Prof. Gerry Hughes passed away on Friday. The funeral notice is here. A brief summary of his career is available from the ESRI here.
Gerry Hughes was awarded a Research Fellowship from the ESRI from 1977 to 1979. He was at the ESRI from 1968 (taking secondment to the NESC in the 1970s) and retired as a Research Professor in 2006. His ESRI publications may be accessed on the ESRI web-site. Since retiring from the Institute he has been a Visiting Professor at the School of Business, Trinity College Dublin and also a Visiting Professor at the Department of Economics, University College Cork. His research is on the effects of pension financing on national savings and on the cost and distributional effects of tax expenditure on private pensions.
J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics, National University of Ireland Galway
Lecturer (Above the Bar) in Economics
Applications are invited for a permanent lectureship post, which will be located within the Discipline of Economics of the J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics at the National University of Ireland Galway. The Discipline seeks to provide a flourishing and diverse academic environment which integrates teaching and research, theory and empirical applications, in a policy-oriented and interdisciplinary way. The successful candidate will contribute to teaching, supervision, and examining at all levels, engage in scholarship and research, and contribute to the administration of the Discipline, the School and the College.
Candidates should hold a PhD in Economics, have demonstrated ability in teaching and capacity for supervision at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and have a research profile commensurate with the position. The successful candidate will contribute to relevant teaching and examining at all levels, including the B.A., B.Comm. and B.Sc. degrees at undergraduate level and the various M.Econ.Sc. programs at postgraduate level; engage in scholarship and research; and assist with administration and the development of the Economics Discipline and J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics.
Closing date for receipt of applications is 17:00 (Irish Time) on Thursday 15th April 2021.
Rachel Dardis, Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland died February 23, 2021. An obituary is here. Prof. Dardis was a prolific author and mentored more than 60 PhD students during her career. She spent her academic career in the USA, starting in the 1960s with her University of Minnesota PhD. She retired in 1996 and is survived by her nephew and his two children.
The Leaving Certificate Exams have three main roles: sorting, incentivizing, and signalling. The exams serve to sort students into third-level courses where the students will perform well and contribute to the performance of their peers; they incentivize secondary school students to study hard and learn, and the examination process allows students to signal their academic abilities and their work discipline by doing well on them.
The
pandemic shutdown has created learning and emotional challenges for sixth-year
students, and also worsened the “digital divide” between students with
supportive home environments and expensive computer technology and those
without. An accommodation needs to be made for students who have not coped well
in this very challenging environment. It is also sensible, where possible, to
reduce the size of examination hall numbers. At the same time, cancelling the
examinations entirely and replacing them with very noisy and low-information estimated
grades seems an inferior plan.
The government, teacher’s unions, and Department of Education officials need to quickly step up and show courage and wisdom in implementing a solution that is not a muddle-through compromise designed only to appease political pressures. The cabinet including its senior members need to oversee and back whatever solution is quickly chosen and implemented. One obvious possibility would be a rigidly-capped estimated grades option (perhaps capped at H5-O1), together with an exam option for those students who feel that they can exceed the H5-O1 level, or exceed the estimated grade (below H5-O1) that they expect to receive.
A guest post by Kenneth Devine (Central Bank of Ireland) on new occupational pension fund data highlighting household exposure, concentrated asset holdings and the impact of COVID-19. [Disclaimer: This blog represents the author’s views and not those of the Central Bank of Ireland]
Pensions are the primary source of income to households in retirement. The volatility and economic shock associated with COVID-19 have compounded pre-existing issues for pension systems. These include aging populations, the low interest rate environment and the prevailing low yields on safe assets (OECD, 2020).
In a recent Behind the Data publication, Ciarán Nevin, David Mulleady and I ask the question – What do we know about occupational pension funds in Ireland? Our note highlights the role of occupational pension funds as a household asset, outlines the breakdown of financial assets, and examines the impact of the pandemic on these holdings. An overview of the key findings can be seen in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: Overview of key findings
While previous
work by the OECD
(2014) provided a comprehensive review of the Irish pension system, its analysis
of occupational pension funds was constrained by a lack of data. New
Central Bank of Ireland statistics covering occupational pension funds help
to fill this gap by providing a better understanding of the structure and asset
holdings of the sector.
We show that, in
June 2020, Irish occupational pension funds had assets of €118 billion,
accounting for 30 per cent of household financial assets. This is the second
largest household financial asset behind currency and deposits. Household
sector housing assets accounted for €542
billion in the same period.
According to the Pensions
Authority’s 2019 annual report, the Irish sector consists of over 75,000
active occupational pension funds, representing almost half a million active members.
This represents over 90 per cent of total euro area pension funds by number. The
size, and role, of occupational pensions varies across euro area countries (Curos
et al., 2020), with total assets of the pension fund sector amounting to €3
trillion at September 2020.
We have seen a transition away from Defined Benefit (DB) funds in recent years (fall of 50 per cent in number of active schemes since end-2009). For Defined Contribution (DC) pension funds, the member’s income in retirement is dependent on asset performance. Therefore, the switch from DB to DC pension funds has shifted investment risk from the corporate sector to households (Brown, 2016). Households, and their retirement income, are now increasingly exposed to financial market shocks.
The Behind the Data piece outlines that Irish pension funds primarily invest in investment funds shares and unit-linked insurance products. Combined, these two instruments account for three quarters of the sector’s balance sheet. However, structural differences in asset holdings exist across DB/DC pension funds. While the larger DB pension funds are seen to directly invest in hundreds of diverse assets, smaller DC pension funds tend to predominantly hold a limited number of investments.
Figure 2: Impact of COVID-19 on pension fund asset prices
As can be seen in Figure 2, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the total value of pension fund assets fell by 6.5 percent (€7.9 billion). These asset values largely recovered across Q2 and Q3 2020 to sit at €118 billion. The movements were predominantly caused by financial market price gains and losses as the pandemic, and global policy responses, evolved. At Q3 2020, asset values were 1.8 per cent below pre-pandemic levels.
Going forward, the Central
Bank will publish Pension Fund Statistics information releases on a quarterly
basis. The next steps in developing this dataset will include an investigation
into asset breakdowns by their sector and geography, to further explore
these household
investment exposures.
Researchers interested in hearing
more about the data can contact Kenneth Devine.
