Westminister Forum Projects

Westminster Forum Projects (WFP) operates a "group of influential, impartial and cross-party forums: the Westminster Education Forum; the Westminster eForum; the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum; the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum; the Westminster Health Forum; the Westminster Legal Policy Forum and the Westminster Media Forum."

"All the Westminster Forum Projects... enjoy substantial support and involvement from key stakeholders within Parliament, government, regulatory bodies, industry, consumer organisations and other interested groups. The forums organise senior level seminars on public policy in these sectors. None of the forums has a policy agenda of its own, other than simply to raise the quality of debate on public policy developments and so create opportunities for informed discussion."

The Westminster Education Forum aims to "provide the premier environment for policy makers in Parliament, Whitehall and government agencies to engage with key stakeholders. These include education professionals, parents and learners, industry representatives and their advisors, interest groups, local authorities, the voluntary sector and academia, along with members of the reporting press."

Two New Papers On Malthus

As if we needed any reminding of it in this climate, economics is often known as the “dismal science”. Malthus is largely to blame for this unfortunate term, thanks to his pessimistic theories on the nature of population growth and mortality. In a simple Malthusian world, an increase in wages increases population. This only results in an increase in mortality rates, ultimately returning society to its original equilibrium with no permanent increase in welfare.

Two recent papers by UCD economists re-examine this issue. Cormac Ó’Gráda and Morgan Kelly (Living Standards and Mortality since the Middle Ages) find that all strata of English society, including the nobility, were affected by food shortages before the Black Death. The relationship between food prices and mortality disappears in the mid 17th century (although not in London), but then reappears in the early 18th century. Interestingly (given Malthus’ objections to the Poor Laws), the authors suggest that social welfare had a part to play in this. This paper is also discussed on the Economic Logic blog.

Research in this area has tended to focus on England; however we know that the UK was exceptional for several reasons. Alan Fernihough (Malthusian Dynamics in a Diverging Europe: Northern Italy 1650-1881) examines the evidence for Italy. He finds support for the existence of Malthusian checks into the late 1800s. Both papers are relevant for the debate on the stages of economic growth (e.g. Galor and Weil, Population, technology, and growth: From Malthusian stagnation to the demographic transition and beyond).

Weather and the macroeconomy

Given the lousy weather and the lousy macroeconomy prevailing in Ireland it is natural to wonder do adverse weather shocks have an impact on economic activity? One's intuition is that bad weather is bad for the economy though clearly there will be silver linings to the cloud for some, manufacturers and purveyors of galoshes for example. For a non-technical discussion of why weather does matter see Niemara (2005).
In an historical analysis Solomou & Wu (2002) "considers the influence of weather shocks at a disaggregated level of analysis, modelling the effects of weather shocks on British agriculture, construction and energy demand over the period 1870–1913. The impact of weather shocks will vary from sector to sector as the conditions favouring one activity may be adverse to another. The sectoral effects are aggregated to give us an estimate of the macroeconomic effects of weather on business cycle fluctuations"

Fry and Laurie - Are You Happy?

Nice clip from the BBC vaults - "You do a job that half of mankind would kill to be able to do and you can have sex with the other half as often as you like. I just want to know if this makes you happy!!??"

Growing Up in Ireland Report Published

From TCD's website - While the macro situation is getting understandable attention at present, Ireland is still a country that spends a lot of money on public services. The task of making sure that our public resources and infrastructures are set up to help this generation of children lead fulfilling lives should get more attention in the policy debate.

Key findings from the report include:

* 86% of nine-month-olds lived in two-parent families with 14% living in lone-parent families.
* Traditional family types are still the norm. Over 70% of the mothers of nine-month-olds were married and a further 15% were cohabiting with a partner.
* 27% of mothers and 24% of fathers were not born in Ireland.
* Nearly one in five mothers (18%) had smoked at some stage during the pregnancy and a similar proportion (20%) had drunk alcohol at some stage. Mothers with the lower levels of education were more likely to smoke, but less likely to drink alcohol, during pregnancy than mothers with the highest education.
* Just over half of all infants (57%) were breastfed at some point, with just over 49% being breastfed on leaving hospital. Irish-born mothers were less likely to have breastfed (48%) than mothers born elsewhere (83%). Rates of breastfeeding also increased in line with better education of the mother.
* One in ten mothers had ‘no intention of ever getting pregnant’ at the time they conceived the Study Infant.
* The vast majority of mothers reported their infant’s health to be good at birth (97%) and at nine months (99%).
* 38% of nine-month-olds were in some form of non-parental childcare. Grandparents were the most frequent provider of childcare (12%), followed by crèche/daycare centres (11%).
* Infants in non-parental childcare spent an average of 25 hours per week in childcare and this cost an average of €5.14 per hour. The most important consideration when choosing childcare was the quality of the care provided. However, a substantial proportion (17%) recorded that their choice had been determined by costs, either completely or to a large degree.
* A total of 57% of mothers of infants are currently working outside the home
* Mothers in higher income groups as well as those with higher education were more likely than others to report that they had missed out on home or family activities because of their work. In contrast mothers from the lowest income group were most likely to record having turned down work activities or opportunities because of their family life

Economics Research at Microsoft

I've blogged before about economics research at Google and Yahoo. Another major technology company with a research area devoted to economics is Microsoft. Within this stream of research, topics of particular interest include game theory, research on the family, financial services for low-SES groups, household well-being, socio-economic mobility, social networking and trust/reputation. Microsoft staffers associated with economic research are shown here.