Sunday, October 30, 2011

New chair in Irish economic policy at NUI Galway

And while we are celebrating a success for an NUIG man (Micheal D.) I am delighted to see that NUI Galway has just advertised a Personal Professorship in Irish Economic Policy. See here for the job spec “The new Professor will play a central role in developing a Centre for the Study of Irish Economic Policy, which will focus on the development of Irish macroeconomic and financial policy in the context of the broader European Union economy.” I mention it here to help ensure as wide a range of applicants for the post. Economic policy in Ireland faces major challenges in the years ahead so it vital to get some fresh ideas and new blood. I look forward to reading the peer reviewed publications of the holder of this important position, whoever he (or she) is.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

New President

Having received 200,000 more first preference votes than his nearest rival, Michael D. Higgins will surely be declared the winner of the Presidential Election later today.

Here is his last talk in the Dáil. He talks about the exercise of parliamentary democracy, the rationality of markets, individuality and inequality, and the nature of republicanism.


Congratulations to him, his family, and his party.

(No, this is not an endorsement.)

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Seminar on Maternal and Child Health with David Barker

For a summary of Barker's work see http://www.thebarkertheory.org/. Geary's Orla Doyle and Colm Harmon are also speaking at this event.

The First One Thousand Days: Policy Implications for Maternal and Child Health

The School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Population Science is hosting a workshop on Thursday 1st December 1pm-5pm, with a keynote lecture by Professor David Barker of the University of Southampton. Professor David Barker is a world-renowned authority on early life influences on later health and wellbeing and his developmental plasticity hypothesis has influenced a large body of research over the last two decades.

Please find attached flyer with details of the event.

Please RSVP to beth.kilkenny@ucd.ie by Friday 18th November if you would like to attend.

www.ucd.ie/phps

Introduction to Machine Learning

Chris Wilson, a journalist at Slate, is blogging class-by-class his experience of taking Stanford's online machine learning course. I found the blog provides an accessible introduction to techniques that are likely to become a mainstay of social science research within a few years.

Simple Logit and Probit Marginal Effects in R

Typically, economists do not care about the estimated coefficients from binary dependent variable models, but do care about their marginal effects. There does not seem to be a package in R which performs this calculation as simply as the mfx command -- which correctly handles factor variables and estimates the standard errors accurately -- as in Stata. I wanted to write a blog post containing some simple functions I have written which offer an easy solution to this issue. However, this post would have been too long. Instead I wrote a short paper which can be downloaded at the following link. Hopefully this paper will be helpful to researchers looking to implement marginal effect calculations and also to those interested in a simple basic explanation of where these figures come from when they are produced by other software packages such as Stata.


Abstract
This paper outlines a simple routine to calculate the marginal effects of logit and probit regressions using the popular statistical software package R. I compare results obtained using this procedure with those produced using Stata. An extension of this routine to the generalized linear mixed effects regression is also presented.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Conference on Irish Economy January

Currently organising, along with Stephen Kinsella and Colm Harmon, a conference on the Irish economy for January. The conference aims to explore a number of themes in the current economic environment including the current fiscal and banking situation and also a broad range of microeconomic issues including household balance sheets, health/education/social welfare policy, unemployment, technology and so on. Please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments, or by email. We have already received a number of good suggestions including the suggestion to increase interplay between different disciplines in analysing different aspects of the Irish economic situation. Full details and a more formal call for ideas will go up here and other places soon.

Conference on Population Geography

CALL FOR PAPERS

Population Geography:
Inter-Generational Patterns and Processes

Third Biannual British-Irish Population Conference 18-19 April 2012

Hosted by Queen's University Belfast under the auspices of the Population Geography Research Group of the RGS-IBG

Papers are invited for a British-Irish population geography conference on inter-generational patterns and processes. Whilst there is a focus on the UK and Ireland, papers that address the broad conference theme in other geographical contexts will be most welcome.

Fertility, mortality and migration, and their respective sub-components, have recorded temporal and spatial changes with each successive generation. The magnitude of change to these core components of population geography has arguably been greatest during recent decades and have obvious policy relevance. Established patterns have and continue to evolve with the causes and implications increasingly found to be multifaceted in nature. National fertility rates at, or just below the, population replacement level are accompanied by increases among specific groups, such as the number of teenage pregnancies and births occurring outside marriage. Births to women aged under 30 years have been declining, women on average are having fewer children and increasing numbers remain childless. Mortality too has declined accompanied by increasing life expectancy. The numbers aged 65 and over, 75 and over, and 85 and over are all projected to increase significantly so that demographic ageing is set to become the dominant demographic trend for the foreseeable future. Migration patterns have also evolved. Changing internal migration patterns and processes (across the lifecourse) are accompanied by increasingly complex immigration flows involving diverse origins and motivations (students, casual labour, family unification, professionals working for multinational companies, and those escaping strife and difficulty elsewhere). Second and third generation (and return) migrants also represent an increasing share of national populations. Collectively these inter-generational patterns and processes are highly variable at different geographical scales with similarities and differences noted between the UK and Ireland. Cutting across all are issues of society, community, family, health and well-being. The broad theme of inter-generational patterns and processes therefore provides a context for exploring and developing existing and new theoretical perspectives on population geography and its core components using traditional and new (such as, longitudinal studies) data sources.

Papers are invited on the following interlinked population geography themes with a particular focus on inter-generational change:

i. population patterns and processes

ii. lifecourse perspectives

iii. life expectancy and ageing

iv. implications for society, community, family, health and well-being.

Abstracts (max. 300 words) are invited by Tuesday 20th December 2011. These should be submitted to bipopgeog@qub.ac.uk and include full contact details for the correspondence author. Notification of abstract acceptance will be sent by 31st January 2012. The conference programme (including additional information) along with on-line conference registration will be available throughout February and March 2012. This will be accessible via a web page conference link at

http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/TheInstituteofSpatialandEnvironmentalPlanning/bipconf2012/

Keynote Address: Professor Irene Hardill (Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Social Sciences at Northumbria University).

The conference opens with registration accompanied by tea/coffee on Wednesday 18th April 2012 at 10.30 in the Canada Room (Queen's University Belfast). This will be followed by the keynote address from 11.30 until lunch. The conference closes mid-afternoon on Thursday 19th April (with an optional field excursion Belfast: Population Matters!).

Conference Fee: £75 (includes a conference dinner on the evening of Wednesday 18th April, and lunch and tea/coffee on both Wednesday 18th and Thursday 19th April). The optional field excursion will cost no more than £10 per person and is dependent on sufficient numbers.

