Ronan Lyons | Personal Website
Ronan Lyons | Personal Website

February 2011

Scoring the General Election manifestos on economic policy

The most important General Election in Ireland’s recent history takes place on Friday. RTE have published an overview of the five main parties’ policies across the ten most important policy areas, as chosen by their audience. Eight of these policy areas are economic. This post goes through the parties’ policies in each of the eight major economic policy areas and scores them out of five in each. While the criteria for scoring parties is unlikely to be populist, hopefully it will be of use to those voting later this week. Read more

This is the people’s economy: Two questions to ask candidates

Ireland’s general election is ten days away. This post outlines the two most important economic policy questions that people should ask their candidates. One is about banking debt and outlines a solution that saves EU face as well as Irish money. The second is about the deficit, which still dwarves the banking crisis and means tax rises and spending cuts are a necessary evil. Read more

Scarcity drives year-on-year rents up for the first time since 2007

The Daft.ie Report reviewing the rental market in 2010 was released this week. This post outlines its major findings – including that rents are now at 1998 levels but are rising in the cities. It looks in detail at oversupply on the rental market, and how it has disappeared in some regions, in particular Dublin. It also finds that there is no systematic difference between trends in the 1-2 bed segment and in the 3-4 bed segment. Read more

Is Africa the new Asia?

Since 2000, China and India have replaced the OECD as the engine of global economic growth. This post, however, discusses an even more exciting picture that may be going on under the radar. Growth in sub-Saharan Africa has more than doubled to 6%, while population growth is slowing. With the region now home to one third of the world’s fastest growing economies, it might be time for the narrative of Africa’s growth to change. Read more