10 years of austerity?  What is the ex-ESRI researcher Richard Tol talking about?  Wasn’t austerity to only last until 2015?  Is this what we have to look forward to?  In a word, you bet.
Tol’s reference to a decade of austerity is well-founded.  While the debate is focused on what’s going to be in the next [...]

The beginning of 2012 is a suitable moment to assess China’s economic prospects for the year and coming period. This overall perspective is clear - China will grow strongly, remaining the world’s fastest growing major economy, and will continue to substantially outperform Western pessimist predictions. This is the same fundamental analysis maintained by the author over the [...]

The French and British authorities are engaged in a war of words over which country will be first to be downgraded by the credit ratings agencies. At least the hostilities are purely verbal - these ‘heroes’ of Tripoli are prepared to use other methods when the odds are overwhelmingly in their favour.
The immediate cause of [...]

Commodity prices are a particularly sensitive indicator for the world economy due to their strong and pro-cyclical price fluctuations. These in turn are linked to supply inelasticities - the obstacles to and pronounced time delays in changing the supply of many commodities.
Agricultural commodities frequently require a minimum of a year to increase output due to [...]

NamaWineLake has an excellent post on the relatively simple point that if the Kenny Report (first published in 1974) was implemented tomorrow the government could save the money that it expects to raise from the Household charge. Although capital programs have been cut back they are still acquiring land in order to build roads etc. [...]

Latest figures show long-term unemployment is rising sharply (CSO, 9 December 2011)  - yet the recent budget threatens the future of our Community Employment Programme for the long-term unemployed!
The Community Employment (CE) Programme has been targeted for massive cuts in the recent budget.  If these cuts are implemented, the impact on the local community in [...]

AGGRESSOR : in plain English a country or organisation(s) that begins hostilities provoking reaction
(In the text below I will try to develop and share some of the thoughts and ideas generated by the podium presentations and the discussion that followed during the ULA meeting in Dublin’s Wynns Hotel last Tuesday night).
It is becoming abundantly clear [...]

The outcome of the EU summit has widely been hailed in the British media as a triumph for David Cameron. It is rare that a complete rupture and isolation in multi-party negotiations is regarded as a triumph - but this is a function of the dominant and still growing xenophobia of the British press.
The EU [...]