The recent debate surrounding Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey’s proposals to reduce the legal alcohol limit for drivers from 80mg to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood provides an interesting insight on the economist’s tool of Cost/Benefit Analysis. On one side we have the Minister arguing that the benefits of the measure will be [...]
In the last two years, China experienced a rapid decline in economic expansion due to the global financial crisis as growth fell from 13% in the fourth quarter of 2007 to a growth rate of just 6.1% in the first quarter of 2009. However, recent data results announced on Thursday by the National bureau of Statistics [...]
Here is a link to the slides from a presentation on the Smart Economy by Eoin O’Leary and I at the Dublin Economics Workshop in Kenmare this weekend.
Denis O’Brien spoke at last night’s Dublin Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner. An extract from his speech is quoted on the RTE website: Mr O’Brien said the country’s third level sector supported 250 academic economists whom he accused of ‘writing blogs, twittering and taking out ads to stop NAMA’. He said they generally made a nuisance of [...]
The slides I used in a recent lunchtime seminar on The Irish Economy are available to view and download here.
How many Third-Level Economics Departments should Ireland have? This is a question that has been addressed a number of time recently, though it is very hard (impossible?) to find any similar discussion in relation to other disciplines. Back in March, Brian Hayes launched Fine Gael’s plans for reform in higher education, called The Third Way. [...]
Here are a couple of op-eds, I did recently on NAMA. One can be found in last week’s Business and Finance and the other is lost in cyber space somewhere. Generally, I argue that the focus of the NAMA debate remains far too narrow, and if viewed in a broader fiscal context, might not seem like such a bad deal. Given the inherent uncertainties attending [...]
Rio de Janeiro has been awarded the 2016 Summer Olympic Games following a vote in Copenhagen on Friday. How did they manage it? And how was clear favourite Chicago eliminated after the first round even with Barack Obama in tow? Here are the odds from 2 days before the vote Chicago 8/11 Rio de Janeiro [...]