The Irish Economy

This Conference, jointly organised with the European Commission, is an associated event of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the EU. It will present and discuss the main findings of the 2012 edition of the European Competitiveness Report as well as recent related empirical evidence and their implications for industrial and innovation policies in Europe and Ireland. The Conference Programme and more information are available here.

The fifth annual one day conference on Economics and Psychology will be held on November 30th. The purpose of these sessions is to develop the link between Economics, Psychology and cognate disciplines in Ireland. A special theme of these events is the implications of behavioural economics for public policy though we welcome submissions across all areas of intersection of Economics and Psychology. We welcome submissions from PhD students as well as faculty and also welcome suggestions for sessions on policy and industry relevance of behavioural economics.  Abstracts (200-500 words) should be submitted before September 30th. Suggestions or questions please send to Liam.Delaney@stir.ac.uk and/or Pete.Lunn@esri.ie

The podcasts and presentations from last year’s Irish Economy conference are available here. This will be run again in January 2013. The general reaction to the 2012 session was positive and we think it has a useful function and should be retained as an annual event held in January.  I wanted to post now to give time for discussion and suggestions for sessions. The layout will be similar to last year, with a potential for three parallel sessions depending on amount of quality speakers that are available. Comments on this blog directly influenced last year’s session so this is a good place and time to make general comments if people are interested in shaping the format and line-up. Alternatively, either me or Stephan Kinsella can be contacted with suggestions. Or use #ieconf as a hashtag on twitter

This session was stuffed with people, the introduction by Constantin Gurdgiev was excellent (and funny) and the papers were illuminating. Karl’s slides were already discussed, but this post puts them (and the audio from his talk) in context.

PodcastChair: Constantin Gurdgiev (TCD)

Brian Lucey (TCD)
Banking in Ireland: Back to the Future

Karl Whelan (UCD)
The IBRC, ELA, Promissory Notes and All That…

Frank Barry (TCD)
Rectifying Design Flaws in the Euro Project

Below are the presentation slides and the audio of the panel I chaired at the Irish economy conference on January 27th. Ronan’s presentation received a fair bit of coverage, understandably, but all the presentations were well received. The full programme is here, and video of the talks will be up later.

Podcast

Ronan Lyons (Oxford)

Residential Site Value Tax: Valuation, Implementation & Fiscal Outcomes

Michelle Norris (UCD)
Pathways Through Mortgage Arrears

Rob Kitchin (NUIM)
Prospects for the Irish Property Market

Slides and audio podcasts from Friday’s session are available at the following link. Let us know if there are any problems. Some technical glitches with the policy evaluation session but we will put material up later.  We are working on the videos and they will be available at some stage but the audio and slides should be fine in terms of getting complete content. As is the norm, we dont include the Q+A components of the sessions. The hashtag is still ieconf for people commenting on twitter. It would be good if different posters started threads on specific sessions and a couple of people have already committed to do this later. Perhaps use this thread if general comments about the conference or suggestions for future events.

Readers may be interested in the Garret FitzGerald Spring Seminar to be held at UCD on 10 and 11 of February. This is the first of an annual series of “Spring Schools” to be named in Garret FitzGerald’s honour focused on topics that were particularly close to his heart.

This year’s theme will ‘Democracy in the 21st. Century’ and the event will include an opening keynote from Mary Robinson on the evening of February 10th.

Further details can be found here. Those wishing to attend are requested to pre-book a space. Contact Mary.Buckley@ucd.ie.

Details of the fourth in the series of conferences on the Irish economy are below. Further details of talks will be posted here in advance.

