Building Ireland’s Smart Economy

The Irish government’s economic recovery plan can be found here. This report has a wide-ranging agenda.

For university-based economists, the following section is especially interesting, since it may represent an important shift in the government’s approach to funding research:

“The creation of more concentrated research-intensive excellence will enhance the country’s reputation internationally and its ability to attract top-level researchers and will underline Ireland’s intentions in terms of the development of the Smart Economy.  It will also enhance the international exposure of Irish
universities and institutes of technology.” (page 75)

New Irish data releases

A busy day for CSO releases.   The quarterly national accounts are published here, while the BOP data are here. In addition, the CSO released the 2006-2007 data for services trade, which can found here.

A striking feature of the data is the wide divergence between GNP and GDP for Ireland, with the most worrying data point being the 0.9 percent decline in GNP during the 3rd quarter (corresponding to an approximately 3.6 percent contraction at an annualised rate).   The widening of the current account deficit, despite the slowdown, signals the external competitiveness problem.

Statistics Central for Ireland

Statcentral.ie is a new CSO-maintained data site that brings together all the CSO data, plus data from a range of other official agencies.

Interview with Brendan Walsh

Brendan Walsh was the guest on the Eamon Dunphy show last Saturday. You can listen to the interview (which covers the current crisis, amongst other topics) here.

Crisis containment: too little, too late

CES Ifo’s latest quarterly Forum has just appeared with a special issue on the financial crisis with articles by Hans Werner Sinn, Barry Eichengreen, Martin Hellwig, and yours truly, among others.

Download it free at http://www.ifo.de/portal/page/portal/ifoHome/b-publ/b2journal/30publforum.

My piece develops the argument that containment and resolution policy started too slowly and emphasized liquidity rather than solvency issues.  True of Ireland as elsewhere.  Only now are some of us coming to terms with this.