8/11/2012: OECD Internet economy outlook 2012: Part 5 Conclusions

By now, I have posted 4 different posts on the OECD Internet Economy Report 2012 and the implications arising from the OECD data for Ireland. The core points of these posts are:

1. Overall ICT-linked employment in Ireland is declining, not rising, as the share of total employment in 1995-2009, despite the fact that we have experienced a virtual collapse in the traditional sectors activity over the same period of time (Part 1 post);
2. Growth in ICT sector revenues has been below OECD average in Ireland during 2000-2011 period, in contrast to the claimed successes in attracting ICT sector FDI into the country and contradicting the Government claims that Ireland-based ICT suppliers are consistently enhancing the value-added activity here (Part 1 post);
3. In addition, growth rate in the sector revenues in Ireland at roughly half the OECD average rate of growth is coincident with unprecedented growth in expatriated profits by the MNCs and massive in scale tax optimization ongoing within the MNCs component of the ICT economy here. This suggests that actual real activity might be declining, not growing, in Ireland (Part 1 post);
4. ICT investment by asset-type and overall in 2010 in Ireland was exceptionally poor, ranking the country as the 5th from the bottom despite the Government claims that Ireland was the leading destination for attracting FDI in Europe (with FDI into Ireland dominated by ICT services)  (Part 1 post);
5. Business R&D investment in ICT-related areas in Ireland ranked the country in 10th place in the OECD in 2010, once again contrasting the claims by the Government that Ireland is an ICT investment hub  (Part 1 post);
6. Business use of the internet in 2011 sees Ireland ranked 5th from the bottom (Part 4 post) despite having access to a broadband connection above OECD average (Part 4 post);
7. We score rather poorly in terms of our broadband infrastructure quality, penetration (Part 2 post) and poorly (well below average) for broadband access in the most economically developed region of the country (Part 4 post);
8. More significantly, we score poorly in terms of the quality of our human capital when it coms to ICT-enabled economy: less than OECD average is the share of Irish residents who used internet for communicating in 2010; we have the third lowest percentage of internet users who created a web page in 2011; we score at the average in terms of individuals engaging in ordering or purchasing goods or services online in 2011; below OECD average in terms of use of banking services online and close to average use of internet for learning in 2010 (Part 2 post);
9. For the 'smart workforce' claimed, irish share of employed persons at work using an internet-connected computer ranks below EU15 average and Ireland sports average rates of growth in this metric for 2005-2011 period (Part 4 post);
10. Despite having above average proportion of schools with internet connection in 2009, we had well below average usage of these connections, suggesting that our education system is incapable of using modern tools of learning (Part 3 post);
11. Consequently to (9), we have below average percentage of individuals using the internet to obtain information from the public authorities websites in 2011 - the outcome that can be expected in a country where education system is incapable of using web-based platforms (Part 3 post);
12. Ireland scores fifth from the bottom in terms of internet users using P2P file sharing to exchange content in 2011 (Part 3 post);
13. Ireland scores average in internet use by the highest educated segment of its population, below average in internet use by medium-educated households and average in internet use by the low-education households (Part 3 post);
14. Irish businesses have close to average (OECD) percentage of businesses with a website (Part 4 post);
15. Less than EU15, EU27 and OECD average proportion of Irish companies share information electronically externally, and the same holds for companies using automatic data exchange to receive or send e-invoices in 2010-2011 (Part 4 post);
16. We rank 9th in the OECD in the total turnover of companies from e-commerce in 2011 (as % of total turnover) despite the fact that we are clearing huge volumes of transactions for ICT services MNC giants like google, linkedin, etc (Part 4 post);
17. We rank 10th in the OECD in terms of companies selling over the internet in 2011 (Part 4 post)

In brief, Ireland is not an ICT services and culture hub, but at best an average performer in the group of advanced economies.

Furthermore, per OECD data:

So Ireland scores 6th from the bottom in terms of share of ICT specialist users in the total economy back in 2010, with that share growing by lowest percentage of all countries save Greece and Portugal. The outcome is made more egregious to the Government claims of Ireland being a global ICT hub by the fact that between 1995 and 2010 Irish economy has been attracting massive inflows of FDI in the sector.

The OECD report is extremely disturbing in terms of the picture it paints of Irish internet-based economy and flies in the face of a number of traditional assertions about Ireland as the global ICT hub made by the Government, IDA and Enterprise Ireland, as well as our business lobby and quangoes.

