Economics 16/9/10: Improving competitiveness

Recently, there have been plenty of claims concerning improving Irish competitiveness through the crisis. Most refer to the Irish Central Bank-reported Harmonized Competitiveness Indicators (HCIs). Here are some charts to detail what has been going on in this area:

The first chart below shows historical trends in HCIs.

On the surface, it looks like:

1. The story of dramatic improvements in our competitiveness (at least as measured by the HCIs) has been true - we are now back to competitiveness levels not seen since June 2007 (in Nominal HCIs), February 2003 (when it comes to HCIs deflated by consumer prices) and January 2006 (as measured by HCIs deflated by producer prices)
2. At the same time, the gap between our performance in HCIs deflated by producer prices and consumer prices clearly shows that these gains in competitiveness were not due to producer cost deflation (improved productivity), but due to massive deflation in consumer prices (margins erosion and collapse in domestic demand).

A closer look in the chart below, however, shows that the timing of our competitiveness gains is not as straight forward as the arguments put forward in the public suggest:
Starting with the peak year for our bubble (2007), our gains in competitiveness since the beginning of this recession in Q1 2008 are hardly impressive at all. To summarize these, here is a table of relative changes:

Loss of 1.4% (nominal) in competitiveness, contrasted by gains of just 2.4% in producer prices-termed HCI and 5.6% in consumer prices-termed HCI are hardly a matter of bragging rights for Ireland Inc.

Irish HCI data is strongly suggesting that so far in the recession, Ireland's producers have failed to gain significant inroads into productivity gains. Instead, lower retail prices so far remain the primary drivers of the improved indices reading.