NERI Seminar: The Impact on National Income of the Patent-Cliff
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...
Monday Blog: Thinking aloud about goods and services in the public domain
‘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 remains a major issue
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...
Monday Blog: Raising wages or cutting taxes?
‘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
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
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
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...
50p tax rate would affect less than 2000 earners in Northern Ireland
Much has been made of the announcement yesterday by the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls MP that a Labour government would reintroduce a 50% tax on incomes over £150,000. The motivation of this policy is to reduce the deficit, and taxing higher incomes is clearly far preferable than withdrawing even more...
Monday Blog: The best behaved pupil?
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?
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...