transmission system operator, EirGrid, gets electrons from ESB, transmits them over lines owned by the ESB, and delivers them to the ESB (who then retails them). The ESB’s dominant position is the main reason why few companies have entered the Irish electricity market.

Today’s announcement suggests that the government plans to continue the current situation. It would make more sense to sell the network to EirGrid. The price of such a sale matters because the ESB is part-owned by an ESOP; and because the ESB is using the network as collateral for cheap loans.

The future ESB will therefore face three demands, compared to two now. The workers will want well-paid jobs, as they had in the past. The political masters will want their pet projects, as they had in the past. And the private owners will want dividends. The consumer will have to pay for all of this.

The Dept Environment is now moving to change the regulation of waste collection from “competition in the market” to “competition for the market”. The reason is simple: Economies of density. In my street, we have three bins (black, green, brown) and four companies collecting bins. Every fourth Monday, no less than 12 waste trucks drive up our road, to the delight of the children and the annoyance of drivers. Three trucks (one company) could do the same work for a little more than a quarter of the cost. Even after allowing for monopoly mark-ups, there would be cost savings for households. Market power would be limited if tendering is competitive and concessions are short (waste trucks are mobile).

A perfectly sensible move by the Department so.

In today’s Irish Times, this is spun (and again) as a way to promote incineration. This is nonsense. At the surface, “competition for the market” was a recommendation in the International Review commissioned by the previous minister, and in the Gorecki report of the ESRI.

The markets for waste collection and waste disposal are largely separated; economies of vertical integration are small. Nonetheless, Irish waste collectors have vertically integrated with waste disposal. The competition in waste collection is such that hardly any money is made. The market for waste disposal would be lucrative with the EU cap on landfill and without additional incineration, but the Poolbeg incinerator would undercut the price of any other disposal technology except landfill. If waste collection would be run as a profit center, waste would be sent for incineration.

Competition for the market will allow waste collectors to make money in their core business again.

‘Competition and consumer choice’ has become a policy mantra to shake up dozy and inefficient industries and to benefit consumers.  EU and national policy-makers and regulators have expended huge effort - and continue to expend effort - to complete the internal EU markets in electricity and gas in line with this mantra.  But all that has been achieved is to move from vertically integrated national monopolists in the individual member-states to a pan-European oligopoly comprised of 12 members (responsible for 85% of EU energy supply) and some residual dominant national incumbents.  (Successive Irish government, not surprisingly, have implemented their own cunning variation on a theme.)

So how did this happen - and what can be done?  The Troika is demanding some action on electricity and gas in Ireland.  The solution outlined has relevance to sectors that, at first sight, appear unlikely candidates. (more…)

A number of the papers/presentations from last week’s Competition Authority conference are now available: see here. 

Last night’s The Frontline programme had an interesting discussion on competition in the market for GPs, among other topics related to the functioning of the health care system: see here. 

Coming soon . . . a guest post by regular IE contributor Paul Hunt on the failures of the “competition model” in key utility industries.

This article by Martin Walsh in the Irish Times has some convincing analysis (unfortunately the graphics are not shown in the on-line version), and some thought-provoking comments on the Irish government policy conundrum regarding residential house prices.  As Martin Walsh notes, to minimize expected future (state-owned) bank losses and Nama losses, policymakers must hope that prices have now fallen to their steady-state equilibrium level.  But for the purposes of restoring competitiveness, continued house price decreases would be better. 

“… it seems that there is a real dilemma at the heart of national policy. Do we prioritise competitiveness by bringing house prices back into line with incomes or keep them inflated in the hope of reducing further losses to the banks and Nama (National Asset Management Agency), as well as containing the extent of negative equity?”

Most importantly, by most long-term metrics, current house prices in Ireland still seem to be above sustainable levels.  

What actions (if any) should Irish policymakers pursue regarding stabilizing the residential housing market, and to what ends?    