Conference Organisers:

Darren Smith, Chair, RGS-IBG Population Geography Research Group D.P.Smith@lboro.ac.uk

Aileen Stockdale, School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Queen's University Belfast a.stockdale@qub.ac.uk

Gemma Catney, School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University Belfast g.catney@qub.ac.uk



Administrative Assistant (LSCS)
University of St Andrews
Geography & Geosciences
Irvine Building, North Street
St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL
lscs@st-andrews.ac.uk
cll@st-andrews.ac.uk

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Economics and Psychology One-Day Conference November 25th

The final programme for November 25th is below. The speakers are a mix of PhD students, researchers in public institutions and academics. This year’s main session take place at the Geary Institute on Friday November 25th. All are welcome. Please RSVP to geary@ucd.ie There will be a special issue of the ESR based on some of the papers from this year’s session. The panel session will be used to discuss how developments in the recent literature have policy relevance. There is no registration charge.

Programme:

9.00: REGISTRATION


9.15: Organ Donation and Individual Consent- The role of Family Consent in Donation Systems.
Clare Delargy- UCD Geary Institute

9.45: Credit Cards: Friend or Foe.
Yvonne McCarthy - Central Bank of Ireland.

10.15: Understanding Taxpayer Behaviour – New Opportunities for Tax Administration.
Keith Walsh- Revenue Commissioners

10.45: BREAK

11.00: Deity and Development: A Study of the Impact of Religious Culture upon Social and Economic Development.
Ryan McKee- Queen’s University Belfast

11.30: The Role of Economic Psychology in Students’ Term-Time Employment and Academic Achievement.
Martin Ryan- UCD Geary Institute

12.00: LUNCH

13.00: Corruption and Well-Being
Rob Gillanders - University College Dublin

13.30: Subcultures in Household Financial Decision-Making: An Exploratory Study of Risky Asset Ownership in the Netherlands.
Michael Dowling- DCU

14.00:BREAK

14.15: Behavioural Economics and participation in recycling programmes
Marie Brugligio- University of Malta

14.45: Behavioural Economics and Policymaking: Learning from the Early Adopters.
Pete Lunn, ESRI

15.15: BREAK

15.30: Behavioural Economics and the Irish Pension System
Liam Delaney- Stirling University and Geary Institute

16.00: Is the health impact of socioeconomic status explained by objective financial resources or subjective social status?
Michael Daly - Manchester and Aberdeen.

16.30: Panel Discussion

VOX Article on long-run determinants of health

Here is a VOX article about my joint work with James Smith and Mark McGovern on long-run determinants of health in Ireland. Working on this and similar papers over the last few years, it has been a constant focus as to how the decisions made in one era affect the outcomes in later ones, particularly when they impact on children. Similarly, working on these topics gives a dramatic sense of how select a sample the current Irish population are, namely the ones that both survived and stayed in or returned to Ireland and a related research agenda looks at migration from Ireland, the first paper (linked here) looking at migration to England in the 20th century, with health selection being very different across the decades. 

At Ireland's current stage of economic development, the obvious targets such as preventable infant mortality due to basic sanitation are no longer a policy focus. The work of my co-author on childhood mental health effects on later adult outcomes (see his IDEAS page here and UCD Ulysses lecture here) is one important direction in thinking about long-run effects of current policies.  In general, the interaction between economic performance, policy and mental health is a key area (I give a brief summary on the post below). 

Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

The Royal Society of Arts has published an amazing set of animation videos by Andrew Park (on Youtube and elsewhere) about a whole range of intellectually challenging and complex ideas and one of them has some surprising ideas about motivation and the role of incentives that should be of interest to anyone working on behavioural economics. The Guardian gives the background to these videos here.



Saturday, October 22, 2011

The Deepest Anxiety

In a previous post I noted the power of long term expectations as an influence on consumer sentiment and behaviour. Robert Shiller argues that people's deep anxieties and fears can influence their spending (and borrowing and saving) decisions over the long term.

Unfortunately we don't have an equivalent in Ireland to the Thomson-Reuters University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index question on long term expectations for the economy that Shiller uses.  Just to remind you, the question is:
“Looking ahead, which would you say is more likely – that in the country as a whole we’ll have continuous good times during the next five years or so, or that we will have  periods of widespread unemployment or depression, or what?”
However, a report published yesterday by the European Parliament on Europeans and the Crisis sheds some light on long term expectations. They surveyed nearly 27,000 Europeans last month. The question is:
"When it comes to a return to growth in (respondent's country), which one of the following opinions is closest to your own?"
I've copied the relevant chart from the report for Ireland.  Nearly half (49%) of all adults in Ireland think that when it comes to a return to growth in Ireland the crisis is going to last for many years. A significantly higher proportion than in the whole of Europe. It isn't obviously the same question as used by Shiller, but it does shed some similar light on long term expectations.

Consumer sentiment is now in 'lock down' mode in Ireland as the domestic economy (especially consumer spending) enters its fifth year of contraction. This is crucially important ahead of Budget 2012. Of course, the psychological impact of previous governments' budgets has been a consideration before. Though certainly not the main consideration. However I suspect as Budget 2012 looms large in the public imagination then it may well turn out to be one of the most psychologically important budgets in recent years.

Mental Health and the Irish Economy

During the general election campaign, Enda Kenny made a number of statements to the effect that mental health was to be a priority of the current government. It is important to more fully tease out what this might mean. The intersection of economics and mental health is clearly an important part of this for a number of reasons including the extent to which mental health policy involves allocation of resources; the extent to which mental health reacts to economic circumstances; and more generally the extent to which mental health considerations should be factored into how economic policy is conceptualised. Below are some broad areas that should be considered in developing a debate on mental health in Ireland that has an Economics input.

(i) Perhaps the first main consideration is how well-being and mental health should be addressed in the context of developing indicators of broad societal progress. As flagged by Nicolas' earlier post, the Sarkozy commission has been influential in placing broader quality of life of indicators into the recent policy debate. It should be a prime feature of the current debate as to how this might be done in the Irish context, including how to make distinctions between overall well-being and the prevalance of acute psychological distress.

(ii) With regard the current economic situation, a clear area where more research and policy consideration is needed is the extent to which unemployment is related to mental health. It is clear that there is a dual relationship between unemployment and mental health, with psychological distress both being a consequence and cause of unemployment states. There are many subtle interactions between the two that have important consequences for areas like job activation policy.

(iii) The extent to which debt influences psychological distress is another important area for policy. As with unemployment, the relationships are more subtle than just looking at the effect of being heavily indebted on mental health. Debt may influence mental health, but mental health response may also influence how people deal with their debt situation and this may again have important consequences for how debt policy is designed and implemented. (see, for example the work of Sendhil Mullainathan).

