User Cost of Debt-Financed Capital in Irish Manufacturing Industry: 1985 – 2011. ESRI WP448. February 2013

This paper provides estimates of the cost of debt-financed capital to Irish manufacturing industry over the period 1985 to 2011. The estimates are provided for two types of capital assets, machinery and equipment and industrial buildings. They also incorporate policy interventions aimed at influencing investment behaviour of manufacturing firms in Ireland. The results show that large capital gains recorded during the Celtic Tiger period created a downward distortion in the user cost of investing in industrial buildings. On average, policy interventions reduced the cost of capital compared to the cost of capital in the absence of these interventions, and the tax-related interventions were more favourable in the case of industrial building than for machinery and equipment

The Impact of Changes in Educational Attainment on Life Expectancy in Ireland. ESRI WP414. November 2011

The purpose of this article is to quantify the contribution of the increasing educational attainment of the Irish population to the prospective improvement in life expectancy over the next 50 years. This analysis uses recently published information for Ireland on life expectancy by level of education. This article also considers the implications of the new data on life expectancy for differences in death rates by level of education for different groups in the population today

The HERMES-13 macroeconomic model of the Irish economy. ESRI WP460. July 2013

The HERMES macroeconomic model has been used extensively for over 25 years to carry out medium-term forecasting and scenario analysis of the Irish economy. Most recently the model has been used to generate the scenarios underpinning the 2013 edition of the ESRI's Medium-Term Review. In the long period over which the model has been used for policy analysis, the Irish economy has undergone substantial change and new approaches to modelling important economic relationships have been developed. This paper outlines the structure and behaviour of the most recent version of the HERMES model (HERMES-13). We describe the key mechanisms and the modelling innovations which have been introduced to deal with major changes in the economy. As the model draws on a range of research on the Irish economy, we describe how this work has been incorporated into the model to better capture key economic relationships. Finally, we examine the results of a series of shocks to key variables carried out using the model. This provides a benchmark against which to evaluate the long-run properties of the model as well as illustrating how the model can shed light on the key transmission channels in the economy. This paper, and the accompanying detailed model listing and estimation output, provides a basic reference manual that practitioners and interested parties can use to interpret model output and, it is hoped, make suggestions for further model development and improvement

The impact of changes in educational attainment on life expectancy in Ireland

This article looks at scenarios quantifying the potential contribution of increasing educational attainment to the prospective improvement in life expectancy in Ireland over the next 50 years. This analysis uses recently published information for Ireland on life expectancy by level of education. This article also considers the implications of the new data on life expectancy for differences in death rates by level of education for different groups in the population today