The report of the Review Group on State Assets and Liabilities has been published here. While some of the key recommendations had been signalled over recent days in the media there is a lot of detail in the report. Apart from the recommendations on asset disposal there are lots of recommendations on the regulation and governance of state bodies. 

An article by Eoin O’Dell, Trinity School of Law explains how. You can read it here.

The latest quarterly report on mortgage arrears from the Central Bank is available here. The report shows a continuation of the steady increase in the fraction of mortgages that are more than 90 days in arrears. This fraction rose from 4.6% in June to 5.1% in September, in line with the previous increases over the past year.

Minister Ryan has come out against the privatisation of state-owned energy companies, for three reasons.

First, the minister states that these companies are investing, and implies that these investments would disappear if the companies would be privatised. That suggests that part of the current investment plans make no commercial sense. It would therefore be good to scrap those investments.

Second, the minister states that the companies paid a 320 mln euro dividend in 2009. The return on capital of ESB and BGE is a respectable 9.4%, but the return to the owner is only 4.3%. Ten year bonds are at 8.1% now, so a sale would be profitable to the Irish taxpayer.

Third, the minister states that splitting the companies would increase their cost of capital. A split is necessary because the network infrastructure is a natural monopoly that should remain in state ownership. Essentially, the minister claims that ESB and BGE use capital cross-subsidies between their activities. The value of the parts is therefore greater than the value of the total.

In sum, the minister has given three excellent reasons why the state-owned energy companies should be privatised.

is here

Paul unsurprisingly focuses on regulation and energy. The piece starts with some common misconceptions about energy prices before arguing the case of vertical disintegration and privatisation.

We made a submission to the Review Group on State Assets and Liabilities.

We argue for privatisation of everything that is not a natural monopoly, but not without proper regulation first. We also say that the government should stop giving away intangible assets. We cast the net a bit wider than the interim mandate of An Bord Strip.

CT&T, a specialist manufacture of all-electric vehicles with big ambitions, has decided to put its European headquarters in … Amsterdam.

Apparently, they plan to build 20,000 vehicles next year and 60,000 in 2013. Wikipedia has nice pictures. Would you pay €15,000 for that?

We need to cut costs and increase productivity to pay the mounting debt. It is disconcerting that Ireland dropped from being the 22nd most competitive economy in 2009 to the 29th in 2010, according to the World Economic Forum.

People pay attention to the overall indicator and rank, but the subindicators tell the real story. There are no surprises, really, but it is a sobering read.

Here are some the negative trends:

*Public trust of politicians: 37 to 65

– higher numbers are worse, as countries are ranked from 1 to 139

*Wastefulness of government spending: 45 to 93

*Burden of government regulation: 61 to 87

*Efficiency of legal framework: 22 to 27

*Government deficit: 55 to 130

*Savings rate: 75 to 119

*Government debt: 51 to 112

*Intensity of local competition: 39 to 51

*Time required to start a business: 24 to 45

*Brain drain: 10 to 19

*Financing through local equity market: 51 to 105

*Ease of access to loans: 19 to 117

*Soundness of banks: 9 to 139 (bottom of the pile)

*Regulation of security exchanges: 16 to 90

*Capacity for innovation: 26 to 31

*Government procurement of advanced tech: 43 to 75

There are positive trends too:

*Quality of infrastructure (6 indices, all up)

*Inflation: 48 to 3

*Interest rate: 63 to 11 (I guess the data are older than a few weeks)

*Pay and productivity: 76 to 56

Ireland is still the best place in the world if you worry about malaria. The judiciary is still strong. And foreign investors are still treated well.

My piece in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post builds on my post of last week. I also included elements of the discussion (thanks!), particularly expanding the bits on import substitution. Having studied in the Netherlands, import substitution was long ago and far away, so I would understand why the average Dutchie would be oblivious to its drawbacks. In Ireland, on the other hand, this policy was tried in living memory.