(iv) The extent to which economic fluctuations influence suicide rates is another area in demand of further study. There is a large and somewhat inconclusive literature on the extent to which changes in GDP influence suicide rates. Indeed in Ireland, it must be noted that historically high rates of suicide were observed during the highest growth periods of the Celtic Tiger phase. There are many complex factors at play including changes in alcohol and drug consumption that may mediate between economic fluctuations and suicidal behaviour (see, for example, the recent article by Walsh and Walsh 2010). An approach to suicide that focuses on aggregate fluctuations themselves is not likely to be useful for policy. What is more interesting is to examine how different types and motivations for suicide change over the economic cycle and the cross-sectional variation in suicide. The data to do this in Ireland are, predictably, very weak and if the government are serious about mental health policy this is a clear priority in terms of research.

(v) Child mental health is clearly a major issue. A number of recent papers by James Smith have shown dramatic effects of childhood mental health problems on outcomes all across the life-cycle (see his IDEAS page). These papers establish a strong case for addressing childhood mental health from an economic and social perspective. However, far more research is needed on the economics of childhood mental health treatment. There is a paucity of research on the effects of standard psychotherapeutic and pharmacological treatments on the long-run outcomes of children. Showing effects on symptoms may be of clinical interest and may be of broader interest under certain assumptions about the link between proximate and ultimate outcomes. However, if we are going to make a large public economic investment in mental health treatments for children and adolescents it is important to know that these treatments will have a positive effect on life-time outcomes such as employment, life satisfaction and so on. This is clearly a complicated area but it should be put on a more inter-disciplinary footing in Ireland rather than being restricted to clinical discussion.

(vi) The development of an aging population clearly also raises a number of other issues about the links between economics and mental health. A number of studies including SHARE and TILDA in Ireland are examining the interactions between psychological, economic and social outcomes in aging. Issues such as the welfare cost of chronic illness pain, the extent to which psychological outcomes are better in home rather than hospital are, the influence of job environments among older people etc., are all big areas of research and will grow in interest over the next few decades.

Overall, the Economics literature has a lot to contribute in the development of a wide debate on mental health in Ireland. A number of researchers including people like Brendan Kennelly and Eamon O'Shea in NUIG; Orla Doyle, Kevin Denny and others in UCD; researchers on projects such as TILDA and the Growing up in Ireland study; and so on are conducting research relevant to this intersection. It is an important and intellectually exciting area of research with many implications for policy and public debate.

Friday, October 21, 2011

IQ more variable than previously thought

It has generally been thought that IQ is fairly stable from the teen years onwards. Non-cognitive ability however has been seen as more malleable & this idea has featured in Jim Heckman's work especially since non-cognitive ability seems to be quite important for labour market outcomes. However based on this study it now seems that IQ varies much more than previously thought for teenagers. What is not clear is whether it can be actively increased by interventions.

China's Kitty Genovese

We talked a lot on the old incarnation of this blog about social dilemmas, whereby combinations of free-rider problems, information asymmetries and so on can lead people to not provide assistance to someone in social situations. The example of Kitty Genovese who was murdered in New York in 1964 is frequently used in psychology textbooks as an example of how aspects of social situations can lead to someone not receiving help from bystanders. In that poor woman's case, the story goes that, despite her desperate pleas for help, the many neighbours in her apartment block ignored her and did not come to her aid. The case has always been a tricky one as it may possibly have been the case that neighbours did not hear her or may have assumed it was not as serious as it may have sounded. In the case of the recent Chinese toddler death, it is extremely sad to see people walking past a child who is clearly and umambiguously injured. Why exactly people just walked past without calling for assistance (someone eventually did) is currently a major source of conversation and outrage in China. The usual caveats about sample sizes of one apply, but it is clearly a case-study that demands debate all over the world. One of the ultimate forms of insurance we have is the basic faith that people will come to our assistance if we are injured in an accident. It is a difficult one to even conceive of developing a private market in and its not clear we would want to live in a world where you had to. The fact that a basic sense that an injured toddler merits assistance did not apply to many of the people in this case is something that we should debate in all countries as to whether this is an isolated case or an endemic feature of basic failures in our social systems.

Short-Termism, Patience and Finance

As a popular open-source encyclopedia states, time preference pertains to how large a premium a consumer places on enjoyment nearer in time over more remote enjoyment. Some readers may be more used to thinking of this as "patience"; which the same open-source encyclopedia tells us is "the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on annoyance/anger in a negative way; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties." So there is an obvious overlap between these concepts: illustrated well by the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment.

I have elaborated on the above because I recently read a paper on time preference in the domain of finance, with the following title: "Patience and Finance". This was essentially a speech delivered last year by Andrew Haldane, the Executive Director for Financial Stability at the Bank of England. I became aware of the paper after doing a key-word search for "patience" -- and then discovering a link to Haldane's speech on the Corporate Law and Governance blog. That blog-post also describes a lecture delivered by Haldane in May of this year, as follows:
"In the lecture - titled "The short long" and available here (pdf) - Mr Haldane notes the (relative) paucity of studies on short-termism in capital markets. He argues, on the basis of his empirical research, that short-termism is statistically and economically significant in capital markets and appears to be increasing. In response to this finding of market failure, Mr Haldane identifies possible public policy responses including those concerning transparency, governance, contract design and taxation."
I googled "short-termism" to find more material on the problem; and found this Telegraph artcle from last year: "Vince Cable was right on the evil of short-termism". The Telegraph article states that: "humans are seemingly hard-wired for short-termism and, worse, they make poorer decisions the more short-term they become. Ask someone if they prefer £10 in a year or £11 in a year and a day and they will, rightly, opt for the £11. But ask them if they would prefer £10 today or £11 tomorrow and they will invariably put out their hand for the money straight away." This is of course, the classic hyperbolic discounting example.

The Telegraph article also tackles the question of why the financial services industry has become fixated on short-term performance: "Companies which used to announce figures twice a year now feel the need to do so quarterly. Fund managers are judged on ever-shorter timescales and unsurprisingly start to play it safe, hugging benchmarks and avoiding the long-term judgements that may be right but won't necessarily come good before the next review. As Keynes observed way back in 1936: 'Investment based on genuine long-term expectation is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable'."

