The Irish Economy

Readers might be interested in this UCD Geary working paper, which was featured in the Sunday Business Post yesterday. The title of the paper is “Celtic Phoenix or Leprechaun Economics: the Political Economy of an FDI-led Growth Model in Europe”.

Our core argument is that Ireland’s post-crisis economic recovery was driven by foreign direct investment (FDI) from Silicon Valley, and whilst this growth model was made possible by Ireland’s low corporate tax rates, it was also a result of inward migration, with these firms using Ireland to directly access the European labour market.

We also demonstrate that Irish fiscal and wage policies have not redistributed gains from the FDI recovery to the broader population. As a result, the economic recovery has been most actively felt by those in the FDI sectors, including foreign-national workers from the EU and beyond.

We suggest that this experience indicates that Ireland’s FDI-led growth model has created clear winners and losers. The FDI growth regime been made possible by inward migration and European integration, but given the unequal distribution of the economic benefits that this generates, it is unlikely to be politically, or electorally, sustainable.

Much has been written about TK Whitaker recently, not least the post and links here.  UCD asked me to write an obituary, which is here.

The 2017 World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research Conference will be held from Thursday 14th to Saturday 16th of September 2017 in Utrecht University, Netherlands.

The conference welcomes contributions from any academic discipline that address the challenges and dynamics of the economic, political, legal and social institutions of our time. Submissions on any other aspect of institutional research are also welcome.

Organisers are requesting abstract submissions (300 words max.). All submission must be about institutions, organisations and/or institutional thought.

Keynotes lectures, representing three academic disciplines, will be given by Johanna Mair (Hertie School of Governance), James Robinson (University of Chicago) and Juliet Schor (Boston College).

The conference will also feature a round table on “ICT, Open Societies and New Institutions” with José van Dijck (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), Haroon Sheikh (Dasym Investment Strategies) and Fredrik Söderqvist (Unionen), and will be preceded by a PhD workshop.

The abstract submission deadline is Monday 13th of March 2017. More information can be found here.

Sone readers might be interested in this excellent blog post by Thomas Piketty on the alleged asymmetry between Germany and France.

The core takeaway is that both countries have similar levels of productivity – measured in terms of GDP per hour worked.

The difference between Germany and France is that they use their high-levels of productivity in very different ways. France consumes and invests what it produces. Germany sells it abroad.

The excessive and persistent trade surpluses in Germany (outside small oil producing states and tax havens) “are unprecedented in economic history”. Europe has a German problem.