One of my recommendations is apparently already being followed up.

This is old hat. Blame too much summer travel. It is worth highlighting nonetheless.

The High Court ruled in favour of a private bus company, trying to compete with Dublin Bus. The judge said the regulator was wrong to allow the subsidized, state-owned incumbent to share a route with a private operator. The judge berated the consultant to the regulator. The judge also ruled that the regulator wrongly delayed the processing of an application for a second license.

This is good news in itself, and it sets a precedent for future cases (although the legislation is about to change).

Note that the High Court implied that, for urban bus transport, competition should be for the market rather than in the market. That is right for all but the busiest routes.

As has been widely reported the Minister for Finance has established a Review Group on State Assets that is chaired by Colm McCarthy.

The terms of reference are:

While most comments in the media have interpreted the focus on asset disposals to refer only to privatisation, it is perfectly possible that the various state companies hold assets that might not be essential for the efficient running of these businesses and thus could be disposed of without privatisation.

In relation to privatisation it will be important not only to consider the short-run gain in funds through the sale of assets, but the longer-run impact on the competitiveness of the economy. Long-run considerations should include the loss of control of national strategic assets that would result from a sale. This might be addressed by keeping the key infrastructures such as networks in public ownership.

In some cases it might also be useful to consider a long-term lease as an alternative to an outright sale of assets, which will also yield revenue up-front but avoids the ’selling off of family silver’. Joint ownership is another option.

Looking through the list of assets to be reviewed it is hard to ignore the differences in ownership patterns with many other countries. Electricity generation, ports and airports are private in many countries.

Yesterday Eurostat released their annual comparison of food prices. It shows that the prices in Ireland are the second highest in the EU after Denmark. What is more worrying is that instead of coming down faster in Ireland than in other countries food prices were actually relatively higher in 2009 than in 2008 or 2007. Irish consumers pay 29.2% more than the EU average. While Italy and Finland improved their relative price levels all other Euro members disimproved. The biggest relative improvement was recorded by Iceland, followed by Sweden and Poland.

The World Economic Forum has released its latest Global Information Technology Report, highlighting the “Networked Readiness Index”. I do not know what that means, but it probably has something to do with the Smart Economy, the government plan that is mentioned in the introductory chapter of the report. Ireland ranks 24th, towards the bottom of the rich countries and at par with the best of the middle-income countries.

The index consists of 3 subindices, each consisting of three subsubindices, derived from a total of 68 indicators.

As everything depends on the arbitrary weighting of the indicators, it is more instructive to look at the bottom level indicators.

Ireland is 24th out of 133 assessed countries. What is dragging us down? I’ll list the indicators on which Ireland is 48th or lower:

• Burden of government regulation: 74th
• Intensity of local competition: 49th
• Time to enforce a contract: 60th
• Residential telephone connection charge: 92nd
• Residential telephone subscription: 118th
• Fixed telephone line tariffs: 52nd
• Business telephone connection charge: 76th
• Business telephone subscription: 92nd
• Availability of new telephone lines: 53rd
• Government prioritization of ICT: 63rd
• Government procurement of ICT: 59th
• Importance of ICT to government vision: 56th
• Government success in ICT promotion: 64th

There is no need to comment on the above.

Ireland scores well on a number of things (12th or higher):

• Judicial independence: 9th
• Number of procedures to enforce a contract: 1st
• Level of competition: 1st
• Quality of education: 8th
• ICT imports: 1st
• ICT exports: 10th

This topic has found its way onto another thread, and given that it has occupied lots of newspaper space and airtime over the last few days it is probably useful to discuss it here in terms of the economic issues. This has been a bit like a tennis match with the ball going back and forth for some time so it is hard to keep track of all the points.

On the one side we have Michael O’Leary who claims he wants to (re)create 300 jobs, but needs Hangar 6. On the other side we have Mary Coughlan and the DAA who say Hangar 6 is not available, as Aer Lingus has a lease on it.