Of course, the recent speech (and lecture) by Andrew Haldane indicates that the quote from Keynes rings true very much today. Even though there has been talk about long-term incentive plans and "long-term bonuses" for the financial sector, it remains unclear to me if anything substantial is being done to reduce the extent of short-termism in finance. However, there is laboratory evidence on the benefits of improving incentive structures, produced 20 years ago at this stage: "Behavioral Consequences of Corporate Incentives and Long-Term Bonuses: An Experimental Study". There is even a recent book with chapters on 'Investment Management Short-Termism' and 'Long-Term Performance Incentives for Investment Managers': "Saving Capitalism From Short-Termism: How to Build Long-Term Value and Take Back Our Financial Future".

To finish, I will ask if any reader has ever heard of the term IBGYBG? Apparently it is "a text-messaging acronym, like LOL or OMG. It was shorthand for a phrase often used in the investment banking business during the run-up to the 2008 Great Financial Crisis". It meant: "I’ll be gone; you’ll be gone". Now that is all about the short-term.

ESRC Methods Event: Modelling Key Variables in Social Science

Modelling Key Variables in Social Science Research

Research Seminar, Royal Statistical Society, 12 Errol Street, London EC1Y 8LX

Thursday 24th November (12:30 - 17:15) and Friday 25th November (09:00 - 13:00) 2011

An ESRC National Centre for Research Methods funded Collaborative activity. ESRC NCRM Lancaster-Warwick-Stirling Node, ESRC DSR E-Stat Node & ESRC DSR Data Management through e-Social Science Node.

A number of 'key variables' pervade social science analyses, for example occupation, education and ethnicity. The measurement and coding of variables related to these concepts, and their appropriate preparation for advanced statistical modelling, is not trivial. The focus of this research seminar will be to highlight the problems and issues associated with the operationalisation of key social science variables in advanced statistical modelling. The presentations showcase statistical modelling and will include examples of complex social science data, including longitudinal and hierarchical data structures. Advanced issues such as dealing with missing data appropriately will also feature.

Attendance at this meeting is FREE and includes lunch on both days.
We cannot pay travel or accommodation costs.

Registration is required and attendance will be strictly limited to 50 places.

Please contact Sharon Day via e-mail by 4th November 2011 (sharon.day@stir.ac.uk).
In your e-mail message, please state your name, job title, university affiliation and academic discipline.

Your place will be confirmed by 11th November 2011.


Research Presentations

Dr Paul Lambert, ESRC DSR Data Management through e-Social Science Node
'Modelling Key Variables in Social Science: The Contribution of e-Social Science'

Dr Juliet Stone, ESRC Centre for Population Change
'Modelling Socio-Economic Positions over the Lifecourse'

Dr Mark Tranmer, ESRC DSR e-Stat Node
'Modelling Social Networks'

Dr James Carpenter, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
'Modelling Key Variables with Missing Data'

Professor Vernon Gayle, ESRC NCRM Lancaster-Warwick-Stirling Node
'Modelling Parental Occupations and Filial Educational Attainment'

Dr Richard Zijdeman, University of Utrecht
'Modelling Key Historical Variables'

Roxanne Connelly, University of Stirling
'Modelling the Role of Cognitive Ability: Examples from the British Birth Cohorts'

Robert French, Institute of Education, University of London
'Modelling Home Backgrounds in Education'

Dr Marina Shapira, ESRC Centre for Population Change
'Modelling Cross-national Variation in Migration and Education'

Attendance at this meeting is FREE and includes lunch on both days.
We cannot pay travel or accommodation costs.

Registration is required and attendance will be strictly limited to 50 places.

Please contact Sharon Day via e-mail by 4th November 2011 (sharon.day@stir.ac.uk).
In your e-mail message, please state your name, job title, university affiliation and academic discipline.

Your place will be confirmed by 11th November 2011.

www.dames.org.uk/key_variables_seminar

Selection and Indoctrination among economics students

Interesting recent JEBO paper on selection and indoctrination among economics students.

Selection or indoctrination: Why do economics students donate less than the rest?

Bauman, Yoram
Rose, Elaina
Abstract

A substantial body of research suggests that economists are less generous than other professionals and that economics students are less generous than other students. Following Frey and Meier (2003), we address this question using administrative data on donations to social programs by students at the University of Washington. Our data set allows us to track student donations and microeconomics training over time in order to distinguish selection effects from indoctrination effects. We find that there is a selection effect for economics majors, who are less likely to donate than other students, and that there is an indoctrination effect for non-majors but not for majors. Women majors and non-majors are less likely to contribute than comparable men.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Behavioural Notes from Kenmare

The notes from my talk on behavioural economics in Kenmare are available on this link.

Abstract:
The last 10 years has seen a dramatic increase in the policy interest surrounding behavioural economics. The appointment of Cass Sunstein to a chief regulatory post in the US, the influence of Richard Thaler on the policy platforms of both Obama and Cameron, the establishment of the UK Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team and a number of high-level conferences held by DG Sanco, all signal a growing interest in this field. This paper examines the potential implications of this literature for Irish public policy. In 2014, Ireland aims to move toward a national autoenrolment system for pensions, a move arising from the behavioural literature. Soft paternalist policies in areas such as health insurance, energy policy, education, innovation, consumer policy and so on, potentially offer a new approach to key policy questions. This approach has promise and benefits from detailed experimental results arising from other jurisdictions but it is extremely important to understand the foundations of behavioural approaches to policy and the principles guiding good design and evaluation.

Is this a shift in incentive prizes?

"The Wolfson economics prize invites the submission of ideas for the orderly exit of one or more members of the euro zone. The one-off award is worth £250,000 ($390,000), making it second only to a Nobel in value for an economics prize." - from the Economist.com Daily Chart accessed Oct. 19th 2011.

To my mind, the appeal of incentive prizes is that they draw attention to stumbling blocks in humanity's quest for knowledge. In 1714 the British government offered a prize to whoever could find a practical means to measure longitude at sea, which they eventually awarded in 1773. Charles Lindbergh claimed a prize of $25000 for crossing the Atlantic in 1927. The X-prize incentives private rockets to explore space. These prizes were awarded for projects that self-evidently knocked over barriers to progress.

Last I heard, the jury of experts was still out on the question of whether the orderly departure of certain countries from the Eurozone would advance progress. In the meantime, this prize encourages the public to design the most efficacious means of execution.

I do not know enough about the European Monetary Union to suggest its appropriate next step. But I am interested in judgment and decision making and my prediction is that the addition of this prize to the debate space will shift its centre of gravity. Once people hear the answer to the question 'how?' the logical next step is to think about 'when'? By that point, it simply doesn't occur to people to ask the question 'why?'

I was prompted to think more deeply about this topic when I learnt that the Wolfson Prize is sponsored by Policy Exchange, a British Euroskeptic think-thank.

