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.
With the 2010 World Cup down to the last sixteen, what would a World Cup of economics look like? How would the sixteen countries that are left fare, if they were competing on economic factors, not football ones? This post presents the Last 16 with a twist – each match is decided by a country’s economic defence, midfield and attack.
In the summer of 2005, Eddie Hobbs opened the eyes of consumers around Ireland with his four-part TV show, Rip Off Republic. The show was a huge success, at least in terms of viewership, with the second show taking a 51% share of the audience that night, according to RTE. Given that prices increased by [...]
Inflation in the eurozone has jumped up in recent months from -0.5% to +1.0%. This post examines the likely pressures on eurozone inflation in 2010, by looking at the prices of commodities. Using World Bank data on commodity prices, it finds rapid inflation in commodities since late 2009. With the current over-reliance of macroeconomic policy on interest rates, this poses a threat to eurozone growth.
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.
A quick look at prices across the different sectors in Ireland reveals a far more interesting pattern than the typical assumption of slowly rising prices would suggest. Clothing and communications prices are at levels similar to those in the 1980s, while ‘deflationary episodes’ are becoming more common in Ireland every decade.
Typical change in prices, by sector, 1990-2009