8/11/2012: World Bank DB Report 2013: Ireland improves in headline ranking

World Bank Doing Business 2013 Indicators summary for Ireland:

Overall, Ireland's rank has improved in 2013 report compared to 2012 from 16th to 15th. The gains are as follows:

• Starting a Business rankings improved from 14th in 2012 to 10th in 2013 - a good result. The core driver, however, was not an absolute gain in scores in Ireland, but a decline in other countries rankings in this area. Thus, Number of Procedures required to start a business in Ireland remained at 4 - the same level as in every other reprot since 2004. Time (days) required to start business improved from 13 in 2007-2012 reports to 10 in 2013 report. Given there has been absolutely no new legislation or regulatory change, it is hard to explain how such a reduction was achieved. Cost as % of Income per Capita of starting business also declined from 0.4 (2011-2012 reports) to 0.3 in 2013 report. Paid-in Minimum Capital as % of income per capita has remained at zero (same as in every other report since 2004). Now, the problem is that Cost metric as used by the World Bank references GDP per capita and as such underestimates the actual cost of Starting a Business in Ireland by ca 25%. Raising the value to GNP benchmark implies a cost of 0.4%, not 0.3%, implying the ranking of 11, not 10, in 2013 table. This still represents a good achievement.
• Dealing with Construction Permits rankings for Ireland have deteriorated from 102 in the world in 2012 to 106 in the world in 2013. The deterioration occurred in Cost as % of Income Per Capita (rising from 616.9 in 2012 to 626.1 in 2013). The Number of Procedures and Time (days) metrics remained the same in 2011-2013 reports. Frankly, I have no idea what is meant by the cost of registering property at 626.1% of our income per capita.
• Getting Electricity rankings also deteriorated from 92nd in the world to 95th in the world, primarily due to Cost (as % of Income per Capita) rising from 91.1% to 94.2% between 2012 and 2013 reports. It takes on average 205 days for a new business to get an electricity connection in Ireland.
• Registering Property rankings have improved significantly in 2013 from a third-world level of 81st in 2012 report to a quasi-second world rankings of 53rd. The improvement is solely due to reduction in the cost of registering property as 5 of property value from 6.5% in 2012 to 2.5% in 2013 - a temporary measure reflecting property reliefs in Budget 2012.
• Getting Credit rankings deteriorated from 9th in 2012 report to 12th in 2013 report - the change that was driven solely by other countries improvements. Irish scores in all four categories combined in the rankings have not changed since 2005 report. Given realities of current credit environment in Ireland, the World Bank rankings in this area are basically irrelevant. The categories used in assessment are: Strength of Legal Rights, Depth of Credit Information, Public Registry Coverage and Private Bureau Coverage.
• Protecting Investors rankings for Ireland have remained at 6th in both 2012 and 2013 reports and there were no changes in the scores in any of the categories that comprise this sub-index.
• Paying Taxes rankings have slipped from 5th in 2012 to 6th in 2013 on foot of increased time required for completion (80 hours per year in 2013 report against 76 hours in all reports from 2006 through 2012). Effective profit tax entered by the World Bank for 2013 report stands at 11.9% for Ireland, while labour tax and contributions stood at 11.6% and other taxes at 2.9% combining to the total tax rate on profit of 26.4% (up on 2012 report at 26.3).
• Enforcing  Contracts rankings declined from 62nd in 2012 to 63rd in 2013 reports. On average it takes 650 days to enforce a contract in Ireland, same as in 2012, but up on 515 days registered in 2004-2011 reports.
• Trading Across Borders rankings for Ireland have deteriorated from less-than impressive 23rd in 2012 report to even more disturbing (for an open economy) 28th. The main source of deterioration was the rise of the exporting costs from USD1,109 per container to USD1,135. Given that worldwide costs of shipping came actually down in 2012, this suggests rising domestic costs.
• Resolving Insolvency rankings have improved in Ireland from 10th in 2012 report to 9th in 2013 report, primarily because the recovery rate has risen from 86.9 cents on the dollar to 87.5 cents on the dollar.

In summary, good to see an improvement in the headline ranking, but more detailed analysis shows that little is being done in terms of structural change to deliver sustained improvements in many categories.

7/11/2012: A patent cliff or a temporary slide?

In the previous post, looking at the top-line figures for Industrial Production for Ireland, I have promised to look more closely at the dynamics underlying the largest singular exports (goods) driver - the Pharma sector - Basic Pharmaceutical Products and Preparations (BPP&P) sector. Here are some numbers and trends.

An excellent analysis of this is also available from Chris Van Egeraat of NUI Maynooth (link here).

Let's start from the top. Throughout, I use the current figures for September that are subject to potential future revisions.

