The 36th Annual Irish Economic Association Conference will be organised by the Economic and Social Research Institute and held in the Sheraton Hotel, Athlone on Thursday, May 4th and Friday, May 5th, 2023.
The IEA 2023 will have two presentation types: 1) Full paper presentation; and 2) Flash Talks.
Full conference presentations are 25 mins in length and require the submission of a full draft paper.
Flash Talks are a new initiative aimed at encouraging early stage researchers wishing to get exposure of their research to the wider economics community. This can be early work in progress. The talks will be 5/10 mins each with a maximum of 3 slides. Flash Talk submissions only require an extended abstract (2 pages approx).
The submissions deadline is 23:59 GMT on Friday 24 February 2023. Submissions can be made via the conference website which is available at:
The Conference will feature two international plenary lectures – the Edgeworth Lecture and the ESR Lecture. A number of prizes will be awarded including the Denis Conniffe prize for the best paper by a young economist, the Brendan Walsh prize for the best paper published in the Economic and Social Review, the Novartis prize for the best health economics paper, and the Irish Society for Women in Economics (ISWE) prize for the best paper presented by a women economist.
In aggregate terms, Ireland’s national income in 2021 was around €230 billion (using modified Gross National Income, GNI*). This comes from an economy where the aggregate turnover is probably around €1 trillion. There is a lot of money flowing around but as is often quoted but rarely attributed: “turnover is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is reality.”
The table shows a progression from turnover to production value. All bar the top two rows are in line with the latest estimates for 2021 from the CSO. Aggregate figures for turnover and for the cost of goods and services purchased for resale in same condition as received are not provided by the CSO within Ireland’s national accounts but the figures shown are within the ballpark. Turnover is not significant within the national accounts framework where the emphasis is on production, value added and income. The sequence shown isn’t how the national accounts are compiled but can serve as a setting off for examining where our income comes from.
Goods and Services Purchases for Resale in Same Condition as Received
Of the roughly €1 trillion of turnover in the Irish economy in 2021, around €300 billion was due to the selling, both wholesaling and retailing, of goods and services that somebody else made. Those doing the selling are looking to gain a small margin. The wholesale sector in Ireland (G46) has a turnover of around €150 billion, some of which is linked to MNC-activities, while the more domestically-orientated retail sector (G47) has a turnover of around €50 billion. Both have operating margins in the low single digits. It will also be the case that the same goods will be included in the turnover of both. The turnover of wholesalers includes sales to retailers and the turnover of retailers is based on the sale of those same goods to customers. Subtracting the cost of goods and services sold in the same condition as purchased leaves around €700 billion of turnover from goods and services that are made – market output. This is the value of output that is produced for sale at market prices.
Non-Market Output
There will also be output that does not get picked up in turnover. There are two main types of non-market output. There is output that is produced by someone for own final use and output that is produced for sale at prices that are not economically significant.
There are lots of activities that could be included in production for own final use and around €35 billion of such activity was included in the national accounts for 2021. One of the main elements is the housing services that owner-occupier households provide to themselves. Owner-occupiers do not buy the housing services that they consume, but instead own the asset that produces them. An imputed value is included in the national accounts for the housing services produced, and consumed, by owner-occupier households. These are based on market rents and around €18.5 billion of such imputed rents were included in non-market output in 2021. Household cooking and cleaning undertaken by workers who are paid is also included in output but any cooking and cleaning done by households themselves is not.
Firms can also produce output for their own final use but as firms do not undertake final consumption their output for own final use only includes capital assets, as capital formation is a final use. Firm may have in-house production of capital assets such as machinery, software, and research and development. They do not sell the capital assets produced but use them in their own production. The 2021 figure is not yet available but in 2020, businesses in Ireland in the industry sector (NACE C) produced around €15 billion of capital assets for their own final use.
There is also non-market output which is provided at prices that are not economically significant (which includes having no price at all). The most important component of this other non-market output is the provision of health, education, and other services by the government sector. There will also be some non-market output from non-profit institutions serving households. In total, the value of such non-market output was estimated to be €50 billion in 2021. As there is no market price this value is based on the costs of production, of which labour costs will be the most significant in many instances. While consistent and measurable, the sum-of-costs approach does mean that such non-market output can potentially be undervalued relative to output included using market prices.