Health, Education and Time Preferences

Differentials in time preferences and related constructs are frequently invoked as unobserved potential reasons for socioeconomic gradients in economic outcomes. However, there is much less work actually measuring this. A number of recent papers have shown that measures of time preferences are predictive of various different types of behaviours and outcomes (see e.g. some papers involving me and colleagues here and here). However, there are no papers I am aware of that show that such factors can explain social gradients. A recent paper below by Van der Pol in Health Economics finds that controlling for measures of risk and time preference explains only a small fraction of the education gradients in health. I think this is an important result, which bears out the importance of thinking further about what is actually transmitted from parents to children in terms of determining their economic and health outcomes.

Health, Education and Time Preferences
Abstract
Education has been shown to be the most important correlate of health. However, the mechanism through which education influences health has been largely unexplained. Grossman argued that education improves health production efficiency. In contrast, Fuchs argued that the association between health and education is not primarily causal but reflects unobserved causes of both outcomes. Instead of education causing better health, some ‘third’ variables may be related to both education and health. The ‘third’ variable most frequently mentioned is time preference. The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of time preference in the relationship between education and health. The role of risk attitude is also investigated. The paper exploits a unique data set of households that incorporated stated preference questions eliciting individuals' time preferences. The results show that the effect of education reduces but does not disappear when controlling for individuals' time preferences. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Growing Up in Ireland Conference

Growing Up in Ireland – the National Longitudinal Study of Children, will hold its third annual research conference on Thursday 1st December 2011 at the D4 Berkeley Hotel, Lansdowne Rd, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.

The conference will be opened by Ms Frances Fitzgerald TD, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, who will launch some Key Findings from the recently completed Infant Cohort (at 3 years) as well as some of the first longitudinal findings from the study.

The Keynote speaker is Professor Edward Melhuish, Professor of Human Development at Birkbeck, University of London and Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Education, University of London. He is an internationally recognised expert in the study of child development and childcare and has extensive experience with longitudinal studies. His research interests include child development, parenting, childcare and early education.

A total of 24 papers will be presented at the conference, by researchers from a wide range of third level and research institutions. These will be based on data from Growing Up in Ireland’s Child and Infant Cohorts and will focus on a range of topics including health, parenting, education and childcare.

Early booking is encouraged and bookings should only be made on the registration form below and sent to Guiconference2011@esri.ie.

For further details, including the programme see:

http://www.growingup.ie/index.php?id=221

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Breastfeeding and handedness

The causes of handedness, and why a small proportion (about 10%) of people turn out to be left-handed, are not well understood. It is known that handedness is heritable: having a left-handed parent (or two) increases the probability of a child being left-handed. There has been some progress in understanding the genetics in recent years. There are various other theories about environmental influences. One such theory, associated with Bakan, suggests that difficulties during pregnancy or birth can increase the probability of being lefthanded, although I am not sure the evidence for this “pathological left-handedness” is that strong. There is also evidence that very low birthweight and a high birth order (say 4 or more older siblings) can have the same effect.

A connection with breastfeeding has not hitherto been studied. In a paper Breastfeeding predicts handedness, just published in Laterality, I show that children who were breastfed for a minimum of around a month to six weeks are significantly more likely to be right-handed – by between 1 and 3 percentage points. Since one expects about 10% to be left-handed this is quite large. This is shown for the UK (with the National Child Development Survey) and Ireland (Growing Up in Ireland). The results are robust to a range of controls. It is generally believed that breastfed children have slightly higher cognitive ability. The mechanism behind this is not understood: it could obviously be something in the milk or it could be the actual act of breastfeeding. There is evidence from animal studies that the quality of parenting can affect the brain’s development. I speculate that similar mechanisms might be behind the connection with handedness.

It would be interesting to look at children who were deprived of this early nurturing experience (for example those put into orphanages) to see if a similar pattern existed. One could also look at those mothers who experienced famines while the child was in utero to see if deficits in ante-natal nutrition had an effect.

Interestingly, in the Irish data, there is a slightly higher proportion of left-handed children than normal (just over 13%) and this might be partly explained by the unusually low incidence of breastfeeding in Ireland.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

A fat tax for Ireland?

The government is said to be considering introducing a “fat tax” for Ireland, following the introduction of one in Denmark, as a way of tackling the increase in obesity. It has already prompted some debate, for example here.

It is also being discussed in the UK and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has just published some thoughtful reflections on it, written by Rachel Griffith & Martin O’Connell, drawing on their recent Fiscal Studies paper. Let us hope we have some similarly informed contributions in Ireland.

Friday, October 14, 2011

OECD Conference on Jobs

The material from today's conference on jobs in Dublin is available on this link. Some very useful stuff including an overall issues paper. Speakers included Orla Doyle from UCD who contributed on the role of early intervention.

The paradoxical effect of job training programs

Several months ago the ESRI released a study of a FAS programme which showed that the individuals on it were significantly less likely to return to work than those who were not on it. It got a lot of attention understandably.

Its natural to ask whether this is an unusual finding. A lot of people saw the finding as a reflection on FAS as an organization. In this regard it is well worth looking at a study of a training program in Norway by Aarvik, Heckman & Vytlacil (J. Econometrics 2005). This paper develops and applies some very nice (but challenging) techniques to look at treatment effects for discrete outcomes. One of the reasons why simple comparisons can be unreliable is because of cream-skimming: those running the programs may choose to take on those who are likely to get jobs anyway as it will make them look better. Clearly this will bias upward an estimate of the treatment effect.

What they find for Norway is that relatively simple comparisons (like matching on observables) imply a positive treatment effect: the probability of being employed raises by 3 or 4%.

However, once one allows for unobservables – using their sophisticated unobserved heterogeneity technique or a simpler Instrumental Variable approach- that the treatment effect is actually negative. None of the estimates are very precise. They also look at how the treatment effects vary with some observed characteristics of individuals. For example the effects are larger for those who are more likely to be unemployed.

All of this shows that careful strutiny of labour market policies is necessary. One needs to use the best econometrics available: the cost of that is small relative to the money one might waste on ineffective policies.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

IZA Working Paper: A Guide and Advice for Economists on the U.S. Junior Academic Job Market

IZA DP No. 5984

John Cawley:

A Guide and Advice for Economists on the U.S. Junior Academic Job Market (2011-2012 Edition)

Abstract:
This guide, updated for the 2011-12 job market season, describes the U. S. academic market for new Ph.D. economists and offers advice on conducting an academic job search. It reports findings from published papers, describes practical details, and provides links to internet resources. Topics addressed include: preparing to go on the market, applying for academic jobs, signaling, interviewing at the ASSA meetings, campus visits, the secondary market scramble, offers and negotiating, diversity, and dual job searches.

http://ftp.iza.org/dp5984.pdf

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Professorships in Stirling Management School

Stirling Management school, which among other things, houses the Division of Economics is advertising multiple Professorships. These are not tied to particular areas. Details are here People from the types of areas discussed on this blog who are thinking of applying should feel free to get in touch. Relevant to research topics discussed here, as well as me, Nic Hanley and his team also work here and there is a good environment for microeconometric-work at the intersection of psychology. There has been a lot of recent activity around hiring new lecturers and Professors and my own experience here has been very positive. In Economics, we are part of the SIRE and SGPE initiatives in Scotland, which facilitates Scottish wide graduate training and research.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Sargent and Sims

This year's Nobel in Economics goes to Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims. Alex Tabarrok on Marginal Revolution gives an explanation of their contribution.