While Michael O’Leary appears happy for other airports to build a facility for him, he does not seem to want the DAA or, given that he appears to prefers not to deal with them, the IDA to build a new hangar for him at Dublin airport. It would appear that the reason for this is cost - he claimed on radio that hangar 6 would be available at a low cost. No doubt Aer Lingus is also getting it at a low cost. In the debate some have argued that Ryanair is pursuing a different agenda - to open Hangar 6 as a terminal. Ryanair say they would be happy to sign a legal agreement preventing them from doing so. So what is this all about??

In a letter to the Irish Times the chairman of Aer Lingus, Colm Barrignton, makes the point that hangar 6 is the only hangar at Dublin airport capable of accommodating wide bodied planes, and that it is extensively used. Could the ability to accommodate wide bodied planes be the key to this scrap? At the moment Ryanair do not have any such aircraft, but might Ryanair have plans to get into the medium- and long-haul business? Aquiring hangar 6 would allow them to build a base in Dublin while at the same time discommoding Aer Lingus, which would be a competitor in that market?

There is a new CEPR report on this topic -  this VOX column provides a summary.

Following up on yesterday’s post about farmers and the IFA, today’s Irish Times reports that the government “is to introduce a statutory code of conduct for grocery retailers and suppliers, in spite of opposition from the bigger operators.” It is also being introduced despite opposition from the ESRI and the Competition Authority. Still, “newly elected president of the IFA, John Bryan, welcomed the announcement.”

For most people, one of the few positive elements of the current slump is that the sharp decline in the cost of living has somewhat cushioned the blow of declining nominal incomes. But deflation has not been a good thing for everyone. In particular, farmers have been hard hit by declining food prices.

One can only have sympathy for farmers who are struggling with current market conditions. However, the current campaign by the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) aimed at blaming retailers for falling prices is based on poor economics and its calls for policy intervention should be resisted by government.

(more…)

With three colleagues Seán Diffney, Seán Lyons and Laura Malaguzzi Valeri, we have recently published a series of papers on the economics of the electricity industry in Ireland. The conclusions are summarised in a Research Bulletin published today. There is also an article in today’s Irish Times.

The original papers are:

DIFFNEY, S., J. FITZ GERALD, S. LYONS and L. MALAGUZZI VALERI, 2009. “Investment in Electricity Infrastructure in a Small Isolated Market: the Case of Ireland,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 469-487. Available here. We will release a working paper with additional results on this topic in the next few days.

MALAGUZZI VALERI, L., 2009. “Welfare and Competition Effects of Electricity Interconnection Between Great Britain and Ireland”, Energy Policy, Vol. 37, pp. 4679-4688. available here. An earlier version is available as a working paper.

A guest post by Paul Hunt

The case for a pro-cyclical fiscal contraction accompanied by a significant “internal devaluation” has been convincingly demonstrated by many commentators and, in particular, on this site by Philip Lane (most recently here).

But Philip has been equally strong on the requirement to tackle rent capture and inefficiencies that increase costs and prices and, to some extent, justify calls for the retention of current nominal pay levels, as in:

“As a complement to pay reductions, it is also vital to more vigorously tackle monopoly power in many sectors of the economy, since a reduction in markups and monopoly rents (often shared between owners, managers and workers in these firms) is an important source of real depreciation and improved competitiveness.” (Irish Economy Note9, p3)

However, apart from a recognition of the importance of this task, it appears that little attention is being paid to what could be done in the short to medium term. There can be no doubt that the bubble economy facilitated increased rent capture and inefficiencies in the sheltered sectors of the economy, but quantifying the scale and extent – not to mind devising effective remedies – is a daunting task. And the political and economic power of the beneficiaries is not insignificant. So it is, perhaps, not surprising that there is little evidence of these problems being tackled effectively.

(more…)