The Irish Economy

Tony Wrigley has posted a short introduction to his work on the role of energy during the Industrial Revolution, here.

This post is well worth a read, if necessary using google translate. It essentially takes the well-known point that moderate inflation can be beneficial in that it helps downward real wage adjustment, in circumstances when this is necessary; and extends this to the context of real exchange rate adjustments in a diverse currency union. It also cites some supportive evidence from the history of the classical gold standard, courtesy of Flandreau, Le Chacheux and Zumer.

Kevin Myers had a piece in the Indo on Norman names the other day; here is a link to the underlying research, by Greg Clark.

One of the things that has always marked out economic history as a subfield within economics is its focus on the economics of technological change. The Habbakuk thesis held that the high wage environment of the United States helps explain the nature of that country’s technological progress in the 19th century, and Bob Allen has recently argued that high wages and cheap energy are key to understanding the British Industrial Revolution.

I was pleased to see John Bruton referring to this in his recent LSE speech.

Since this is the weekend, here is another example of directed technological change (or at least, such is Roger Cohen’s interpretation), this time from Denmark.

This is an addendum to John McHale’s last post and a response to JTO’s plea for more real data on this site. Below is a consistent series (based on CSO data) for the net migration rate from 1961 to 2010.  The net flow has been expressed as a rate per 1,000 average population. The years are to end-April.
We await with great interest the results of the 2011 Census, which will give us a fix on the migration trend for the year ending April 2011 and allow the estimate for 2002 to 2010 to be updated. 
Preliminary Census results should become available by the end of the summer.

Readers might be interested in this analysis of the (bureaucratic and electoral) politics of the introduction of export profits tax relief in 1956, available here. The abstract is as follows:

T. K. Whitaker and Seán Lemass are generally credited with effecting the policy shift from protectionism to outward orientation. Ireland’s low corporation tax regime, however, has its origins in the export profits tax relief (EPTR) measures introduced by the second inter-party government in 1956. EPTR was introduced at the behest of the Department of Industry and Commerce in the face of long-standing opposition from Revenue and the Department of Finance. Industry and Commerce at the same time successfully thwarted the desires of the Taoiseach, the Department of Finance and other state agencies to have restrictions on foreign ownership of industry repealed. These apparently contradictory positions were rooted in the historical legacy of protectionism. The inter-party Taoiseach, John A. Costello, downplayed the connection between EPTR and foreign investment in an apparent attempt to deprive Fianna Fáil of an opportunity for controversy. Its introduction hastened the end of Fianna Fáil prevarication on the issue of foreign ownership.

The importance of the intense electoral competition of the period is also frequently ignored in accounts of the policy shift towards outward orientation. Following sixteen years of unbroken Fianna Fáil rule, the next four general elections brought four changes of government. Along with the depth of the 1950s recession, this forced Fianna Fáil into a comprehensive reexamination of its industrial strategy. The economic thinking of the major political parties co-evolved, and many of the institutional innovations of the period, including the Capital Investment Advisory Committee, the Industrial Development Authority, the early Córas Tráchtála, and, of course, EPTR, were the result of inter-party government initiatives.

The defeat inflicted on Finance by the Department of Industry and Commerce partly motivated Finance’s work on Economic Development, the 1958 publication of which was important in providing political cover for Fianna Fáil’s U-turn on overall economic strategy.

Even the Taiwanese are making cartoons about us (HT Gideon Rachman).

This is about the 1930s!  UCD historian Mary E. Daly and I have just concluded a draft of our paper examining how the Great Depression was perceived in Ireland at the time.  The paper is purely historical and makes no attempt to draw any parallels with the current situation.  It might nevertheless be of interest to some readers.  It is available here.

The Irish State Administration Database was launched last week at an event which formed part of the Innovation Dublin festival. The Database was developed by an interdisciplinary team working in the UCD Geary Institute, led by Dr Niamh Hardiman of the UCD School of Politics and International Relations, with funding from the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences. The searchable Database records details of births, marriages and deaths of all central stage agencies (including government departments) since the foundation of the State in 1922. Avid agency watchers can study the growth in agency numbers to their peak in 2008 and subsequent modest decline. The Database shows that there are currently 350 central state agencies. However, the rich data can be mined in other ways, enabling users to look at trends by reference to such characteristics as function (eg delivery, trading, regulation, adjudication), policy domain (eg health, education, transport), and legal form (eg statutory corporation, public company, company limited by guarantee). Some further information about the Database can be found here. Users need to register here to use this free resource. There will a be hands-on demonstration of the Database on 23 November, 3-5pm, in Room G-5, Daedalus Building, UCD Belfield Campus, with an emphasis on the range of potential applications. This event is open to all but requires advance booking with mary.shayne@ucd.ie.

I don’t agree with everything in this article, by any means, but it is thought-provoking and topical. And I definitely agree with the authors about the brilliance of Albert Hirschman.

Besides, it gives me an excuse to post a link to this piece from April.