Post Authors

Thanks to new posters Gerard O'Neill, Director of Amarach Research in Ireland and Nicolas Scharioth, a consultant with Gallup Europe. As said, we hope to widen the number of contributors and perspectives over the next few months. Suggestions, as always, very welcome.

Unrealistic Optimism

People tend to accept good news much more than bad according to this paper by Sharot, Korn and Dolan. I suppose these kinds of asymmetries stand at the heart of behavioural economics.

Prayer can reduce depression: some econometric evidence

There has been a lot of work in recent years by economists on the determinants of people’s well-being. Many of these determinants are not something you can do much about at least in the short run, like income or health.

In a paper in press in Social Science and Medicine I look at the effect of prayer on the number of symptoms of depression recorded by individuals in the previous month. The data is from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) . I use the Euro-D scale which was designed to measure the incidence of depression symptons in an older population – it is not a diagnostic scale.

There are many studies looking at associations between well-being or mental health and either religion affiliation or devotion. Freud took a rather dim view of religion and this has cast a long shadow on the issue. As far as I can see, he did not do any serious data analysis so its unclear to me why one should put any weight on his views.

A problem of course in this literature, is whether one can infer anything causal. After all, people who are feeling down might easily turn to religion as a response. I use instrumental variable estimation to tackle this issue.

This turns a positive association (prayer positively correlated with depression) to a negative one i.e. prayer reduces the number of depression symptoms. This is not that surprising in a sense: if prayer made you more miserable on average, you would have an incentive not to do it. The results are robust to various combinations of instruments.

The magnitude of the effect (of praying at least daily) is comparable to that associated with different marital statuses, about half that of being female and twice as big as the effect of being unemployed.

I speculate on the possible mechanisms behind this effect, noting that it may not be the religious aspect per se. There is increasing evidence of the benefits of meditition and mindfulness based techniques for reducing depression and anxiety.

Friday, October 07, 2011

The Age of Anxiety

Pete Lunn from the ESRI was on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme this morning with Peter Kellner from YouGov discussing the impact of consumer confidence on the real economy (if you listen to it on the BBC website then fast forward to 2:55 as it's the last item on the show).

Pete made the point that it isn't just the 'quantity' of uncertainty that is adversely affecting consumer confidence right now, it's the 'quality' as well (my distinction, not his). In other words, it's one thing to worry about something directly affecting your life like a job promotion, but qualitatively something else to worry about a thing you cannot control like the prospects of a global recession. And right now we live in an age of anxiety. Make that increasing anxiety.

Kellner, on the other hand, leans more towards the 'conditions determine consciousness' school of explanation. He argues that it is the trend in house prices - and the poor prospects for same in the UK - that are the source of the emotional anxiety affecting British consumers right now.

However, the always interesting Chris Dillow has an entirely different take on the 'confidence drives the economy' issue. He argues that it is the sentiment of senior business leaders that drives the economic cycle in the short run - not consumer sentiment.  His proof? Economists have a better record of forecasting consumer spending growth than they do investment growth - suggesting that the latter is subject to more extreme and therefore more 'emotional' factors than generally realised.

Which does raise an interesting question. Would it be more useful to track the emotional well-being of business leaders rather than the general public as a guide to our economic prospects?

The OECD and Well-being

The OECD is organising a conference in Paris on 12 October 2011 on "Two Years after the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report":

Some interesting OECD related links:
Better Life Initiative: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/
Measuring Progress: www.oecd.org/measuringprogress
wikiprogress: http://www.wikiprogress.org/


The Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report is very much a must-read on the topic: http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Scottish Independence

Linked here is a BBC Q+A from a few months back on the issue of Scottish Independence. I am currently working with some people here on the design of questions to assess preferences for constitutional options, tax-benefit scenarios and so on. A number of interesting behavioural issues including the roles of loss aversion, risk aversion, framing and priming in influencing preferences as well as the extent to which perceived economic benefits influence preferences and also the extent to which people will adapt to any future changes in Scotland arising from constitutional change. Will post more on this over the next few months.

Song About Unemployment

Great song about a depressingly topical issue. Ordinary Man by Christy Moore.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Don't put your daughter in a mixed-sex school : some evidence

Casual empiricism suggests that parents in Ireland want their daughters to go to single sex schools but their sons to mixed sex schools. Trying to measure the effects of these different school types is obviously tricky because it is endogenous. The paper below looks at the case of girls in Switzerland with some quite interesting results – one that will probably be welcomed by a lot of Irish parents.

Academic Performance and Single-Sex Schooling: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Switzerland

Gerald Eisenkopf, Zohal Hessami,Urs Fischbacher, Heinrich Ursprung

We study the effects of random assignment to coeducational and single-sex classes on the academic performance of female high school students. Our estimation results show that single-sex schooling improves the performance of female students in mathematics. This positive effect increases if the single-sex class is taught by a male teacher. An accompanying survey reveals that single-sex schooling also strengthens female students’ selfconfidence and renders the self-assessment of their mathematics skills more level-headed. Single-sex schooling thus has profound implications for human capital formation and the mind-set of female students.

Irish Debate Session on Unemployment

I will do another session on the Irish Debate website on October 28th at 12pm. A preliminary version of the outline is below. Suggestions welcome. I will post about how to login closer to the time.


Irish Unemployment Policy: An Urgent Debate

The dramatic rise in unemployment in recent years is the most urgent policy problem facing the Irish state. Unemployment durations greater than one-year, in particular, are associated with a range of negative long-run social, economic and psychological consequences. While rebalancing the economy in terms of debt, price and fiscal policy following a protracted bubble and collapse is clearly the most direct route to solving this problem, it is also absolutely clear that such a process is a medium-to-long term one and the question of short-run active employment policy must be given greater focus. This debate discusses the current policy environment in Ireland. It will begin with some overviews of the extent of unemployment in different regions and among different demographic groups. It will talk about some likely consequences of the high-level of unemployment in these groups. It will then examine government policy in the area of unemployment during the course of the last three years. The bulk of the discussion will be devoted to discussing current and potential government initiatives in the area of jobs stabilisation. The recent jobbridge initiative has created much debate online and we will discuss the potential for internship and placement programmes. The bringing together of the benefit payment and job placement aspects of the welfare system is another potential opportunity for improvement. Furthermore the extent to which the cash and non-cash benefit systems creates distorted incentives at the margins of the labour market and how this might be changed will be discussed.

