Irish house prices: Déjà vu all over again? Quarterly Economic Commentary Special Article, WINTER 2017

The pace at which Irish house prices have grown since 2013 has surprised many observers. The Irish housing market was one of the most affected across the OECD after the international financial downturn of 2007/2008, with prices falling by 54 per cent in nominal values between 2007 and 2013. However since 2013 prices have increased by 50 per cent with recent house price inflation showing no signs of abating. The performance of the housing market currently very much reflects developments in the real economy with Ireland’s strong recovery in macroeconomic terms post-2013 resulting in falling unemployment and growing income levels, all set against the backdrop of persistently low Euro Area interest rates. In this paper, using a variety of approaches, recent developments in house prices are appraised; in particular, the sustainability or otherwise of current prices is evaluated and cross-country comparisons are also drawn. The unifying conclusion which emerges is that, given Ireland’s expected strong economic performance over the next five years, the domestic market, in the absence of a significant supply response, looks set to experience consistently rising house prices over the medium term

Why do some countries produce so much more output per worker than others? A note.

In an important paper. Hal! and Jones (1999) show that international differences in output per worker across 127 countries in 1988 are fundamentally determined by variations in. what they term, a country's "social infrastructure". This paper conducts a robustness check of their findings by implementing a testing framework that is radically different to their approach. Specifically, we estimate a stochastic, rather than a deterministic, production frontier and we also model the potential role of social infrastructure in explaining productivity in a single step, rather than the statistically unsatisfactory- two-step method used by Hall and Jones. We obtain two important findings that are strongly supportive of Hall and Jones' results. First, the bulk of inter-country variation in output per worker is accounted for by differences in productivity. Second, social infrastructure is found to be a highly significant variable in explaining inter-country productivity differences.Productivity, Social Infrastructure, Stochastic Production Frontier.

Exploring the Implications of Monetary Policy Normalisation for Irish Mortgage Arrears. Quarterly Economic Commentary Special Article, Spring 2019.

The current level of the monetary policy rate in the Eurozone is low both by international and historical standards and will likely rise over the coming years. In this Article we consider what the impact of a rise in ECB policy rates would mean for the Irish mortgage market. First, we examine the structure of the Irish mortgage market in terms of interest rate contract types and explore the link between the mortgage rate and the policy rate. Second, we draw out the results of policy modelling linking arrears and interest rates using a model put forward in Slaymaker et al. (2019). We then use this model to provide some further scenarios exploring the impact of interest rate rises on the arrears rate for particular groups of Irish households. Our findings suggest a 25 basis point increase in the policy rate would lead to a 0.1 percentage point increase in new missed mortgage payments. While households are in a better economic position to withstand policy rate increases given the recovery in the labour market and in house prices, rate rises would lead to payments rising faster than long-term income growth. Younger, lower income households who are at an earlier stage in their mortgage contract are more at risk, as are households on tracker interest rates who have a contractual pass-through from the policy rate to the lending rate

Cosmological Parameter Estimation Using 21 cm Radiation from the Epoch of Reionization

A number of radio interferometers are currently being planned or constructed to observe 21 cm emission from reionization. Not only will such measurements provide a detailed view of that epoch, but, since the 21 cm emission also traces the distribution of matter in the Universe, this signal can be used to constrain cosmological parameters at 6 < z < 20. The sensitivity of an interferometer to the cosmological information in the signal may depend on how precisely the angular dependence of the 21 cm 3-D power spectrum can be measured. Utilizing an analytic model for reionization, we quantify all the effects that break the spherical symmetry of the 3-D 21 cm power spectrum and produce physically motivated predictions for this power spectrum. We find that upcoming observatories will be sensitive to the 21 cm signal over a wide range of scales, from larger than 100 to as small as 1 comoving Mpc. We consider three methods to measure cosmological parameters from the signal: (1) direct fitting of the density power spectrum to the signal, (2) using only the velocity field fluctuations in the signal, (3) looking at the signal at large enough scales such that all fluctuations trace the density field. With the foremost method, the first generation of 21 cm observations should moderately improve existing constraints on cosmological parameters for certain low-redshift reionization scenarios, and a two year observation with the second generation interferometer MWA5000 can improve constraints on Omega_w, Omega_m h^2, Omega_b h^2, Omega_nu, n_s, and alpha_s. If the Universe is substantially ionized by z = 12 or if spin temperature fluctuations are important, we show that it will be difficult to place competitive constraints on cosmological parameters with any of the considered methods.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, accepted by Ap

