Are more open countries being hit harder in the recession?

A review of the IMF’s April 2009 World Economic Outlook, and an analysis of the fastest growing – and contracting – economies of 2009. The 2009 economic growth in Africa and Asia is welcome, and growth (albeit weaker) in China and India indicates the beginnings of self-sustaining domestic demand in those economies.

Are Irish workers undertaxed?

An overview of how much the typical worker is taxed in Ireland, compared to the rest of the OECD, reveals Irish workers to have a significantly lower tax burden than the OECD peers. The trend of lower and lower since 2000, so that the average industrial worker was actually subsidised in 2007, now appears not only unsustainable but also reckless.

How many months supply is sitting on the property market?

The US leads the way for many types of statistics – and in particular for their timeliness. The housing market is no different, with a plethora of measures such as prices and volume of transactions out every month. In Ireland, though, we have to labour under a dearth of timely statistics on a range of [...]

Protectionist backlash or falling consumer demand: Is the world in danger of deglobalization?

What if unemployment in Ireland reaches 25% next year? What if GDP falls a quarter between 2007 and 2012? The spectre of the Great Depression looms over us large at the moment and there has been much commentary of late – see for example Robert Samuelson’s recent blog post – on whether and how our [...]

Tackling the thorny issue of teachers pay

Earlier this year, I calculated average salary estimates for the public and private sectors in Ireland. The answer, that the average worker in the private sector earned €40,000 last year, almost €10,000 less than their public sector counterpart, has proved if not controversial than certainly a starting point for debate. Given some of the comments [...]

A brand new scare graph – Japan’s collapsing exports

I have just discovered a set of global trade statistics updated monthly by the Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB). (Incidentally, this is not the first time I’ve come across excellent work by the CPB – their work on administrative burdens imposed by regulation is essentially the international pioneer on the topic and has [...]

The first cut is the deepest – Dublin’s falls and Ireland’s property paradox

This week’s daft.ie report revealed some intriguing findings in relation to the current state and trajectory of Ireland’s property market. As was discussed yesterday, for example, while east peaked earlier than west, north has fallen further than south since the peak. One of the conclusions of both these findings is that Dublin and its commuter [...]

Lopping the top half off & Ireland’s property market in a global perspective

On Monday the latest daft.ie report came out, showing that asking prices had fallen just over 4% in the first three months of the year. Yesterday, I changed focus on the blog a little, as it was Budget day, and tried instead  to put some numbers on what a potential property tax could raise. Today, [...]

A €4bn Budget day suggestion – just how much could an Irish property tax raise?

Yesterday, the latest daft.ie report was released. More details here, but the overall gist is that asking prices fell 4.2% in the first few months of the year. Coupled with the falls in 2007 and 2008, this means that asking prices are now down 18% in two years. On the face of it, this may [...]

Irish house prices fall 4% since the start of 2009 – latest daft.ie report

Ireland’s property slump marked it second birthday today, with the news from the latest daft.ie report that asking prices for residential property fell 4.2% in the first three months of 2009. This latest drop in prices marks the eight consecutive quarter that prices have fallen. As the official press release notes, the national average asking [...]