Welcome to my website – I hope you find it useful. I am an Irish economist based at Oxford University. My research there is on what makes cities and regions survive and thrive, and on this site, I examine related themes by looking at the Irish economy, the world economy and the property market. My experience is as an economic researcher and analyst across academic, private and public sectors, and I’ve worked on issues relating to public policy, national competitiveness, ICT and economic development, economic growth, foreign direct investment and the history of globalization.
I seem to have always been interested in economic affairs. My earliest idea was when I was six or seven: I wanted to become an architect so that I could design six buildings employing 50,000 each, thus solving Ireland’s then unemployment crisis! (If only it were that simple now.) About ten years later, I started a degree in Economics & Political Science in Trinity College, Dublin and I was elected a Scholar of the College in 2000. Having graduated with a first class joint honours degree, I went on to read a first-class honours M.Sc. and a research-based M.Litt. in Economics, where my thesis with Kevin O’Rourke was on the relationship between labor market inequality and its determinants, including deglobalization, unionization and industrial change.
After serving briefly as a Junior Diplomat with Irish Aid in 2005/2006, I was economist for Ireland’s National Competitiveness Council and a policy analyst at Forfás, Ireland’s enterprise policy advisory board in 2006 and 2007. From 2007 to 2009, I was a Managing Consultant at the IBM Global Center for Economic Development, part of IBM’s business think-tank, the Institute for Business Value. My work involved research and analysis on issues of importance to economic development, including the socioeconomic impact of ICT, e-readiness, emerging markets, environmental challenges and the global economic recession. On the basis of my work on economic development, I have been asked to present nationally and internationally on Ireland’s economic development and on topics relating to competitiveness and foreign direct investment.
In 2004, I set up the Economic Research unit at daft.ie, Ireland’s largest property website, and since then, I have been responsible for the quarterly reports on Ireland’s residential sales and lettings markets. The Daft Report has grown to become one of the most widely cited economic reports in the country, featuring in more than 200 print media articles alone every year.
I still work for Daft.ie but my “full-time job”, so to speak, is in Oxford, where I’m pursuing my doctorate in economics at Balliol College, with John Muellbauer. I’m also a Research Associate at the Spatial Economics Research Centre in LSE and a Visiting Researcher at the Economic & Social Research Institute, Dublin. Through my work on the blog, I’ve become a regular commentator in Ireland and internationally on the Irish and European economies. I also give professional advice and consultancy, through my roles at the Economics Clinic and Gerson Lehrman Group. March 2011 saw the publication of Next Generation Ireland, a book I co-edited with Ed Burke.
If you’d like to contact me, click here. You can also connect with me on twitter, LinkedIn, or academia.edu, if you’re on any of those networks.
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PS. While economics is the primary focus of my attentions and thus of my website, I am also interested in and post about genealogy, technology, politics and a few other bits and pieces, which are hidden away here. I have a separate genealogy site, on myheritage.com, with lots more information on my family tree, if that’s of interest.