Research Assistant Post

I’m hiring a Research Assistant in Economics. This is a 12 month post, closing date for applications is January 31st, and the details of the job, as well as details on how to apply, are here.

SGP Revised – again

The latest playbook for the Stability and Growth Pact has been published by the European Commission.  Here is a link to the document along with two related press releases.

We now have this little matrix:

The Commission’s methodology puts Ireland’s output gap at close to zero so we are in “Normal times".  With public debt above 60 per cent of GDP this means that an improvement of greater than 0.5 per cent of GDP in the structural balance is required.

The numbers released with October’s budget would suggest that Ireland is on schedule to achieve this.

This shows an average annual improvement in the structural balance out to 2018 of just over 1.0 per cent of GDP. But these numbers come with a massive health warning.  The projections in the outlook are set in terms of the following qualification:

As there are still uncertainties with regard to the interpretation and implementation of the fiscal rules, there is a technical assumption that voted expenditure ceilings remain fixed at 2015 levels. Similarly, taxation measures for the outer years are not embedded in the budgetary numbers at this stage.  Priorities, which have been outlined in the Budget and Expenditure Report, will be addressed in subsequent Budgets when there is technical clarity around the quantum of fiscal space.

So no provision has been made for the promised tax cuts and expenditure increases that are being wheeled out on a regular basis.

The Commission document has lots of stuff on how they intend to account for the unknown impact of future reform measures on the unknowable structural balance. If there are going to be new caveats and qualifications every time a country is close to breaching the rules there is a risk that the SGP might become complicated!

From Ireland’s perspective it must be realised that while rules can be good they can never be perfect and there appears to be a risk that our fiscal policy becomes fixated on doing just enough to satisfy the SGP rules.  There are frequent references to the amount of “fiscal space” that is available.  This will be set relative to the Expenditure Benchmark which is likely to get increased attention when we become subject to it in 2016 upon leaving the EDP.

However, with a continuing deficit and a debt north of 100 per cent of GDP there is close to no fiscal space.  In the run-up to the crisis Ireland’s budgets satisfied the rules that were in place at the time. We reached and then stayed at the MTO of a balanced budget but that was no protection against the budgetary collapse that occurred. 

The updated rules might be better but there is no evidence that they are a panacea. If they were they wouldn’t need constant updating.

Revenue Statistics webpage

See new site here.

The page contains statistical information on taxes and duties for which the Office of the Revenue Commissioners is responsible, as well as further outputs linked to Revenue’s activities and links to tax related information sources on other websites. Information is presented under a number of categories:
· Tax Receipts
· Ready Reckoners
· Registrations, Assessment and Transactions
· Income Tax and Corporation Tax
· Vehicle Registration Tax
· Incidence of Excise and VAT on Oils, Alcohol and Tobacco
· Cross Border Price Surveys
· Local Property Tax Compliance Stats

Strategy for dealing with banks is working

Article in The Irish Times by Minister for Finance Michael Noonan is here.

It is being reported on elsewhere:

All of these seem an exaggeration of what was actually in the article and the use of single quotation marks by the Irish Independent suggests their headline is something Michael Noonan actually said. 

The piece from the Minister concludes:

I am confident that, over time, we will at a minimum fully recover the funds this Government invested in AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB. If economic and trading conditions continue to improve over the next decade or so, the cash returned to the State combined with the value of any remaining shareholding may exceed the funds invested.

The confidence is about the recovery of the money put in by “this Government”.  That was the €19 billion put in after the 2011 PCAR exercise of which around €2.3 billion has been returned from the sale of Irish Life and the BOI contingent capital notes.  There is €17 billion to go.  The article does not say that all the money pumped into the remaining banks will be returned though is something that “may” happen. 

Part of this reported is likely the result of the byline used by The Irish Times which states that:

At the very least, the State should recover all of the money it has invested so far

It appears the sub-editor didn’t take in the actual text either. 

And, of course, there is no discussion in either the original piece or the reports of it that money received in the future after “the next decade” will have a different real value to the money used from 2009-2011 to recapitalise the banks, not to mention interest and opportunity costs. 

It is a positive that we are now considering some of the bank legacy issues as assets rather than liabilities. But the possibility of recouping money from selling stakes in the banks is not new and just as there was lots of exaggeration on the way down it now looks like we’ll get plenty of it on the way up. 

The Guarantee

The film will be aired tonight at 9pm.  The film is good and well worth watching for those who missed its cinema run before Christmas. 

It must though be considered in the light of being a drama and not a documentary.  Unsurprisingly it differs somewhat from the stage version, Guaranteed!, with additional characters and less emphasis on a number of the alternatives that may have been considered. 

Obviously some of the characters and most of the dialogue is fictional and we can’t be sure that the stance of individual characters is accurate, particularly in the Cowen-Lenihan exchanges.  Overall it is a good dramatisation and will probably be more accurate than the debate which is due to following the airing.

I am looking forward to The Bailout later this year.