A reminder that the Irish Economy Conference: Learning from Crisis will take place on Feb 25th. Programme details and how to signup are here.
I have posted the underlying data used in my recent SSISI paper here.
There has been some talk recently about how Greece should take its medicine the way Ireland has. So here is a chart, taken from the IMF’s WEO database, showing the two countries’ structural budget balances as a percentage of GDP:
Even if you start the clock in 2008, there is a sizeable difference. And if you start in 2010, when the programmes started, there is no comparison in terms of the “fiscal effort” made. (And yes, I know, it would be much better to look at ex ante measures of austerity, but this is what was to hand.) On top of that, the multiplier in Greece is presumably larger than in very small and very open Ireland. The EC estimates that it is almost twice as large in this paper, not that I take their Greek multiplier estimate particularly seriously. And finally, there is this chart which a friend sends me.
So, to summarise: the Greeks have done more “reform” than we have, have endured a lot more austerity, and live in a country where the costs of austerity are likely to be higher than here. Perhaps the Irish government might want to tone down its assertions of relative virtue, and display a bit of solidarity with Greece. Is a less deflationary and less creditor-friendly Eurozone not in Ireland’s long term interests, assuming that we remain a member of the single currency?
Except of course that it won’t, for party political reasons. And you can see why. Expect to see more ad hominem attacks on dangerous ex-IMF radicals and other fellow travellers in the months ahead (despite the fact that the government is expecting the electorate’s gratitude for…implementing the programme that the self-same IMF and its fellow-Troika members designed! You couldn’t make it up.).
Report here.
Eating People Is Wrong, and Other Essays on Famine, Its Past, and Its Future
Famines are becoming smaller and rarer, but optimism about the possibility of a famine-free future must be tempered by the threat of global warming. That is just one of the arguments that Cormac Ó Gráda, one of the world’s leading authorities on the history and economics of famine, develops in this wide-ranging book, which provides crucial new perspectives on key questions raised by famines around the globe between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries.
The book begins with a taboo topic. Ó Gráda argues that cannibalism, while by no means a universal feature of famines and never responsible for more than a tiny proportion of famine deaths, has probably been more common during very severe famines than previously thought. The book goes on to offer new interpretations of two of the twentieth century’s most notorious and controversial famines, the Great Bengal Famine and the Chinese Great Leap Forward Famine. Ó Gráda questions the standard view of the Bengal Famine as a perfect example of market failure, arguing instead that the primary cause was the unwillingness of colonial rulers to divert food from their war effort. The book also addresses the role played by traders and speculators during famines more generally, invoking evidence from famines in France, Ireland, Finland, Malawi, Niger, and Somalia since the 1600s, and overturning Adam Smith’s claim that government attempts to solve food shortages always cause famines.
Thought-provoking and important, this is essential reading for historians, economists, demographers, and anyone else who is interested in the history and possible future of famine.
Cormac Ó Gráda is professor emeritus of economics at University College Dublin. His books include Famine: A Short History and Black ’47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory (both Princeton).