Constantin Gurdgiev and I offer different views on Ireland’s capacity to avoid default in today’s Irish Examiner. Articles here. The articles follow an introductory piece by the paper’s political reporter, Mary Regan.
The latest Eurostat data on industrial production and GDP are now available. GDP growth decelerated fairly sharply in 2010:Q3, down to 0.4% from 1% in Q2. As always the Irish data will only be available with a lag, which is unsatisfactory.
Industrial production was down 0.9% in September as compared with October, with consumer durables production leading the decline at 3%. A glance at the table shows how volatile Irish industrial production data are in comparison with the data elsewhere, implying that the monthly data are not informative for this country. The annual recovery in Irish industrial output has been quite respectable, however.
The implications of this deceleration for the Eurozone periphery are too obvious to need spelling out, although the FT does so here.
Economics and Psychology One Day Session: UCD Geary Institute
We will be hosting a session on Economics and Psychology in the UCD Research Building on November 23rd. Those who wish to attend should RSVP to Philippa Barrington at geary@ucd.ie. Please indicate whether you wish to attend the full-day session or the keynote lecture by Professor Laibson only. The programme is below. There is no registration fee.
Programme
10.00am – 10.30am
Martin Ryan (UCD) “The Role of Economic Psychology and Non-Cognitive Skill in Students’ Lecture Attendance and Academic Achievement”
10.30am – 11am
Liam Delaney (UCD) “Automatic Enrollment and the Irish Pension System”
11am – 11.20am: Coffee
11.30am – 12pm
Cormac O’Dea (IFS and UCL). “Cognitive function, numeracy and retirement saving trajectories”
12pm – 12.30pm
Marie Briguglio (University of Malta). “Voluntary Pro-Environmental Behaviour”.
1230pm – 1pm
Michael Daly(TCD) “How income relates to life satisfaction and daily emotional experience: Evidence from the American Life Panel”
LUNCH
2pm – 2.30pm
Mick O’Connell (UCD) “Variation in ‘Returns to Education’ and academic performance by country in OECD’s PISA science scores”
2.30pm to 3pm
Robert Metcalfe (Oxford) “Behavioural Economics TBA”
3pm – 3.30pm
Peter Lunn (ESRI) “What Can I Get For It? A theoretical and empirical re-analysis of the endowment effect.”
3.30pm – 4pm Coffee
4pm – 5.30pm: Keynote Speaker.
David Laibson (Harvard) “Natural Expectations and Economic Behavior”
The second Geary Lecture of 2010 will be given by Professor Canice Prendergast, W. Allen Wallis Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Venue: ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2
Date: 25/11/2010
Time: 4 p.m.
For the last couple of decades, there has been a large body of work arguing for the widespread use of pay-for-performance as the appropriate means of aligning the interests of workers with those of their employers. This lecture outlines recent contributions to this body of work, and focuses on a number of general themes. First, the successes of pay-for-performance schemes are limited to a small class of agency settings that do not seem to generalise to other settings. Second, the literature has now begun to consider instruments other than pay as the most natural way to align interests. Finally, there is controversial literature in psychology that now challenges the basic assumptions of this strand of economic literature. The talk will review all these recent contributions, and likely directions for future research.
Canice Prendergast, who was a research assistant at the ESRI from 1983 to 1985, is now one of the world’s foremost researchers on workplace incentives and their impact on productivity. He is currently the W. Allen Wallis Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
The Geary lecture is organised each year by the ESRI and honours Dr R. C. Geary (1896 –1983), the first Director of the Institute.
This is one of the special events being held during 2010 to mark the Institute’s fiftieth birthday.
Booking
Attendance at the event is free but must be pre-booked. There are a limited number of places available and early booking is encouraged. To book a place, please send details of attendee’s name, organisation and contact telephone number by email to admin@esri.ie.
His article is here.