Conference on Irish Economic Policy

Dublin

January 27^th

Clarion Hotel IFSC

On January 27th 2012, the Geary Institute will run an event on the future of Irish economy policy in Dublin. An era of unprecedented growth followed by a dramatic economic collapse is giving way to several years of sluggish growth. The main theme of the conference will be the development of more intelligent economic policy that enables substantial development even in the context of a tightened fiscal and monetary environment. The conference will take place over the course of the full day, with parallel sessions addressing employment, innovation, education and related themes. The conference aims to provide a forum for new ideas on the conduct of Irish economic policy, including the extent to which academic economics and related disciplines can make a bigger contribution to the conduct of economic policy in Ireland, and the extent to which policy can be designed more effectively.  The conference organisers are Liam Delaney, Colm Harmon and Stephen Kinsella. Please email to register attendance: emma.barron@ucd.ie There is no registration charge.

As part of its fortieth anniversary celebrations, the Department of Geography at NUI Maynooth is organising a one-day conference on Networks and Flows in Economic Space. National and international academics will present papers on export flows, spin-off networks, innovation networks, finance networks, multinational global production networks and regional development. The keynote speaker is Henry Wai-Chung Yeung, Professor of Economic Geography at the National University of Singapore.

Free Registration at: geography.department@nuim.ie
Conference details and list of speakers here.
For further information, contact: chris.vanegeraat@nuim.ie

The fourth in the series of sessions on the Irish economy will take place on January 27th. The venue is the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel Dublin City Center. It will take place between 9.30am and 5pm. Co-organisers are Liam Delaney, Colm Harmon and Stephen Kinsella. RSVPs to Emma.Barron@ucd.ie A full programme will be posted here shortly. There will be approximately 20 talks on a range of issues relevant to the current economic situation.

The programme for this year’s Irish Society of New Economists conference is available on the website www.isne2011.com.  The conference is organised by  Svetlana Batrakova, Alan Fernihough, Rob Gillanders and Mark McGovern of UCD. They have done a terrific job and the programme is very varied, with talks across many fields of Economics. Keynote speakers are Morgan Kelly of UCD and Peter Neary of Oxford.

It will take place on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th August. All are welcome to attend (there is no conference fee). However those going should email the organisers in advance (isne2011@gmail.com) beforehand, as the building rules require pre-registration for entry.

The Barrington Medal is awarded under the auspices of the Barrington Trust (founded in 1836 by the bequest of John Barrington). The award is intended to recognise promising younger researchers in social sciences in Ireland. This will be the 163^rd anniversary of the lecture series and the recipient will be the one hundred and twenty-fifth Barrington Lecturer. The award is a silver medal and €1,000. 

 The lecture should be based on a paper of not more than 7,500 words addressing a topic of relevance to economic or social policy and of current interest in Ireland.  Candidates, who are within 10 years of completing a primary degree (or not more than 33 years of age), should submit a detailed abstract of approximately 1,000 words on the proposed lecture. They should also submit a short curriculum vitae and the name of a proposer who is familiar with their work. Entries should be sent by the 29 July 2011 to  
Dr Seán Lyons
Honorary Secretary, The Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland
c/o Economic and Social Research Institute
Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay
Dublin 2.
Email: sean.lyons@esri.ie

Winners since the mid-1980s:

Clinch, J. Peter; Delaney, Liam; Harmon, Colm; Horgan, John J.;Johnston, Joseph J.;Kane, Aidan;Kearns, Alan; Keeney, Mary J.;Lane, Philip R.; Lawless, Martina; Lee, George; Lucey Brian M.; Lucey, Siobhan; Muckley, Cal; McCoy, Daniel A.; McNicholas, P. D.; Meenan, James; O’Rourke, Kevin; O’Toole, Ronnie; Oldham, C.H.; O’Neill, Donal; Thornhill, Donal J. and Whelan, Ciara.

