What a year it has been so far. The phrase used by the exiting Margaret Thatcher in 1990, ‘It’s a funny old world’, springs to mind in considering the fall-out from a referendum in the UK and a presidential election in the USA. However, the matter is far from funny. The immediate causes and impacts...

In an earlier post I contrasted some measures of productivity in food manufacture [ A Tale of Two Cities ]. The Republic of Ireland stands out as having the highest gross value added per employee in 2012 amongst EU Member States. Clearly something is odd with this. The clue lies in a further...

The vulnerability of the Republic of Ireland economy to external shifts and shocks was brought home in 2016 in at least two ways. While the potential Brexit from the European Union (EU) has unclear political implications, it has almost certainly negative economic implications. At the same time, the...

The term ‘social wage’ is sometimes used to refer to those public goods and services consumed by workers and their families. Apart from wages earned over a given period we enjoy the benefits of ‘free’ or heavily subsidised services in areas such as education and health (although the balance has...

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” – the opening line of Charles Dicken’s The Tale of Two Cities is a familiar one. It could be applied to the fall-out from the ‘Brexit’ vote in the UK on 23 rd June. If UK policy makers, analysts and the general public were not exactly prepared...

The prospect of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union presents a once-in-a-generation challenge for the Northern Ireland Executive, the Irish Government and citizens across this island. A recent paper by economists at the Department of Finance [ UK EU Exit – An Exposure Analysis of Sectors...

The draft budget for 2017 for the Republic of Ireland will now be submitted to the European Commission for approval. In the meantime, the real work in relation to the implementation of Budget 2017 proposals will involve various deliberations and discussions leading to the Finance Bill in a number of...

The squeezed middle is one of those terms that has entered popular discourse in Ireland as well as abroad. Political and media pundits refer, at ease, to the ‘squeezed middle’ who are said to have borne the brunt of the recent recession or fiscal austerity and have lost out compared to those on...