Tomorrow I am participating in a public debate on research funding hosted by the Long Room Hub in Trinity. The debate is entitled Academic Research: is it of any value to the taxpayer?. Speaking on the opposite side (of course argung that it is of value) is Professor Poul Holm (TCD) and Professor Luke O’Neill (TCD). The [...]
Bertie Ahern wondered in 2007 why critics of government economic policy didn’t commit suicide. Now he thinks they should do something productive like ‘dig the garden or grow bluebells’. The comments were made to VIP magazine.
Not any of the so-called scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich that’s for sure. A story that has had a surprisingly low profile in the mainstream media has grabbed the attention of the online world. In an incident that has been dubbed Climategate a hacker managed to [...]
Alan Good of The Irish Examiner uses basic concept of incentives to analyse the infamous hand ball goal in the recent Ireland-France play-off in this post on The Examiner‘s sports blog. Economics does a good job of explaining this, however. Artisans of the dismal science are, by their own admission, obsessed with incentives, and they are at [...]
RTE has a story that is of little interest except for the dichotomy it offers. IBEC, Sinn Fein present pre-budget submissions
….. but has a marketing problem (apparently). Writing in today’s Irish Times HSE Chief Executive, Professor of Paediatrics Brendan Drumm argues that the HSE ”has achieved major successes over five years”. Some paragraphs from the piece state: Our increase in productivity has seen a cut in waiting times for elective procedures. In the last year alone, the number [...]