Neutrophil extracellular traps in stored canine red blood cell units

BackgroundNeutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), webs of DNA and citrullinated histones extruded from activated neutrophils cause transfusion‐related acute lung injury. Supernatants of stored red blood cell (RBC) units might promote NETosis in neutrophils from the units or from transfusion recipients.Hypotheses(1) NETs form during storage of canine RBC, (2) leukoreduction (LR) before storage of RBC reduces NETosis, and (3) supernatant from stored, nonleukoreduced (NLR) RBC units induces NETosis in healthy canine neutrophils modeling transfusion recipients.AnimalsSix healthy purpose‐bred research dogs were utilized for blood donation.MethodsProspective controlled study. RBC units were collected from each dog, aseptically divided into 2 equal subunits, 1 of which was leukoreduced, and stored for 42 days. Stored units were sampled biweekly for quantification of NET markers citrullinated histone H3 (Western blot) and cell‐free DNA (cfDNA) (DNA dye binding). Unit supernatants were applied ex vivo to canine neutrophils and extracellular DNA release representing NETosis was assessed.ResultsMarkers of NETs increased during RBC storage (cfDNA P < .0001 and citrullinated H3 P = .0002) and were higher in NLR than LR units (day 42 LR cfDNA 0.34 ± 0.82 ng/mL vs day 42 NLR 1361.07 ± 741.00 ng/mL, P < .0001; day 42 LR citrullinated H3 0.19 ± 0.13 AU vs NLR 0.57 ± 0.34 AU, P = .007). Isolated neutrophils did not form NETs when exposed to stored canine RBC supernatant.Conclusions and Clinical ImportanceNETosis occurs in stored canine NLR RBC units, and is attenuated by LR before storage. NETs might be mediators of transfusion reactions.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162806/3/jvim15876-sup-0001-supinfo.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162806/2/jvim15876_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162806/1/jvim15876.pd

A close look at the Centaurus A group of galaxies IV. Recent star formation histories of late-type dwarfs around CenA

We study a sample of 5 dwarf irregular galaxies in the CenA/M83 group, which are companions to the giant elliptical CenA. We aim at deriving their physical properties over their lifetime and compare them to those of dwarfs located in different environments. We use archival HST/ACS data and apply synthetic color-magnitude diagram fitting in order to reconstruct the past star formation activity of the target galaxies. The average star formation rate for the studied galaxies ranges from 10^{-3} up to \sim 7x10^{-2} M_odot/yr, and their mean metallicities correlate with their luminosities (from [Fe/H]\sim -1.4 up to \sim -1.0). The form of the star formation histories varies across the sample, with quiescent periods alternating with intermittent enhancements in the star formation (from a few up to several times the average lifetime value). The dwarfs in this sample formed ~35% to ~60% of their stellar content prior to ~5 Gyr ago. The resulting star formation histories for the CenA companions are similar to those found for comparable Local Group and M81 group dwarfs. We consider this sample of dwarfs together with 5 previously studied M83 dwarf irregular companions. We find no trend of the average star formation rate with tidal index or distance from the main galaxy of the group. However, dwarfs with higher baryonic masses do show higher average star formation rates, underlining the importance of intrinsic properties in governing the evolution of these galaxies. On the other hand, there is also a clear trend when looking at the recent (~0.5-1 Gyr) level of activity. Namely, dwarfs within a denser region of the group appear to have had their star formation quenched while dwarfs located in the group outskirts show a wide range of possible star formation rates, thus indicating that external processes play a fundamental role, complementary to mass, in shaping the star formation histories of dwarf galaxies.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures; A&A accepte