Selected Readings:

1. The papers of Bell and Blanchflower on this topic are very useful - a collection of these are available below

http://connect.stir.ac.uk/pg/blog/dnfb1/read/119758/labour-papers

2. The Krueger/Mueller paper "Job Search in a period of Mass Unemployment" is very useful

http://www.princeton.edu/~ceps/workingpapers/215krueger.pdf

3. Geary Working paper by me and co-authors on the experience of unemployment in Ireland is useful for getting a sense of the views of people who are unemployment

http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp201116.pdf

4. Card et al is one of the most useful papers on the success or otherwise of job activation programmes

Card, D., Kluve, J.& Weber, A. (2010) Active labour Market Policy Evaliations: A Meta Analysis. NBER Working Paper No. 16173.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16173.pdf

2011 Nobel Prize in Economics

A nice post on Mostly Economics on next week's announcement of the prize. Their list below of favourites seems a good one though there are clearly others one could add (Ernst Fehr, Angus Deaton, Richard Easterlin being names mentioned in different lists that are most relevant to the type of work we discuss here). Jean Tirole is also someone that must be on a shortlist somewhere. If I were to take an outside bet, the philosopher Jon Elster is someone who has had a big influence. Dont think its likely but, having said that, the committee has gone for people before who have influenced economics while primarily being based in another discipline.

"Jagdish Bhagwati, Avinash Dixit for international trade
Robert Barro, Paul Romer for growth economics
Oliver Hart for Transaction economics
William Nordhaus and and Martin Weitzman for Environment Economics.
Eugene Fama and Kenneth French for Financial economics
Robert Shiller and Richard Thaler for behavioral economics"

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

SBE 2020- White Papers

This series of proposals, released by the Directorate for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences of the National Science Foundation (SBE/NSF) in the US, is worth a look. 

Researchers were invited to submit a short paper detailing what they considered the 'grand challenges' facing their discipline in the future to be. Respondents included Prof. Edward Glaeser, on bounded rationality in markets and government, and Prof. Esther Duflo on the future of development economics. 
 
The 252 papers can be viewed here http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sbe_2020/all.cfm.
A pdf file containing all the submissions collated together can be downloaded here        http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sbe_2020/Abstracts.pdf.

Irish Fulbright Awards for Postgrads: Applications open

Have been involved with this both as faculty scholar and supervisor. Details below or at the following link. Bright PhD students in Ireland who would benefit from time in the US should really consider applying. For readers of the blog outside Ireland, most countries will have their own version (e.g. version for UK citizens here)

Fulbright Awards 2012-2013 Open to Applicants...
Apply through www.fulbright.ie

September - The Fulbright Commission in Ireland has launched its Awards for 2012-2013. These scholarships provide Irish and EU students, scholars and professionals with the opportunity to study, lecture and research at top universities and institutions in the US.

Visit www.fulbright.ie for further information and to apply.

The following awards are available:

1. Fulbright Student Awards are available for postgraduate study or researchin the United States. Applicants may enrol for a postgraduate degree or conduct independent research e.g. as part of their Irish / European PhD programme. These are given for one academic year but students can remain in the US for the full duration of their programme if they wish. Grants are awarded averaging $18,500 up to a maximum of $25,000 and the minimum stay is 6 months.
Some of the more specialised Awards in this category include:

o Fulbright – CRH Award in Business Studies or Engineering

o Fulbright – University of Notre Dame LL.M Award in International Human Rights Law

o Fulbright - Environmental Protection Agency Award in Water, Climate Change and Environmental Health.

2. Fulbright Scholar and Professional Awardssupport academics, post-doctoral researchers or professionals with more that 5-7 years experience to spend 3-12 months researching or lecturing in the US. Grants are awarded averaging $6,000 up to a maximum of $20,000 and the minimum stay is 3 months.

The following is also open to Scholars/Professionals:

o Fulbright - Environmental Protection Agency Award in Water, Climate Change and Environmental Health

3. Fulbright Irish Language Scholar Award in the Irish Language to support scholar/professional to lecture or lecture / research 3-9 months. Worth a maximum of €50,000.

4. Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship Awards (FLTA) for 10 months of post-graduate study and Irish language teaching in the US. Worth a maximum of approximately €20,000.

How to Apply:

1) Visit www.fulbright.ie

2) Confirm you are eligible

3) Read and follow the guidelines

4) Apply as a student or scholar

Applications must include

Personal Information & CV
Personal Statement & or Research/Project Statement
References
Transcripts if you are a student
Samples of work for visual & performing artists
be submitted online AND in hard copy by NOON Friday 18th November 2011

Americans Don't Really Hate Government That Much

The economic theory behind public good provision is largely unsatisfactory. Bergstrom, Blume and Varian (1986) remains the benchmark paper in the literature and under pretty general conditions it finds a unique Nash Equilibrium that taxes funding public goods will completely crowd out private provision.

An implication of this is that higher taxes should not, all else equal, be associated with greater public goods provision. This is not supported by the data. So what's happening?

In 2008 American government expenditure over GDP was 0.37, markedly below the EU average of 0.47. With the Tea Party being the talk of the town on this side of the Atlantic, I wondered how much of this was attributable to Americans simply trusting Congress less. Does the old cliche of Americans really distrusting government hold true? Not really.
Although the United States is below the (unweighted) EU average for trust/confidence in its national parliament, the members of Congress still retain more support than their counterparts in Belgium, Germany, France, the UK, Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Could it be that a small fraction of Americans are particularly averse to government intervention? Possibly, but this tabulation below seems to suggest Americans are more centrist than they let on.
I'm not sure what's going on here, but I have a few ideas. It could be that a small fraction of government-averse American voters are pivotal in elections; or that differences in wording of the questions between US and EU surveys leads to data incomparability; American levels of mistrust would be much higher if G/GDP reached European levels; or that trust in government has more to do with the latest scandal than the efficacy of its expenditure.

At any rate, contrary to popular perception, it's interesting to see that support for government in Boston does not seem all that different to Berlin.

