Guinness and the knowledge economy

One of the points which smart economy boosters often miss, but which is obvious to economists, is that technology is internationally mobile. It follows that productivity growth in a small open economy like Ireland depends much more on the domestic adoption of foreign inventions than on domestic inventions. This in turn has implications for the sorts of arguments that can be made in favour of government R&D expenditure in Ireland.

Cormac provides a nice historical example here.

Benoit and Marsh on excellence (or not)

In a paper just published in the ESR, Benoit and Marsh confirm that research excellence is measurable — even for political scientists, some of whom argue that reality is constructed. They show that research quality varies considerably. Should research budgets be cut, there is now a basis for cuts that minimise damage to quality.

Some of you will want to bitch that Benoit and Marsh feature as the numbers 1 and 3 on their own ranking. This is nonsense. The correlation between the various indices is high. The same people are top regardless of the quality measure used, and people-in-the-know already roughly knew who would do well. This exercise primarily serves the community — and the authors invested time that they could have used to publish in a more prestigious journal.

Draft submission to Innovation Task Force


The Innovation Task Force was appointed to advise the government on how to turn Ireland into an international innovation hub and to support the development of a smart economy. It’s easy to be cynical but better to be constructive. The ITF has issued a call for submissions on its terms of references:

  • to examine options to increase levels of innovation and the rates of commercialisation of research and development on a national basis with a view to accelerating the growth and scale-up of indigenous enterprise and to attract new knowledge-intensive direct investment;
  • to bring forward proposals for enhancing the linkages between institutions, agencies and organisations in the public and private sectors to ensure a cohesive innovation and commercialisation ecosystem;
  • to identify any specific policy measures which might be necessary to support the concept of Ireland as an International Innovation Development Hub including in the areas of legislation, educational policy, intellectual property arrangements, venture capital and immigration policy.

Here is my draft submission. All comments welcome. I’ll acknowledge your input by something like “A draft of this submission was posted at www.irisheconomy.ie and substantially improved as a result of the discussion there. Comments by Malle Appie were particularly helpful.”

High wages require high labour productivity. High productivity requires excellent skills and creativity. Ireland can only maintain its position at the forefront of economic development if it fosters innovation and commercialization. Innovation is a creative process, however, and therefore cannot be mandated by government policy. The government can only create the conditions under which innovation and commercialization are likely.

Ireland’s flagging innovation strategy needs a radical overhaul

From yesterday’s Sunday Business Post

An Bord Snip: Research

One of the recommendations of An Bord Snip Nua is to transfer all research money from the departments and agencies to a single research body.  Besides the cost savings, I see three advantages:

1. Competition for research allocation between fields (as opposed to the current earmarking of research money for someone’s pet projects)

2. Academic quality control (captive agencies occassionally grant funding to researchers of low repute but the right political colour)

3. Streamlining of applications and administration (at present, research bodies need to keep track of the rules of a range of bureaucracies)

I see two disadvantages, however:

1. Disruption: Transfer of tasks between public policy inevitably leads to chaos, and no research funding will flow for a certain period. This may lead to the destruction of human capital — that is, the good researchers may leave the country, leaving the dross behind. Continuity is therefore a high priority.

2. Applied research has a lower status, and funding will be under additional pressure from blue-skies research. The agencies and department that lose their research grants should have a substantial say in the type of research to be funded (but not, of course, select the researchers).