Production volumes:

• Index of production volume in Basic Pharmaceutical Products and Preparations sub-sector fell from 165 in August to 107 in September - a decline of 35.15% m/m and down 31.76% y/y.
• Compared to 2010, the index is now down 29.47%, compared to the peak value for January 2010-present period the index is down 42.41%.
• Back in September 2011, the index rose 3.36% y/y, so the swing in growth rates is extremely sizable.
• The declines are much shallower if we look at 3mo MA readings which a more likely to be reflective of the longer trends: for the latest 3 months through September 2012, the index average is down 9.27% compared to the 3 months period through June 2012. The index is also down7.02% compared to 3 months period through September 2011 and 5.93% down on its reading for the period through September 2010. Back in 2011, 3 months average through September rose 0.57% y/y. 

Turnover:

• Turnover index fell from 136.4 in August to 105 in September 2012 a decline of 23.02% m/m and 27.44% drop y/y.
• Compared to September 2010, the index is now down 29.72% and compared to the all-time peak activity for January 2010-present period, the index is down 40.10%.
• Back in September 2011 the index posted a decline of 3.15% y/y.
• Again, looking at 3mo averages through September 2012 there was a rise in the index of 2.0% compared to 3mo average through June 2012, but a decline of 8.82% on 3mo average through September 2011. Compared to 3mo average through September 2010, current index reading 3mo average is down 11.85%. This contrasts with index 3 mo average through September 2011 declining just 0.9% y/y.

Chart:

There is clearly a steep drop off in both series. And this falloff has a significant impact on our exports and overall industrial sectors activity. 

However, the series are volatile. For example, for January 2010-present, standard deviation in the turnover index for BPP&P sector is 11.82, against standard deviation for manufacturing sector at 3.41. In terms of volume of activity, index standard deviations are 12.61 and 4.42 for BPP&P sector and manufacturing, respectively.

Nonetheless, the drops in September amounted to 4.6 STDEV in Volume and 2.66 STDEV in Value - both are sizable.

A comparable drop in Volume in November 2011 came in at:

1. Shallower m/m change of 25%;
2. Was on foot of historical high (August 2012 was the third highest reading in Volume terms) and
3. Coincided with a monthly rise, not fall, in the Turnover index activity.

Thus, one has to be cautious when attributing the index moves in September 2012 to either volatility or the specific long-term trend change, such as a patent cliff (again, the note linked above from Chris Van Egeraat is spot on in this point).

However, one must be cognizant of the signifiant positive links between activity in the BPP&P sector and overall Manufacturing activity. Chart below illustrates the strength of that relationship:

One has to be also significantly concerned with the fact that we have coincident drops in Turnover and Volume, so the price effects seem to be going the same direction as the volume of activity. In general, there is virtually no meaningful relationship between sector volume and turnover. Strengthening of the link between turnover and volume can be reflective of a structural slide in the overall activity.

As usual, caution is warranted in interpreting the immediate and provisional figures. However, 'slips' like this do matter - both in terms of their immediate impact on GDP and (less so) GNP, and in the light of what we do anticipate - the reduction in overall sector activity in the near future due to patent cliff.

6/11/2012: Irish Industrial Production & Turnover: September 2012

There has been a massive, extremely disturbing, albeit alltogether not un-predictable fall off in manufacturing activity in Ireland over September 2012. Here's the CSO statement:

"Production for Manufacturing Industries for September 2012 was 13.9% lower than in August 2012. On an annual basis production for September 2012 decreased by 13.7% when compared with September 2011.

The seasonally adjusted volume of industrial production for Manufacturing Industries for the quarter period July 2012 to September 2012 was 4.5% lower than in the preceding quarter.

The “Modern” Sector, comprising a number of high-technology and chemical sectors, showed a monthly decrease in production for September 2012 of 22.4%. The most significant change was in Basic pharmaceutical products and preparations with a decrease of 35.2%.

There was a decrease of 1.3% in the “Traditional” Sector.

The seasonally adjusted industrial turnover index for Manufacturing Industries decreased by 5.7% in September 2012 when compared with August 2012. On an annual basis turnover decreased by 4.5% when compared with September 2011."

