Ronan Lyons | Personal Website
Ronan Lyons | Personal Website

June 2010

Competitiveness regained? How prices in Ireland compare to the rest of the eurozone

Eurostat’s publication of prices of food and drink across Europe has highlighted again how expensive Ireland is relative to its neighbours. This post examines prices across Eurozone members since 2001 and finds that the damage was done in Ireland by 2003 – and that much has been reversed in the last two years. It’s unlikely, though, that Ireland will rank below third in price league tables any time soon. Read more

When will Ronaldo dive? Insights from behavioural economics

With all the investment banks getting in on the act, here’s another shameless attempt to cash in on the World Cup. When will Ronaldo dive? What can behavioural economics tell us about this? After a quick poll, to profile Ronaldo, this post looks at three schools of thought in economics that might reveal something about when Ronaldo will dive: how people are biased to the present, how people value fairness and how people dislike ambiguity. Read more

What do 1,600 would-be buyers think? First Results from the rent-or-buy calculator

This post reviews the first 5,000 entries in the rent-or-buy calculator put up on the site in April. While almost half of all entries were considering a loan-to-value of 90%-95%, many of those are looking at terms of 25 years or less – a sign that times have changed. Those who changed the defaults were generally more pessimistic about the future growth of house prices (and rents). The calculator has been quite balanced in its results, with the ‘buys’ having the slight edge over the ‘rents’ at this point. Read more

How much trade has been lost in the Great Recession?

This post examines the latest OECD data, to see which economies have been most affected by “lost trade” during the Great Recession, especially as it is being rewritten in the light of eurozone/PIIGS crisis. It turns out that the nature of the exporting sector, and not the government’s finances, has determined a country’s trading success since 2008, with drug-exporting Ireland and Switzerland among the least affected, while Finland (ICT) and Japan (cars) find themselves among the most affected. Read more