Seán Lemass and the Nadir of Protectionism

This paper considers the move to protectionism in Ireland with the advent of the new government in 1932. Using material from an unpublished paper by Lemass the paper shows the logical basis of the protectionist policy adopted: designed as a means of increasing employment and possible development. This paper then places the collapse of protectionism in the late 1950s within the context of a general failure of protection to provide for development and a mismanaged macro-policy, leading to the acceptance of outward looking policies.

Budget 2009. FFS/ESRI Budget Perspectives Conference, October 2008

Since the recovery from the 1980’s depression the economy has performed extraordinarily well. However, during that period it experienced two growth cycles, in the early 1990’s and again in the early 2000’s, when output was well above and well below potential, but did not record negative growth. The economy is now in a further cycle, this time accompanied by negative growth. Fiscal policy throughout this whole period has been pro-cyclical, and this characteristic has accentuated the difficulties faced by policymakers in framing the budget for 2009 and future years. This paper looks at the origins and consequences of this approach and indicates the policy implications

BUDGET PERSPECTIVES 2011. RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 18 October 2010

The Budget Perspectives Conference, co‐hosted annually by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and the Foundation for Fiscal Studies provides a forum for discussing key public policy issues of both immediate concern (in upcoming budgets) and longer term concern. In the context of the current fiscal and economic crisis, research insights aimed at making more efficient use of scarce resources are needed now more than ever. Furthermore, research on the allocation of benefits and tax burdens is critical not only for intrinsic reasons but also to ensure that policies are publicly acceptable. It is not enough for policy to promote efficiency and fairness – it must be seen to do so. The research papers presented at this year’s annual Budget Perspectives conference continue in this tradition, providing an opportunity for policymakers, social partners and researchers to engage on some of the major issues that we face today

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Provision of private pension schemes in Poland

This paper considers the problems of the social security system in relation to pensions in Poland. It concludes that the system that prevailed up to recently had the capacity to cause the Social Insurance Fund to be permanently in deficit because of structural issues deriving from the conditions of the scheme, early retirement and recent increases in the dependency rate. Over the long term this deficit was likely to widen for demographic reasons. The recent reforms are unlikely to eleminate the deficit, so that the system may be driven to the private provision of pensions. This in turn raises fundamental property right issues. Finally, the issue of the private provision of pensions need to be seen in the light of the economy's need for domestic saving and financial markets and instruments to accelerate development.A hard copy is available in UCD Library at GEN 330.08 IR/UN

TEAM and Irish Steel : an application of the declining high-wage industries literature

Since wage stickiness generates unemployment or intersectoral labour transfer in excess of that associated with a flexible-wage adjustment process, it is frequently argued that declining industries should be subsidised to some extent to replicate the behaviour of undistorted economies. We discuss three arguments against this "traditional" viewpoint, and find that each applies in the cases of Irish Steel and Team Aer Lingus. Intervention, we find, far from alleviating the competitiveness problems that these sectors face, actually worsens them.A hard copy is available in UCD Library at GEN 330.08 IR/UN

Social consensus, income policies and unemployment

The original photocopying quality of this item renders some text unreadable. A hard copy is available in UCD Library at GEN 330.08 IR/UN

Compulsory health insurance : the next step?

DEW Annual Policy Conference, Kenmare, 15-17 October 199