Assorted Links

1. The American Association for Public Opinion Research on non-probability online panels. Also, respondent engagement and survey length: the long and the short of it.

2. Insider Econometrics: Empirical Studies of How Management Matters

3. The Lord Mayor of Dublin's Commission on Employment. "In September 2009 the Lord Mayor’s Commission on Employment put out a public “Call for Ideas” in a bottom up approach to invite the public, business and community-based, to tell their proposals to generate economic activity in the City." In the wake of this initiative, there is a conference on the 23rd April, that must be registered for by this Friday.

4. Economic Development Action Plan for the Dublin City Region: July 2009

5. The Ernst & Young Economic Eye: "Ireland was the first Eurozone economy to be officially classified as ‘in recession’ during 2008... A severe (GDP down by 10%) or prolonged (three or four years) recession is often referred to as a depression." Given this definition, Ireland is now technically in depression, as GDP has fallen by more than 10% since the 2007 peak. (GNP, the more relevant figure, has fallen further). The data are available in the most recent edition of the CSO's Quarterly National Accounts (March 25th), which documents the "largest decline in output ever recorded in a single year."

6. Ronan Lyons: "270,000 private sector jobs have been lost in Ireland – that’s about 16% of all private sector jobs. At the same point in the Great Depression, the U.S. had lost 18% of jobs, compared to losses of just 6% this time around (for the U.S.). It’s very clear from these figures that Ireland is suffering a severe jobs depression." And that comment was from last October.

7. "Ireland's Great Depression" (Ahearne, Kydland and Wynne): "We argue that Ireland experienced a great depression in the 1980s comparable in severity to the better known and more studied depression episodes of the interwar period."

8. Michael Hennigan on how the duration of Irish unemployment compares historically: "Two statistics document... (that) the median duration of unemployment has reached 20 weeks, more than twice the peak in the deep 1981-82 recession, and a record 41 per cent of the unemployed have been jobless for six months or longer, for the first time since 1948."

9. Paul Corcoran and Ella Arensman (EJPH, 2010): Suicide and employment status during Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy

10. The Irish Independent last week: "As many as 170,000 homeowners may already be in negative equity, it has been estimated based on figures released by Bank of Ireland last week."

11. For the victims of of hard paternalism: "Now who here among us, still believes in choice? Not I!"