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Exploring Affordability in the Irish Housing Market
Get PDFThis paper examines housing affordability in Ireland by looking at the distribution of housing costs across households. Using microdata from the SILC survey over the period 2006-2016, the contribution of this paper is threefold. First, the paper considers the trends in the cost of housing in Ireland across groups of households split by age, region, household structure, and their position in the income distribution. Second, we apply selected international housing affordability definitions and explorethe share, and composition, of households in Ireland that would be captured by these definitions. We do not find evidence of universal affordability difficulties in the Irish market. However, certain groups do face acute affordability challenges. Third, working towards a definition of housing cost affordability for use in Irish policy discussions, we provide some guidance as to what such a definition could look like
Contributing to Macro-Economic Policy in Ireland
Get PDFFrom 1970, the return of many Irish economists who had studied abroad contributed greatly to the volume of research on the Irish economy and to the related debate on policy. This was reflected in the establishment of The Economic and Social Review in 1969 and, since its establishment, the research published in the Review has made an important contribution to our understanding of the behaviour of the Irish economy and to improving the quality of policymaking.
 
The Current Account, a Real-Time Signal of Economic Imbalances or 20/20 Hindsight?
Get PDFThe current account balance has a rich tradition as an indicator of macroeconomic imbalances – one considered essential in terms of presaging the recent financial crisis. However, we show that the current account balance may be misleading in real time. Preliminary estimates are subject to large revisions and are often of a sufficient magnitude to cross key international thresholds for signalling macroeconomic imbalances. We find some evidence that revisions in certain countries may be systematically biased and, hence, predictable. Exploring the Irish current account data in detail, we find that trade statistics dominate revisions
The Scale and Impact of the Local Authority Rent Subsidy
Get PDFThis paper examines the targeting of rent subsidies among local authority tenant households. Using microdata from the SILC survey over the period 2006 to 2015, the distributions of household rents and incomes are examined and the targeting of the local authority rental subsidy is assessed. Using propensity score matching, estimates are made of the impact of the rental subsidy on households and on the income distribution. The potential impacts on the income distribution of alternative rent subsidy mechanisms are assessed. The paper finds that the subsidisation of the rental costs paid by local authority tenants decreases income inequality, when housing costs are taken into account. Also evident is the poor targeting of rental subsidies; counter-factual scenarios in which local authority rental subsidies are directed to a greater degree towards lower income households are shown to reduce income inequality
Fifty Years a-Growing: Economic History and Demography in The Economic and Social Review
Get PDFThis paper surveys publications in the fields of economic history and demography in The Economic and Social Review since 1969. Numbering 60 in all, they cover a broad chronological and thematic range. Some of these papers never attracted much notice, but stand as useful sources for future historians. A few have become classics.
 
Ireland’s Gender Wage Gap, Past and Present
Get PDFThis paper first provides a brief survey of research on the gender wage gap in Ireland, particularly in The Economic and Social Review. It then documents recent research on how the gender wage gap varies across the wage distribution; the gap now appears to be greatest for high earners, for whom it also tends to be largely unexplained by human capital variables. Finally, it uses a combination of recent research results and some descriptive analysis of the Labour Force Survey to consider the potential importance of occupation in explaining the gender wage gap. It concludes with a call for further research in the area
The Euro at 20: Successes, Problems, Progress and Threats
Get PDFThe euro has had a difficult second decade but the project has still had some important successes. The common currency is popular among the Euro Area’s citizens, intra-European exchange rate instability has been removed and the ECB has successfully achieved its primary goal of price stability. The single currency’s popularity has made the euro more resilient than many sceptics thought possible twenty years ago. A number of improvements to the architecture of EMU have been implemented in the past decade but serious tensions remain, relating to fiscal capacity, sovereign default and financial stability. To keep the euro together, Europe’s politicians need to make the Euro Area less crisis-prone and to make it easier for member states to recover from the inevitable cyclical downturns that will happen in the future. The past few years have seen many proposals put forward for future improvements to the economic policy structure underlying the euro. Keeping the euro together may depend on Europe’s politicians agreeing to implement them
Foreword - Vol 5
No full textThe board has recently reviewed the editorial policy of the Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy. The exercise was prompted by our desire to provide a more diverse, representative and inclusive platform for academics and emerging researchers, those involvedin both creative and management practice in the cultural sector, and policymakers, to engage with questions of policy and management on cultural issues across the island of Ireland. While maintaining our existing commitment to publishing original academic research papers, the new policy seeks to highlight emerging research from the wealth of student work at MA level on the island, and provide an opportunity for cultural managers, practitioners and policymakers to reflect on policies and practices shaping the cultural sector here
New Voices: A discussion of methods to measure the economic impact of art and cultural events
Get PDFThis research paper interrogates the methods used by Grant Thornton to measure the economic impact of Limerick City of Culture and proposes alternate local/non-local expenditure segmentation as a more accurate method.
The European Capital Cities of Culture and UK Capital of Culture initiatives have been viewed as successful cultural projects. In 2014 a similar initiative for Ireland, the National City of Culture, was launched with Limerick awarded the first title. Set broadly in the area of cultural economics, this paper discusses economic impact reporting techniques applied to the Limerick City of Culture in 2014. It concludes that a technique of segmentation of audience expenditures may contribute to a more accurate picture of economic impact of event attendees. It compares this process of segmentation to the methods employed by Grant Thornton in their Economic Impact Assessment of the Limerick City of Culture and concludes that economic techniques alone fail to capture the range of benefits that accrue from the existence of art and culture and should therefore be complemented by other tools, such as social impact assessments
Social Housing in the Irish Housing Market
Get PDFThis paper traces the evolution of social supports for housing since 2004, including local authority (LA) housing, housing provided by Approved Housing Bodies (AHB) and support for renting in the private sector through schemes administered by the local government sector (Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS) and the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP)) and the Rent Supplement scheme operated by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. Given the increased use of the private sector to provide housing for low-income households, the paper draws on SILC data to examine changes between 2004 and 2015 in the quality of housing in different sectors, as measured by problems such as dampness, lack of central heating, lack of double glazing, insufficient light and noise. The analysis finds that the overall percentage of housing that is socially supported increased during the recession to 17 per cent from 13 per cent in the boom years (2004-2007, mainly via increased use of Rent Supplement) but dropped back towards pre-recession levels by 2015 (about 15 per cent). The use of the private sector as a source of socially-supported housing rose from 28 per cent in the boom years to 42 per cent during the recession before dropping back to 33 per cent by 2016. Housing quality improved between 2004 and 2015, with a drop from 16 per cent to 9 per cent in the percentage of people living in dwellings with two or more of five quality problems; the improvements were significantly greater for those living in rented than owned/mortgaged dwellings, though rented dwellings remained at a disadvantage in 2015. Improvements in quality in the rented sector were found across the income distribution