“By 2050, there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish, entangling sea creatures and trapping them, mimicking their food, and releasing toxins that poison them: marine turtles feed on plastic bags because they float in the ocean like jellyfish. Alabtrosses, those vast ocean-going birds, are...

Last Monday morning, I looked out the window and it was calm and sunny in the part of Ireland where I was. ‘What storm’? I mumbled. A few hours later made all the difference. Economists are very good at explaining what happened. Lots of econometrics and fitted regression lines work wonders. We are...

The draft budget for 2018 to be yet approved by the European Commission has arrived. Still, some working out of detail in the Finance Act and various other legal measures remains. The build-up, the leaks, the drama, the instant analysis, the soundbites and the slowly emerging aftermath is part of...

‘Economics’ is often viewed as a ‘positive science’ that examines choices in a world of constrained resources. One only has so much time or money or capital (including human). There are so many choices and needs. The ‘science’ of economics, it is claimed, involves optimising outcomes or well-being...

Much progress has been made in regards to the state of Irish public finances, due in large part, to the recovery in economic activity in recent times. Taxes are flowing under many headings as unemployment continues to inch downwards and there is a broad-based recovery. Yet, many people are scarcely...

In the Autumn of 2016 Prime Minister Theresa May commissioned Matthew Taylor to undertake a review to consider how employment practices need to change in order to keep pace with modern business models. One of the central aims of the review was to consider the extent that emerging business practices...