More on underlying dynamics:

• Volume of Manufacturing output shrunk 13.73% y/y and 13.88% m/m. Compared to September 2007, index reading is down 13.89%. Q3 2012 reading is down 4.8% q/q and down 2.82% y/y.
• Manufacturing activity (in volume terms) now stands at the levels last seen back in December 2009 and is down 2.6% in 2005 levels.
• 6mo MA through September 2012 is at 110.78, virtually indistinguishable from 12mo MA of 110.98.
• Volume index for All Industries is now at 96.8 - the level last seen between November and December 2009. The index is down 12.71% y/y and 12.64% m/m. Q3 2012 reading is down 4.52% q/q and down 3.10% y/y.
• 6mo MA is now slightly below 12mo MA (108.75 v 109.10).
• The index is at 3.2% below 2005 levels of activity.

• Modern Sectors volume of activity index has fallen to 105.0 in September, down 18.03% y/y and 22.45% m/m. Activity has fallen to the lowest level since November-December 2009 and compared to September 2007 the index reading is down 8.96%. 
• Q3 2012 index is down 5.96% q/q and down 1.60% y/y.
• 6mo MA (127.07) is identical to 12mo MA.
• Traditional sectors fall-off was less steep, but the index of volume of production here suffered second consecutive monthly decline. The index is down 5.01% y/y and down 1.30% m/m to reach 83.5 reading, lowest since January 2012. 
• Traditional sectors volume of production is down 22.53% on September 2007 and down 16.5% on 2005 levels of activity.
• Q3 2012 reading is 1.33% below Q2 reading and down 6.15% y/y.
• 6mo MA (84.93) is below 12mo MA (85.4).

As the result of the above changes, the gap between Modern sectors activity (volume) and Traditional sectors activity has narrowed dramatically to 21.5 ppt in September against 50.8 ppt in August.

Turnover data signaled narrower reductions in activity, suggesting that some MNCs have accelerated transfer pricing in light of higher producer price inflation (as signaled by recent PMIs):

• Manufacturing turnover activity fell to 97 in September, down 4.53% y/y and down 5.73% m/m. 
• Compared to the same period of 2007, turnover is now down 10.08%.
• Q3 2012 reading is up 3.70% q/q and up 0.36% y/y - once again due to improved price inflation.

New orders index reading slipped to 97 in September, down 3.96% y/y and down 6.55% m/m. Compared to same period 2007, the new orders activity is down 11.31%. Q3 2012 new orders average activity was up 3.59% q/q and up 1.44% y/y. 6mo MA, nonetheless is almost flat at 99.35 compared to 100.00 for 12mo MA.

Employment indices have slipped across a broad range of sectors in Q1 2012 - the latest for which data is reported. Modern sector employment fell to 63,500 in Q1 2012 against 67,100 in Q4 2011. Chemicals and pharma sector employment actually rose to 43,800 in Q1 2012 against 43,300 in Q4 2011, while Computers, electronic and optical products and equipment employment fell from 23,800 in Q4 2011 to 19,700 in Q1 2012. Overall industrial employment in Ireland fell from 201,200 in Q4 2011 to 192,700 in Q1 2012.

Volumes of industrial production in Basic pharmaceutical products and preparations fell 31.8% in September 2012 y/y and were down 35.2% m/m. In turnover terms, activity was down 23.1% m/m and down 27.5% y/y.

I will blog on this in more detail later tonight, so stay tuned.

5/11/2012: OECD Internet economy outlook 2012: part 4

This is the fourth note on the OECD Internet economy report 2012 (part 1, part 2 and part 3 are linked here).

We hear much about the vast gap between Dublin and the rest of the country in digital economy. Usually this refers to the disparity of access. Yet, as the following illustrates, even the 'advantaged' Dublin scores poorly compared to its peers (other capital regionas) in the OECD:

For example, Dublin and Southern and Eastern region are worse than Scotland - the lowest scoring region in the UK. Too bad the folks at the WebSummit and other prime events in digital economy world converging onto Dublin have no clue just how poor we really are in terms of enabling and deploying ICT services-based economy. May be some of them will read these posts or the OECD document before they start extolling the virtues of Irish 'digital' economy.

But enough about the households. What about pioneering, innovative, R&D intensive, knowledge economy business environment here? After all, as I said earlier, ireland is home to so many MNCs in the sector and so one should expect business use of the web to be high...

Oops.. I thought we have hugely innovative start ups and MNCs popping up on every corner... After all, IDA and EI brochures are full of their smiling faces and sunny stories.

And usage is, as with schools, vastly lower than access:

Now, unimpressive record on the share of employees connected to the web and using it...

Equally interesting fact revealed by the above chart is that there is no impressive growth in this metric in 2005-2011 period, despite the fact that overall share should have risen dramatically due to obliteration of jobs in less computer- and web-enabled sectors such as basic consumer services and construction. In other words, the above chart shows conclusively that Irish economy is not becoming more knowledge-intensive even after jobs destruction wave sweeping traditional sectors.

