Ronan Lyons | Personal Website
Ronan Lyons | Personal Website

November 2009

Public sector pay and the idea of intensive (not extensive) cuts

On a day of national strikes, this post reviews the evidence on cuts in pay and presents three arguments against the trade union line that their pay must not be cut: only public sector is an Exchequer issue, we do not know what is happening in most of the private sector, and public sectors should adjust different to recessions anyway. If private sector scale savings had been achieved, the Exchequer would be €1.5bn better off this year. Read more

Which countries have seen their economies rebound fastest? The China effect

The IMF has published its latest growth forecasts. This post gives an overview of the headline stats and analyses the revisions to the 2009 figures. It finds that while some countries in most regions of the world, with the possible exception of the Americas, have seen their growth prospects this year significantly improve, the largest concentration is around China. This suggests a regional dimension to the global economy that is likely to prove important in the medium ter. Read more

Who cares about measuring inflation correctly? Taxpayers should

Correcting for technical errors in how inflation is measured sounds like a topic only for the pure theorists. This post, however, presents estimates of the cost to Irish taxpayers of the Government’s use of an inadequate measure of changes in the cost of living. If the Government had adjusted CPI downwards each year by 1.1%, as per leading estimates, it could have saved in the order of €13bn this decade. Read more