A county-level perspective on housing affordability in Ireland. ESRI Research Notes 2019/4/2

The issue of housing affordability in Ireland has come to the fore in recent years as house prices have increased significantly following the recovery. In a recent survey, Corrigan et al. (2019a) find that 86.5 per cent of renters expressed a preference for homeownership. However, rising house prices have led to serious concerns about the ability of first time buyers (FTB) to enter the housing market. This group has been cited as one particular pressure point in recent assessments of market affordability (Housing Agency, 2017). Analysis published in the ESRI Quarterly Economic Commentary (McQuinn et al., 2018) finds that house price growth has been uneven across the distribution, with cheaper properties growing at faster rates than more expensive properties. This is likely to further exacerbate the affordability concerns of first time buyers, who typically enter the housing market at lower house price levels than second and subsequent borrowers

The Financial Crisis and the Changing Profile of Mortgage Arrears in Ireland. ESRI Research Notes 2014/4/2

Understanding which households go into mortgage arrears during both boom and bust periods in Ireland is of critical importance to ensure suitable policies are deployed to safeguard future financial stability. Many of the difficulties in Ireland arose from the loosening of underwriting standards by financial institutions. This led to excessive household leverage ratios and provided households with limited buffers with which to absorb shocks (McCarthy and McQuinn, 2017; Lydon and McCann, 2017). The joint effects of labour market difficulties and large falls in house prices led to a situation where nearly one-in-five mortgage loans was in arrears at the height of the crisis (McCarthy, 2014)

Assessing price sustainability in the Irish housing market: a county-level analysis. ESRI Research Notes 2019/4/1

In the wake of a number of high profile property crashes, a question that has come to the fore recently is; are housing booms and busts clustered in specific areas within countries or do they tend to be more pan-regional? Within the United States for example, considerable variation in the boom-bust cycle has been experienced with the so-called ‘sand states’ (California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada) showing much greater fluctuations in prices than other regions following the financial crisis.2 In an Irish context, a significant issue of interest is the apparent divergence between the Dublin property market and other regional markets as well as the difference between urban and rural areas

Exploring Affordability in the Irish Housing Market. ESRI WP593, June 2018

This paper examines housing affordability in Ireland by looking at the distribution of housing costs across households. Using microdata from the SILC survey over the period 2005-2015, the contribution of this paper is threefold. First, the paper considers the trends in the cost of housing in Ireland across groups of households split by age, region, household structure, and their position in the income distribution. Second, we apply selected international housing affordability definitions and explore the share, and composition, of households in Ireland that would be captured by these definitions. We do not find evidence of universal affordability difficulties in the Irish market. However, certain groups do face acute affordability challenges. Third, working towards a definition of housing cost affordability for use in Irish policy discussions, we provide some guidance as to what such a definition could look like

Quarterly Economic Commentary, Autumn 2019.

Although the Irish economy continues to perform in a robust manner, a number of considerations arise given the present growth performance. Firstly, due to certain multinational related activities, a divergence is likely once again between headline and underlying output growth for the present year. While we are revising upwards our forecast of headline GDP to just less than 5 per cent for 2019, certain underlying data would suggest the growth outlook has moderated somewhat as we move through the present year. Secondly, a number of significant international related risks are on the horizon for the Irish economy. As with previous Commentaries, our forecasts, unless otherwise stated, are subject to the technical assumption that the United Kingdom remains part of the European Union

Financing Constraints and Firms’ Growth in the European Union: Has the Financial Crisis Made Them Worse? ESRI Research Bulletin 2015/2/5

Since the onset of the financial crisis, corporate investment has declined sharply. The largest falls in firms’ investment from peak to trough have been in Greece, Latvia, Ireland, Estonia, Slovenia and Lithuania, the countries hardest hit by the financial crisis. While much of the declines in investment can be linked to poor macroeconomic conditions and a lack of profitable investment opportunities, financing constraints due to financial market imperfections may also have played a role

Quarterly Economic Commentary, Winter 2018.

The Irish economy looks set to register another very strong year of growth in 2018, with the outlook remaining positive as well for 2019. While difficulties persist with the interpretation of the National Accounts, it is fair to say that the growth performance in 2018 has been broadly based with both domestic and external factors contributing significantly to the growth performance

Quarterly Economic Commentary, Spring 2019.

2018 saw the Irish economy register another sizeable increase in activity with GDP estimated to have risen by 6.7 per cent. While some of this increase is due to the disproportionate activities of a select number of multinational firms, the underlying performance of the economy is still remarkably strong. Increases in taxation receipts, even aside from corporation taxes and the ongoing dynamic performance of the labour market, are compelling evidence of this

Quarterly Economic Commentary, Summer 2019.

While a number of international concerns continue to cast a shadow on the domestic economy, both taxation receipts and labour market indicators suggest that the Irish economy continues to perform strongly in 2019. Output is still forecast to grow by 4.0 per cent in 2019 before moderating somewhat at 3.2 per cent in 2020. Unemployment is set to fall to 4.5 per cent by the end of the present year and to 4.1 per cent at the end of the next year. All forecasts, unless otherwise stated, maintain the Commentary’s baseline assumption that the trading status of the United Kingdom remains equivalent to that of a full European Union Member State

Investment efficiency, state-owned enterprises and privatisation: Evidence from Viet Nam in Transition

Our research firstly tests the difference in investment efficiency between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms and secondly evaluates the effect of privatisiation and equitisation policies on the investment efficiency of former state owned enterprises (SOEs). We use a novel dataset from Viet Nam which covers large and non-listed SMEs across construction, manufacturing, and services sectors. Our methodology uses a structural model to test the relationship between Tobin’s Q and capital spending. We find no evidence of investment spending being linked to marginal returns by SOEs across all sectors and size classes. However, former SOEs who have been privatised and equitized with a minority state shareholding display positive links between Q and investment. In fact, the link is stronger for these firms than for private firms