Venue: Economic and Social Research Institute, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2, Ireland

Date: 30 May 2011

Programme

14:00 Introduction

Richard Tol

14:15 Environmental pressure by household type

Sean Lyons and Richard Tol

14:45 Vegetarians in the UK and Ireland

Eimear Leahy, Sean Lyons and Richard Tol

15:15 Spatial pressures on the environment

Edgar Morgenroth

15:45 Break

16:15 Energy use in industry

Liam Murphy and Stefanie Haller

16:45 The impact of smart meters

Conor Devitt, Sean Lyons and Anne Nolan

17:15 General discussion

Entrance is free. All are welcome. For planning purposes, please register if you intend to attend this seminar.

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.

Economics and Psychology One Day Session: UCD Geary Institute

We will be hosting a session on Economics and Psychology in the UCD Research Building on November 23rd. Those who wish to attend should RSVP to Philippa Barrington at geary@ucd.ie. Please indicate whether you wish to attend the full-day session or the keynote lecture by Professor Laibson only. The programme is below. There is no registration fee.

Programme

10.00am - 10.30am
Martin Ryan (UCD)  “The Role of Economic Psychology and Non-Cognitive Skill in Students’ Lecture Attendance and Academic Achievement”

10.30am - 11am
Liam Delaney (UCD)  “Automatic Enrollment and the Irish Pension System”

11am - 11.20am: Coffee

11.30am - 12pm
Cormac O’Dea (IFS and UCL). “Cognitive function, numeracy and retirement saving trajectories”

12pm - 12.30pm
Marie Briguglio (University of Malta). “Voluntary Pro-Environmental Behaviour”.

1230pm - 1pm
Michael Daly(TCD) “How income relates to life satisfaction and daily emotional experience: Evidence from the American Life Panel”

LUNCH

2pm - 2.30pm
Mick O’Connell (UCD) “Variation in ‘Returns to Education’ and academic performance by country in OECD’s PISA science scores”

2.30pm to 3pm
Robert Metcalfe (Oxford) “Behavioural Economics TBA”

3pm - 3.30pm
Peter Lunn (ESRI) “What Can I Get For It? A theoretical and empirical re-analysis of the endowment effect.”

3.30pm - 4pm Coffee

4pm - 5.30pm: Keynote Speaker.

David Laibson (Harvard) “Natural Expectations and Economic Behavior”

On the 28th May, the Geary Institute will hold a major event on “Behavioural Economics, Policy and Business” in Dublin City Centre.

The currently confirmed panelists include Liam Delaney and Colm Harmon of the UCD Geary Institute, Peter Lunn of the ESRI and author of the well-known behavioural economics book Basic Instincts, and Gerard O’Neill, Director of Amarach Research. The event begins at 2pm and ends at 4pm, and will be followed by coffee. The venue is the Institute of Bankers building on North Wall Quay.

The session will begin with a short introduction to the field of behavioural economics. This short introduction will provide a working definition of behavioural economics; a short history of the field; an overview of the major global centres and projects in the area; a description of the most widely cited applications of behavioural economics ideas to real-world problems; and a brief overview of potential applications in the Irish business and policy context.

A wide ranging panel discussion will follow, addressing such questions as:

- What aspects of behavioural economics should particularly interest business people? For example, how is behavioural economics relevant to product development, advertising and marketing? What are the potential regulatory changes emerging from this literature?

- Why should policymakers care about behavioural economics? What is the relevance of behavioural economics to such questions as how we should design taxation and regulation? Is there any role for government to protect citizens from themselves in areas such as financial services?

- What has this new literature to say about economic renewal in Ireland including its relevance to major strategic initiatives such as the Smart Economy and the Strategy for Science Technology and Innovation?

We welcome suggestions for other questions to pose during the panel discussion. There will also be ample opportunity for audience participation.

In order to help us plan the event and print registration details, we would be very grateful if people could RSVP to Emma.Barron@ucd.ie at their earliest possible convenience if they intend attending the event.

Professor Robert Holton, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin will give a lecture at 7 pm in Trinity College tonight which may be of interest to readers of this blog entitled “Is globalisation reversible?” as part of the Institute for International Integration Studies Public Lecture series. Details can be found here.