The past six years have been very challenging with a succession of harsh budgets, pay cuts, tax increases and price hikes faced by all households. For those impacted most, unemployment and emigration have hit home. For others, the challenge to make ends meet has grown harder and harder. While the...

It’s a funny old world as a former British Prime Minister once said. The United States and the United Kingdom have distinguished themselves in the last quarter century as leaders in wage in equality, a declining share of wages in total income and enhanced ‘labour market flexibility’. Larry Summers...

Today's NERI seminar in the INTO Learning Centre focussed on the impact of the patent cliff on economic and fiscal activity In Ireland. Shane Enright and Mary Dalton gave a detailed overview of their recent paper on the subject. Mary and Shane both work in the Department of Finance. Previously, Mary...

‘Economics’ has been defined as a ‘science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses’ (Lionel Robbins). While I have difficulty with an understanding which regards economics as a ‘science’ (scientific methods may be used but, surely...

Under-employment continues to be a major long-term issue for Irish workers. The broadest measure of unemployment (whereby people are either unemployed, or working part-time but wishing to work full-time, or discouraged workers) remains at 23.5%, down from a peak of 25.8% in mid-2012. In the third...

‘Putting more money into the pockets of consumers and workers’ Now who could be against that? ...after six years of unrelenting austerity, wage cuts for some, tax increases for nearly everyone …. But the problem is that ‘putting more money into the pockets’ can be done in a number of ways. Taxes on...

Indicator 4.4 from the NERI’s latest Quarterly Economics Facts (QEF) document examines wealth across Europe using a measure of average net financial wealth per person. This measure, calculated using the latest data from Eurostat, captures assets such as cash, bank deposits and shares but does not...

Investment – or the lack of it – has been a frequent theme in the debate about how economic recovery could be assisted through targeted, timely and beneficial interventions. Typically, mention of investment invokes images of men and women with yellow hats, cranes in the horizon and engineers...

Understanding the nature, shape and composition of the income distribution is an important component of our understanding of society and the appropriateness of various policy options. In the context of considerations of policy changes (to taxes, welfare payments or public services) or changes to...