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Irish Economic Association Annual Conference 2024 – Call for Papers

The 37th Annual Irish Economic Association Conference is being organised by the Discipline of Economics, University of Galway and will be held at the Galway Bay Hotel, Salthill, Galway on Thursday 9th and Friday 10th May 2024. The keynote speakers are Prof. Cass Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School, and Prof. Lucrezia Reichlin, Professor of Economics at London Business School.

Three types of submissions to the conference are invited:

1) Full presentations: These are 25 minutes in length and require the submission of a full paper by the person who intends to present.
2) Short presentations (Flash Talks): These are 10 mins in length, can be work-in-progress, and require the submission of either an extended abstract (approx. 2 pages) or early draft paper. While short presentations are aimed primarily at providing early career researchers with an opportunity to present their work and develop their conference experience and skills, these sessions are also open to more experienced researchers who wish to present early-stage work and/or give a shorter presentation.
3) Organised sessions: These are full sessions of 1.5 hours on a specific topic or area and are a new initiative at the IEA conference. Proposals for organised sessions must be submitted by one person (i.e. the organiser) and the session should include at least 3 but no more than 4 papers to be presented. One submission should be made by the organiser, and this should include extended abstracts and/or full papers for each presentation, along with a one-page overview and description of the organised session. The inclusion of at least one discussant is encouraged.

The deadline for all submissions is midnight on Tuesday February 6th 2024 and submissions can be made via the conference website: https://iea2024.exordo.com/. Please note that no author-identifying information should be included in any uploaded file(s) i.e. papers, extended abstracts, and organised session proposals.

A number of prizes will be awarded at the conference including the Denis Conniffe prize for best paper by a young economist, the Brendan Walsh prize for best paper published in the Economic and Social Review, the Novartis prize for best health economics paper, and the Irish Society for Women in Economics (ISWE) prize for best paper presented by a woman economist.

There will also be some pre-conference activities held at the conference venue on the afternoon and evening of Wednesday May 8th 2024. Details to be confirmed in due course.

Prof. Donal O’Neill R.I.P

On behalf of the Economics Department in Maynooth University.

We are greatly saddened by the news that our colleague in Maynooth’s Economics Department, Donal O’Neill, has died after a short illness. He was just 56.

Donal was a first-rate economist and published in many top journals, including the Journal of Political Economy, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Labor Economics and the Journal of Human Resources. He was an excellent, innovative teacher and a wonderful colleague. Donal’s main research fields were labour economics and inequality, but he also had a considerable interest in econometric methodology, which fed into his applied research. Among his many contributions to the Irish economics community, he served as president of the Irish Economic Association from 2014-16 and as an enthusiastic member of the inaugural Irish Low Wage Commission.

All of his work was marked by a real love of Economics – he never stopped being fascinated by the insights Economics offered, or by its potential as a force for good. Donal was also a very decent and kind person. He will be very sadly missed.

Our thoughts are with his family and friends, particularly with his wife, Olive Sweetman, also a member of Maynooth’s Economics Department.

Dublin Industry at EEC Accession

I will be giving a talk based on this small segment of my new book as part of the Dublin Festival of History this coming Wednesday evening (October 4) at Pearse Street Library from 6pm-6.50pm. Admission is free. No booking required. Places allocated on a first-come first-served basis.

Further details available at:
Dublin Industry at EEC Accession: The Leading Firms and Factories – Dublin Festival of History

Industry & policy in Independent Ireland, 1922-1972

My book on industry & policy from the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 to the eve of Ireland’s accession to the EEC in 1973 will be published by Oxford University Press within the next few weeks. Among other things it identifies the largest manufacturing employers in the Free State area in the decades prior to 1922 and in the late 1920s, the late 1940s and at other key points through to 1972. By the time of EEC accession foreign-owned firms accounted for almost one-third of manufacturing employment. Though Ireland had been targeting export-oriented foreign multinationals since the mid-1950s, a large number of those in operation at EEC entry were protectionist-era ‘tariff jumpers’ or indigenous firms that had been acquired over recent years as trade liberalisation proceeded. The book also unearths substantial new archival evidence on the determinants and consequences of industy policy. The sources of the firm-level employment data cited in the book have just been made available at: http://www.tara.tcd.ie/handle/2262/101139

Professor Christopher Whelan, RIP

Prof. Chris Whelan passed away this week. He was Professor Emeritus of Sociology at UCD, a former Research Professor at the ESRI and Member of the Royal Irish Academy. The funeral notice is here. A brief summary of his career is provided by the ESRI.

Chris began his career with the Institute as a Research Assistant in 1972, becoming Research Professor in 1992. During this time, Chris coordinated research programmes in the areas of social inclusion, social cohesion and quality of life, publishing extensively on these topics and on economic and social change in Ireland during bust and boom. He left the ESRI in 2009 when he was appointed to the Chair in Sociology in UCD, but continued his connection with the Institute as a Research Affiliate.

The full tribute from the ESRI is available at the following link:

https://www.esri.ie/news/esri-pays-tribute-to-chris-whelan