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In this guest post, Frank Convery responds to the various comments made on this blog over the past few days and the initial post by Richard Tol:

Holbrooke Shields and others re Censorship

‘Is Comhar SDC practicing a form of censorship by not publishing Richard Tol’s comment

Response

Tol’s comment was received on Friday 20th at 11:47, and it was posted Monday 23 at 09:59, as were the comments by Holbrooke and Lucey which were submitted on Saturday 21st . The delay was a product of the fact all comments have to go through an administrator because a huge amount of spam comes through, and the office is not staffed over the week end.

Conclusion

Discussion is appreciated and welcome. Keep paranoia at bay if there is a delay in posting. We’ll check out the management of Irisheconomy.ie to see if turnaround can be improved.

Economic and Social Review has been accepted by Thomson Reuters for re-inclusion in the Social Science Citation Index (hence Web of Science).

We should  be  indebted to the work of Niamh Brennan, Programme Manager, Research Information Systems & Services, Trinity College Library Dublin, for her work that showed the citation and publication record of the Journal, during its time in exile, to be of the international standards required by Thomson Reuters.

I personally enjoy writing, teaching and publishing on Ireland.  Work on Ireland published in the ESR was beginning to be seen as not internationally recognized. Hence we saw promotion boards in Irish Universities not counting the publication, yet it was counted in the research assessment exercise in the UK.  This creates poor incentives for scholars to work on Ireland, when in reality it provides extremely fertile ground for economic and social research.

As shown by Lucy and Barrett (2003), the ESR since 1970 has mainly published papers by those that were also publishing in the best Journals in their field, Neary, Honohan, Lane and Whelan, to name a few.  Lane and Whelan also edited the journal when it out of the Web of Science. The ESR is an important outlet for Economic and Social research on Ireland. Hopefully, the economics community will now promote it and build up its citation record to become a leading economic journal.  The researchers in Ireland are as good as those in Australia, Canada and the UK but we are seriously disadvantaged by not having top “home” journals promoted on good digital platforms such as the Web of Science.  

Well done Niamh, Editors and Contributors

Alan Barrett and Brian Lucey  (2003). “An Analysis of the Journal Article Output of Irish-based Economists, 1970 to 2001,” The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 34(2), pages 109-143

The President of the High Court, Justice Nicholas Kearns, has established a working group to explore the alternatives to Ireland’s system of lump-sum compensation for accident victims. The group is headed by another judge of the High Court, Justice John Quirke, and has been asked to report by end-year.

The lump-sum system has been modified across the water, where the courts can award recurring payments, in practice index-linked annuities, with or without the agreement of the parties. I argue in the paper below that we should consider following suit in this country.

 http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/wp10_23.pdf

Teagasc colleagues have produced their mid-year assessment of the likely outturn for output and incomes in Irish agriculture in 2010. The main message is that there is a solid recovery in gross margins in dairy and cereals from the awful year in 2009 and also a positive outlook for sheep (helped by the recent announcement of support under the new Grassland Sheep Scheme), but no change is expected on cattle farms where low or negative profitability will continue.  Overall, the Teagasc assessment is that both total agricultural output and incomes should increase by around €300 million this year, which will be an increase of 18% on the operating surplus in agriculture in 2009.

Is this really a moral victory for Ireland or is it once again just “the cracked looking-glass of a servant”?