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Austerity, the Public Sector and the Threat to Gender Equality - Geary Lecture 2014
Get PDFEurope is in the grip of austerity policies. Some governments regard this as a medium term cyclical correction but others seek a long term shrinking of the social state. This shrinkage applies particularly to the state’s social roles as: a source of income support; a provider of free or subsidised public services; a direct employer; and a defence against the marketisation of society. All four areas have specific significance for women such that we cannot envisage progress towards gender equality in Europe, understood as a socially progressive objective, without a reversal of the austerity trends and an active social state
Do Credit Constraints Affect SME Investment and Employment?
Get PDFThis paper explores the potential presence of credit constraints confronting Irish SMEs and investigates the impact of these constraints on firms’ employment and investment. Using new survey data collected by the Department of Finance, we define firms as credit rationed or discouraged borrowers and link these constraints to employment and the propensity to invest. We find a negative and significant effect of SME credit constraints on employment for firms that are discouraged from applying for credit. We also find a negative effect of constraints on the probability of an SME investing. This effect is driven by firms who are credit rationed when seeking capacity expansion loans
Is Fuel Poverty in Ireland a Distinct Type of Deprivation?
Get PDFIn this paper, we draw on the Central Statistics Office SILC data for Ireland to ask whether fuel poverty is a distinctive type of deprivation that warrants a fundamentally different policy response than poverty in general. We examine the overlap between fuel poverty (based on three self-report items) and poverty in general – with a particular emphasis on the national indicator of basic deprivation which is used in the measurement of poverty for policy purposes in Ireland. We examine changes in the overlap between 2004 and 2011 and the risk factors for fuel poverty compared to those for deprivation more generally. The paper concludes, based on evidence from factor analysis and multinomial regression, that fuel poverty is better regarded as an aspect of low living standards rather than being a distinct dimension of deprivation
Housing Bubbles and Monetary Policy: A Reassessment
Get PDFThis study contributes to the ongoing debate over the causes of housing bubbles. The argument that excessively low interest rates were responsible for the rapid increase in house prices over the last decade has received considerable attention in the literature. However, few papers have attempted to quantify the extent of house price overvaluation in countries that have seen housing booms and busts, in addition to quantifying the looseness of monetary policy. For a sample of 10 OECD countries, we estimate fundamental house prices using demand and supply side characteristics of the housing market. This is supplemented with analysis of price to rent ratios and fundamental price to rent ratios. Loose monetary policy is defined as the deviation of the shortterm interest rate from the rate which the Taylor rule would prescribe. The empirical results suggest that for some countries deviations from the Taylor rule played a role in the surge in house prices and that a monetary policy stance less discretionary and more closely aligned with a Taylor rule could curtail some of the imbalance in the housing market
EOIN O’LEARY, Irish Economic Development: High-Performing EU State or Serial Underachiever. London: Routledge; 232 pages; March 2015
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Alan Counihan
Get PDFArtist Alan Counihan spoke his experience tendering for public artwork commissioned by the Arts Council and other bodies and how this experience reflected both the strengths and weaknesses of Irish arts policy.
The comments and points I am about to make have been shaped and experienced as a maker of art, neither as a producer of product nor as an entrepreneur, over the past 25 years. Even where critical or questioning I hope that they will be seen as constructive; it is how they are intended. We have been invited to address the fitness of purpose of current cultural structures and their responsiveness to change. I do so in light of personal engagement with cultural structures in recent times – I do not claim that they are representative
International Risk Sharing and the Irish Economy
Get PDFThis paper studies international risk sharing in Ireland during the 1970-2007 period. Following the correlation- and regression-based approaches, we confirm that Ireland belongs to the rare set of countries where risk sharing took place. We also study whether changes in consumption and income risk sharing were associated with the European integration process by looking at specific sub-periods. We find no evidence of consumption risk sharing being associated with this. However, our empirical results suggest that income risk sharing improved as Europe became more integrated
A Reduced-form Equation for the Unemployment Rate Estimated from a Panel of Nineteen OECD Countries
Get PDFUsing a dynamic fixed-effects model for a panel of nineteen OECD countries and annual aggregate data, 1970-2008, we estimate a reduced-form equation for the observed unemployment rate. We find that wage-push factors, such as employment protection and union power, increase the unemployment rate, whereas net immigration reduces it, although this last effect is practically negligible. We also find that the labour market is characterised by strong “lagged adjustment processes,” so the governments of the countries in the sample have an additional incentive to fight current unemployment, to prevent it from becoming prolonged
Anaesthetic Awareness: A Past, Present and Future Challenge
Get PDFAnaesthetic awareness is a rare complication of general anaesthesia. Its occurrence is likely to be multifactorial, with young age, female sex, Chinese ethnicity, previous awareness, gestation, and pulmonary hypertension associated with a higher risk of awareness. Awareness is a distressing complication for patients, with 30% of patients who experience awareness developing psychiatric symptoms ranging from nightmares, flashbacks, and anxiety to post-traumatic stress. Therefore, attempts to monitor awareness are desirable. The aim of this short article is to look at past achievements and future challenges in detecting, monitoring, managing and avoiding awareness