The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has a vacancy for an economist, details are here. Closing date is the 16th of September.
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On Wednesday, September 30, we are holding a one-day conference on ‘Higher Education Funding: Drawing on the International Experience’ in Maynooth.
The context for this conference is the debate on how to fund higher education in Ireland. In 2014, the Minister for Education established an Expert Group on Future Funding for Higher Education, and the motivation for the conference is to inform the discussion about the choice of funding options available; we have a particular interest in the interaction between funding mechanisms and differential access to higher education along socioeconomic lines.
International speakers include Sara Goldrick-Rab of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has written extensively on the issue of higher education funding in the US; Claire Crawford of Warwick University and the IFS, who has written several detailed analyses of the UK system; and Bruce Chapman of the Australian National University, whose name is particularly associated with income-contingent student loans, both in terms of his academic research and his role as policy advisor to many governments.
Local speakers include Rory O’Donnell of NESC and Delma Byrne of Maynooth University.
The conference will be open to all. I’ll post further details here in the coming weeks.
Update: Full details are now available here.
IFAC have a new analytical note on this topic: here.
There is a brief article in Bloomberg Business today about the search for a new Irish Central Bank governor.
“Ireland is about to deliver evidence on whether, nearly two years after regaining its economic sovereignty, much has really changed. …… Noonan’s dilemma now is whether to move back to the pre-crisis mode of finding a governor from inside the civil service, or repeat the Honohan recipe and appoint another outsider.”
The Paddy Power betting odds are discussed. As a financial economist, I am forbidden by the Efficient Market Theory from making gambling bets, but perhaps some of the labour/macro economists might want to take a punt.
I had an earlier post on the strategic issues around this appointment. The recent China-related volatility in financial markets is the latest difficult policy problem confronting monetary authorities in Europe and globally. Ireland should appoint someone as governor who can serve both domestically and also contribute to ECB council deliberations.
Since some readers will know some of the people mentioned personally, I blocked the comments feature.