Monday Blog: Raising wages or cutting taxes?

15 Feb 2014
Tom Healy
‘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...

Comparing Wealth in Ireland and the EU

10 Feb 2014
Micheál Collins
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...

Monday Blog: Time for a debate on Higher Education

07 Feb 2014
Tom Healy
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...

Household Income Distribution in the Republic of Ireland

04 Feb 2014
infobo
table> 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...

Household Income Distribution in the Republic of Ireland

04 Feb 2014
Micheál Collins
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...

Monday Blog: The best behaved pupil?

26 Jan 2014
Tom Healy
As memories of the Troika in Ireland recede and as the narrative has been truly set we should pause and ask some hard questions. In a recent article entitle Ireland: The Best Behaved Pupil? on the Policy Network website (State of the Left) I have argued that 'the great irony of recent months is that...

Ireland’s VAT Gap – a missing billion?

22 Jan 2014
Micheál Collins
A recent report from the European Commission (DG TAXUD) offers some interesting insights into the Republic of Ireland’s VAT system and the amount of VAT collected. The report, which examined the VAT systems across EU member states, sets out to estimate the ‘VAT gap’ a measure of the difference...
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