Category: Uncategorized

A collection of researchers at the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA), R. Kitchen, J. Gleeson, K. Keaveney, and C. O’ Callaghan, have written a powerful new report on Irish property market policy and land development planning policy, critically examining both policy errors during the 1993-2007 period, during the post-crash period post 2007 (including a critique of NAMA) and making suggestions for the future.  The link is here.

The report has a modern geographers’ perspective and is strongest when discussing zoning policy, development policy, and property-related tax policies, but there is still plenty of things for mainstream economics comments/discussion in the report.

The report makes clear to what a large extent post-1993 property-related government policy, right up until today, is driven by the interests of the property development industry.  Coincidentally (or not) this industry is one of the biggest funders of the dominant party in government during this long period.

I am not sure if I am the correct person to paste up this link, but perhaps others can provide useful comments and replies to comments.  (I do not claim to be a property researcher but to the extent that property is a risky portfolio asset it touches a little bit on my own research area.)

The recently published NCC study on the costs of doing business in Ireland can be found here.

The newly released stress test of selected EU-area banks by the Committee of European Bank Supervisors (CEBS) is flawed in its methodology and the results are not a reliable indicator of EU bank sector soundness. A stress test should examine the impact on net portfolio value of extreme but plausible shocks to the key variates explaining net portfolio value.  The CEBS report states proudly and repeatedly that it uses extreme but plausible shocks, and this is true, but it ignores the key-variates criterion of a well-designed stress test.

A while ago, I pointed out on this site that a season ticket to Shamrock Rovers offered remarkably good value for money. Any of you who acted on my advice will now be in the happy position of being able to buy tickets for the Juventus game on Thursday.

Just saying.

Agustín Bénétrix, Barry Eichengreen and I have a piece over at Vox looking at the end of house price collapses. Historical patterns don’t suggest that Irish residential prices will stop falling any time soon; the best way to ensure that they do is to let them adjust downwards as speedily as possible.

Update: in light of a recent article in the Sunday Tribune, I should clarify that nowhere in the Vox piece do we present estimates of the extent to which house prices will decline in Ireland. When asked by the journalist in question how far they would have to fall, I replied that I agreed with Morgan Kelly’s analysis, or words to that effect. When pressed as to what that meant, I gave the figure mentioned in the Sunday Tribune. I am always happy to cite and give credit to Morgan’s work in this area, but I am not happy to be presented as an independent source of analysis on the subject, much less to be described as a “leading housing researcher”.

There. That feels better.