Monday, October 03, 2011

Governments and Economists

I am delighted to see this forum back in a new format; and I look forward to reading many interesting posts. In this post I share some information that I gathered recently on the contribution of economists to governments' policy-formation and departmental operations. This also follows on from a recent thread (on a post written by Gerard O'Neill), where Liam and Rob mentioned the interaction between governments and economists.

As a preliminary, it is worth noting Colm Harmon (director of the Geary Institute) has raised this topic for discussion before; twice on the Irish Economy blog, as follows: (i) Skills Deficits (ii) Norman Glass. In his first post Colm says: "What is badly needed is something like the Government Economic Service in the UK. This ensures two things - the presence of a cadre of professional economists within the sector, but also the harmonisation of the training across Departments giving a unity of approach regardless of the topic... (This) ensures that economists can move between Departments, be redeployed... very easily and that economics has a core platform within the service." In a comment on that post by Colm, Kevin suggests that a Council of Economic Advisers should be established in Ireland. What follows below is a first glance at the nature of the interaction between governments and economists in Ireland, the UK (and Scotland), the USA and Australia. I would be glad if additional information (and indeed, any insights on all of this) was provided in the comments-thread.

First off, it is worth noting that there is a "Revenue Analytics Branch" within the (Irish) Revenue Commissioners. If one downloads this paper on tobacco taxation by Keith Walsh and Padraic Reidy, you will see the explicit affiliation (of Revenue Analytics Branch) on the Pdf. A unit like this is an interesting illustration of how a Government Economic Service (GES) might take form in the various departments and service-providers under the remit of the Irish Government. Second, the closest that Ireland comes to having a Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is the National Economic and Social Council (NESC). According to the NESC website: "The members of the Council are appointed by the Taoiseach, for a three year term. These members are representatives of business and employers’ organisations, trade unions, agricultural and farming organisations, community and voluntary organisations, and environmental organisations; as well as heads of Government departments and independent experts."

Perhaps it would be better if the economists on this council (John McHale and Edgar Morgenroth) were more numerous than two, and were given their own domain in a separate council (that could still participate in the umbrella forum now known as NESC). It is also worth noting that NESC have an analytical team; this group includes several trained economists and is responsible for the production of NESC policy documents. This group is a pre-existing resource that a new Council of Economic Advisers could avail of.

The Scottish Council of Economic Advisers is a diverse group; including private sector representation (a former chairman of Sun Microsystems), media representation (a former long-standing contributor to The Economist magazine), but also academic economists; including Frances Ruane, director of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Dublin. The Scottish Government also have their own version of a Government Economic Service; this is called the Scottish Government Economist Group and is managed by the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser. There are seven divisions in this group: Communities, Education, Enterprise & Energy, Rural & Environment, Health, Transport, and Justice.

Beyond this, I have tried to see if the UK has something akin to an Advisory Council, in addition to their Government Economic Service. Of course, we have heard about the Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team; and there is a new Office for Budget Responsibility: along the lines of Ireland's newly minted fiscal council. However, the extent of a CEA-type advisory outfit in the UK seems to be limited to the following Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat (EDS) within the Cabinet Office structure. This doesn't appear to have any academic input, and seems more like a service-provider than an advisory council, to me. I might be wrong though.

In fairness to the UK Government, they seem to get a lot of advisory input from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). The IFS researchers "meet regularly with policymakers across Whitehall, from the Downing Street Strategy Unit to the Department for International Development. (And they) give evidence to parliamentary select committees... brief MPs ahead of each Budget and... meet annually with the Chancellor of the Exchequer." While this sounds like more than what the ESRI do in Ireland, it is still short of a formal advisory structure.

I also tried to see what the equivalent of the GES is in the United States. There is of course the Fiscal Commission (their recently devised version of a fiscal council) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO); the latter of which produces a whole range of outputs, including micro papers on policy topics. However, the CBO is not the provider of economic services to the U.S. Federal Government, as far as I am aware. It appears that many branches of the Federal Govt. have their own economics department; such as the Burea of Labor Statistics (although that's not purely an economics-based dept.), the Directorate for Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences (somewhat like an econ dept. within the National Science Foundation), and the Economics and Statistics Administration, which "provides timely economic analysis, disseminates national economic indicators, and oversees the U.S. Census Bureau (Census) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)."

There is also an economics advisory board for agriculture, an advisory committee on international economic policy, an advisory committee for the BEA (which includes a lot of recognisable academic economists), and an institute of education sciences. In addition, there is the Office of Management and Budget (a part of the Treasury), whose "mission is to assist the President in overseeing the preparation of the federal budget and to supervise its administration in Executive Branch agencies. In helping to formulate the President's spending plans, the OMB evaluates the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures, assesses competing funding demands among agencies, and sets funding priorities." The OMB is where Cass Sunstein (co-author of Nudge) works, as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

This all seems very disparate (in the USA structure), though that is perhaps to be expected given the massive scale of the federal bureaucracy. One thing at least is that the OMB and the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) are both part of the Executive Office of the President; so that seems like the avenue along which those groups are co-ordinated. It's also worth noting that there is an "Economic Recovery Advisory Board", wholly separate to the CEA. This could be an interesting suggestion for the Irish case, if there was no appetite for a council of economic advisers to be present on a permanent basis in Ireland.

Lastly, it's worth noting that the Australian Productivity Commission (APC) is an unusual mix of research alongside an advisory function. It seems to me that it combines the research-role of the IFS with the advisory capacity of the (North American) CEA; but without the service-provision of the (UK) GES. Colm may correct me here if I am wrong, because I know he has been over to visit the APC. Whether there is added value in such a set-up (the APC approach) is another issue again; the UK could emulate the Australian approach somewhat by giving the IFS an explicit advisory role. Finally, I'm not sure whether the Australians have some form of a GES; but from a very quick investigation, it appears that they do not.

Losing our religion? Religious attendance amongst Irish children

Once upon a time, and it probably wasn’t that long ago, young people in Ireland went to church because thats what people did. But the position of religion in Ireland has changed dramatically in recent years and we also have a more heterogenous population because of immigration. So what is the situation now?

The Growing Up in Ireland survey asked parents how often their children (9 year olds) attend religious service.

The graph shows the responses. Virtually none attend on a daily basis and about 50% on a weekly basis. About 28% attend either monthly or less often.Around 14% attend on special occasions, presumably Christmas, weddings and so on.

There is an interesting rural/urban split (not shown here) with the “weekly” category much higher in rural areas (roughly 57% vs. 37%). The data does not allow one to distinguish between different denominations or Christian vs. non-Christian faiths.

These numbers don’t augur well for organized religions in the future ‘though probably some are doing much better than others.