Changes in Stocks
As we want to get the production value within a particular time period (such as a year) an adjustment is made for changes in stocks. It could be that some of this year’s turnover is derived from the sale of goods made last year (i.e., a decline in stocks) or there could be output made this year that is not sold (i.e., an increase in stocks). In 2021, it is estimated that more output was produced during the year than was sold during the year which resulted in a positive figure for the change in stocks, of around €5 billion.
Production Value
Adding these four items: market output (€700 billion), output for own final use (€35 billion), other non-market output (€50 billion), and changes in stocks (+€5 billion) gets us to the total value of goods and services produced in the economy and included in the national accounts. Thus, the value of production in the Irish economy was estimated to be €790 billion in 2021. In a future post, we will pick up the sequence and follow how this production value is transposed into GDP and subsequently to National Income.
Prof. Chris Whelan passed away this week. He was Professor Emeritus of Sociology at UCD, a former Research Professor at the ESRI and Member of the Royal Irish Academy. The funeral notice is here. A brief summary of his career is provided by the ESRI.
Chris began his career with the Institute as a Research Assistant in 1972, becoming Research Professor in 1992. During this time, Chris coordinated research programmes in the areas of social inclusion, social cohesion and quality of life, publishing extensively on these topics and on economic and social change in Ireland during bust and boom. He left the ESRI in 2009 when he was appointed to the Chair in Sociology in UCD, but continued his connection with the Institute as a Research Affiliate.
The full tribute from the ESRI is available at the following link:
The Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland is delighted to open a call for entrants for the Barrington Prize for its 176th session, which takes place between September 2022 and June 2023. More details are given below.
Call for entrants The Barrington Medal is awarded annually by the Council of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland under the auspices of the Barrington Trust (founded in 1836 by the bequest of John Barrington). The award, which includes both a silver medal and €1,000, is intended to recognise a promising new researcher in the economic and social sciences in Ireland. This will be the 173rd anniversary of the lecture series and the recipient will be the 132nd Barrington Lecturer. Recipients in the past 35 years include: Deirdre McHugh, Don Thornhill, George Lee, Alan Joyce, Daniel McCoy, Brian Lucey, Kevin O’Rourke, Siobhan Lucey, Mary Walsh, Philip Lane, Aidan Kane, Donal O’Neill, Peter Clinch, Colm Harmon, Ronnie O’Toole, Cathal O’Donoghue, Paul McNicholas, Mary Keeney, Liam Delaney, Martina Lawless, Cal Muckley, Orla Doyle, Yvonne McCarthy, Ronan Lyons, Mark McGovern, Rebecca Stuart, Karina Doorley, Daragh Clancy, Barra Roantree, Niall Farrell and Paul Kilgarriff.
The lecture should be based on a paper of not more than 7,500 words addressing a topic of relevance to economic or social policy and of current interest in Ireland. In treating the issue of economic or social policy, the paper may either report the findings of a statistical research study dealing with some aspect of the problem or deal with the underlying theoretical considerations involved, or preferably combine these two approaches. It should be written in a manner that makes it accessible to non-specialists in the area. More technical material may be included in an appendix. The paper is published in the Journal of the Society, so it should not have been published before (nor should it be published subsequently without the prior consent of the Council of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland).
Candidates, who at the time of their submission must be not more than 35 years of age, should at least submit a detailed abstract of approximately 1,000 words on the proposed lecture, with preference being given to full papers. A short CV and the name of a proposer who is familiar with their work should also be submitted. Entries will be accepted from 1st June to 31st August, 2022 and should be sent to the Honorary Secretaries of the Society, via email, using the email address secretary@ssisi.ie, as should any queries regarding this call for entrants.
The J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics and the Whitaker Institute for Innovation and Societal Change at NUI Galway will host an online event on Reconstructing the Economy of Ukraine at 6.00 p.m. (Irish time) on April 26. The event is free but registration is required. To register for the event, please go to:
The main speaker is Professor Tymofiy Mylovanov. Professor Mylovanov is the President of Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. He served as Minister of Economic Development, Trade, and Agriculture in Ukraine from 2019 to 2020.
Also speaking will be Professor Barry Eichengreen. Professor Eichengreen is the George C. Pardee & Helen N. Pardee Chair and Distinguished Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as a Senior Policy Advisor to the International Monetary Fund.
The event will be chaired by Dr. Edel Doherty, Lecturer in Economics at NUI Galway.
