The trend of rising non-standard employment across the developed world is by now, well established. Full-time permanent positions as a proportion of employment are in decline as part-time and fixed-term contracts are rising. The growth of ‘precarious’ work (often used as a blanket-term for low-wage...

‘Why don’t they get a job?’ “Isn’t social welfare making people chose ‘leisure’ over ‘work’?” ‘Aren’t social payments in Ireland way above those in the UK and elsewhere?. Only a particular perspective and frame of mind among economists, politicians or commentators trigger these sorts of questions...

First, there was a bonanza for land-owners in or near cities in the 1960s. Then there was the Kenny Report in 1973 (Kenny was a High Court judge who recommended pegging development land prices at 25% above agricultural land value – the recommendation has been ignored ever since). After that nothing...

For most economists the sources of productivity, innovation and technological progress are almost co-extensive with the central question of economics - what is the source of the wealth of nations? Unfortunately productivity growth has been on a generally downward in the advanced economies for close...

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) were much in vogue across Europe for many years especially prior to the Great Recession of 2008-2012. The essential idea behind PPPs is that the State commissions a private company to undertake some or all of the following: part-fund, design, build, operate and...

Time was when a patch sown on to the elbow was not a fashion statement but a timely and thrifty measure to prolong the use of a jacket or jumper. ‘Circular economy’ might be set to become the new buzzword but it is not a new idea. The discipline of economics (I much prefer the more honest descriptor...

Trends In recent years Ireland’s headline national accounts have become increasingly distorted by multinational activity. Indeed the distortion is now so pronounced that it has become difficult to interpret Ireland’s economic performance and cyclical position using aggregate indicators. Even so, it...