Given that an agreement looks likely, it’s probably worth opening a thread on what commenters believe the new programme for government should contain, what it might contain, what that weird intersection of politics and economics means it will contain.
Category: Economic growth
The Department of Finance has released a Spring-less Statement (.pdf), showing some interesting debt dynamics projections and a really nice risk-assessment section (see page 26) and their likely impacts on the Irish economy. Brexit figures highly, as one might imagine, but so do other external demand shocks and domestic issues, and the fiscal risks associated with not meeting our climate change targets. The Department writes:
There are fiscal risks associated with a legally binding EU Effort Sharing Decision on climate change covering the 2013-2020 period. Ireland is obliged to achieve a 20 per cent Greenhouse Gas emissions reduction (compared to 2005 levels) in certain sectors. Current EPA projections estimate that Ireland will not achieve this reduction and failure to comply may incur costs of hundreds of millions through the purchase of carbon credits until such time as the target is complied with. Similarly, further new costs may arise in the context of a new EU climate and energy framework for the period 2020-2030, which will set new emissions reduction targets.
Scary stuff.
Oxford’s Simon Wren Lewis writes about why you might expect a bump in consumption following a debt shock and then a government spending shock. Well worth reading and thinking about, especially in terms of our rebound in economic growth and the chances of that rebound being permanent (or even semi-permanent).
Here.
Readers of this blog might be interested in this working paper we’ve just put up on the Levy working paper series. The abstract is below.
We examine the relationship between changes in a country’s public sector fiscal position and inequality at the top and bottom of the income distribution during the age of austerity (2006–13). We use a parametric Lorenz curve model and Gini-like indices of inequality as our measures to assess distributional changes. Based on the EU’s Statistics on Income and Living Conditions SLIC and International Monetary Fund data for 12 European countries, we find that more severe adjustments to the cyclically adjusted primary balance (i.e., more austerity) are associated with a more unequal distribution of income driven by rising inequality at the top. The data also weakly suggest a decrease in inequality at the bottom. The distributional impact of austerity measures reflects the reliance on regressive policies, and likely produces increased incentives for rent seeking while reducing incentives for workers to increase productivity.