The Celtic Tiger in historical and international perspective

When Economic Development was published in 1958 there was good reason to worry both about Ireland's economic performance and its economic prospects. While most western European countries were enjoying rapid economic growth Ireland was falling well behind the leaders. With an industrial−relations structure based on strong but de-centralized collective bargaining, Ireland was not in a position to follow the corporatist path to rapid catch-up growth based on wage restraint in return for high investment which prevailed in much of Europe. As a small, inefficient, and still quite agricultural economy on the periphery, there were good reasons to fear the consequences of moves to free trade within Europe

What does the 1930s’ experience tell us about the future of the Eurozone?

If the Eurozone follows the precedent of the 1930s, it will not survive. The attractions of escaping from the gold standard then were massive and they point to a strategy of devalue and default for today’s crisis countries. A fully-federal Europe with a banking union and a fiscal union is the best solution to this problem but is politically infeasible. However, it may be possible to underpin the Euro by a ‘Bretton-Woods compromise’ that accepts a retreat from some aspects of deep economic integration since exit entails new risks of financial crisis that were not present eighty years ago

Western Europe’s growth prospects : an historical perspective

This paper surveys the recent history of Western European growth. It concludes that this experience has been disappointing and that further reforms are desirable in many countries. The requirement for reform comes both from achieving ‘close-to-frontier’ status and from the opportunities provided by the new technological era. The paper goes on to consider the effects that the current crisis may have on medium-term growth rates. The lesson from the 1930s is that, if the current crisis leads to a similarly bad downturn, the policy reaction in terms of greater state intervention will not be conducive to improved growth prospects

Creating competitive advantage : policy lessons from history

This paper reviews selected aspects of the history of UK supply-side policy in terms of their productivity implications. An important change after the 1970s which improved productivity performance was the adoption of policies to end protectionism and strengthen competition. A review of horizontal industrial policies shows weaknesses in education, infrastructure, taxation and, especially, land-use planning but, on the positive side, a regulatory stance conducive to the rapid adoption of ICT. A big implication is that any return to a more active industrial policy should be designed to minimize adverse effects on competition

UK defence news, 1920-1938 : estimates based on contemporary sources

This paper employs the concept of ‘defence news’ proposed by Ramey (2009) to develop a time series of shocks to UK defence spending in the interwar period at a quarterly frequency. ‘Defence news’ is the present value of changes to defence spending plans. Information on this is taken from contemporary sources, in particular, The Economist. The estimates in this paper can be used as an input to assessing the size of the fiscal multiplier in interwar Britain as in Crafts and Mills (2012)

The Mott insulator - 10th order perturbation theory extended to infinite order using QMC

We present a new method, based on the combination of analytical and numerical techniques within the framework of the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). Building upon numerically exact results obtained in an improved quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) scheme, 10th order strong-coupling perturbation theory for the Hubbard model on the Bethe lattice is extrapolated to infinite order. We obtain continuous estimates of energy E and double occupancy D with unprecedented precision O(10^{-5}) for the Mott insulator above its stability edge U_{c1}=4.78 as well as critical exponents. The relevance for recent experiments on Cr-doped V_2O_3 is pointed out.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Significant changes in introduction and summary; experimental reference added; Figs. 1 and 3 modifie