The same ic confirmed by a different metric:

Remember the malarky about MNCs operations in Ireland being of great benefit to 'clustering' and 'spill-over of skills and know-how' to the broader economy? Why, it seems to be pretty much a lie too:

Per chart above, Ireland scores relatively well on internally shared systems and rather poorly on externally shared ones. In other words, if MNCs are creating knowledge and transfers here, they are more likely to keep them to themselves than to allow them to 'spill-over' to outside their own offices.

Ireland-based businesses are not even any good at invoicing via the web:

Of course, the headline figures on earnings generated via e-commerce are high, but these are grossly skewed by MNCs (e.g. google et al):

How I know that? Because the actual usage of e-based sales is poor in Ireland:

So revenue generation ranking above is skewed heavily by few businesses carrying out huge transactions volumes, not by broad reach of e-commerce.

And the same applies to ICT business spending on R&D:

Once again, more on the topic in the next post.

5/11/2012: OECD Internet economy outlook 2012: part 3

In part 1 and part 2 earlier I took a look at some stats coming from the OECD report published today and positioning Irish internet economy overall at the very best at-or-below the OECD average across e-business, connectivity and social use.

Let's continue wading through the massive report (linked in the first post above).

An interesting chart below:

This shows that Ireland overall scores relatively well in terms of schools access to the web - at least we are above the OECD average. But usage of this access is... well - well below the OECD average ranks Ireland closer to 7th from the bottom. So having access (public spending) is not equivalent to quality of use. In fact, ireland has the 5th largest gap in usage relative to access in the OECD.

Irish Government is equally poor at providing useful and user-friendly access to information on the web, on par with our sub-average performance in other ICT-enabled services:

Which is in line with general lack of transparency and engagement with services users on behalf of our State, where fixing potholes still requires a phone call to a local TDs, rather than a more modern and less corrupting approach of simply requesting a service from responsible authorities.

Back to utilization of basic ICT services:

No comment necessary.

And usability by our remarkably highly educated workforce? Why, average, again:

Remember, it's the workforce marvel that attracts MNCs into Ireland - the workforce where even highly educated don't really use the web, and where education system doesn't encourage use of the web in schools, and where stats for P2P file sharing, use in continued education, basic webpage publishing etc are all abysmally poor.

Never mind... just read an IDA brochure and believe!..

5/11/2012: OECD Internet economy outlook 2012: part 2

Here comes the second post on OECD Internet Economy Outlook 2012 report (first in the series was here), focusing on Ireland and the mythology of our 'global ICT services hub'.

So wading deeper into the OECD report, take a look at this chart:

Ireland hardly can boast of an advanced fibre infrastructure that would be consistent with real ICT economy, especially ICT services economy. Per OECD: "Fibre-based broadband connections offer the fastest data transfers..." Now, in many countries, deployment of fibre broadband is lower due to home ownership rates being lower (people tend to invest less in a fixed connection quality when they rent, other things held constant). In Ireland, abysmally low fibre coverage is coincident with very high home ownership rates.

Next up, given lack of fibre coverage, you'd think we should lead the world in overall penetration of the substitutes (e.g. wireless), although, of course, fixed fibre and wireless can be complementary to each other (e.g. fixed line at home, mobile on the go). Alas, not really:

And subsequently, the gap between broadband connections and overall internet connections in Ireland is high by comparative standards:

In fact, we are below both EU27 and OECD average on broadband coverage per above chart.

Next up: the world of data is becoming portable. And in particular it is becoming portably mobile - in other words, more and more access to data is now taking place via mobile devices, rather than portable computers... And in Ireland?

Despite all the talk about the new generation of mobile users, etc, Irish 'younger and more educated workforce' seems to be not using mobile devices.

Having netted into Ireland all flagships of ICT web communications services providers and having established ourselves as social networking capital of Europe, we show neither a dramatic rate of coverage for internet communications, nor a dramatic rate of growth from 2007 through 2011 in this category:

In fact, per OECD data, we have fewer internet users engaging in social networking than Greece, Portugal, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary (overall, we rank 12th in the group of 24 countries in terms of this parameter).

And we are not exactly content-creative either:

E-commerce is absolutely average in its reach in Ireland too and is growing relatively slowly:

As is internet-based learning:

Do note that e-learning is associated strongly with continued or life-long education, so the above suggests we tend not to upskill much via continued education once we get our degrees. Not exactly a badge of honour.

More on this in the third post.

5/11/2012: OECD Internet economy outlook 2012: part 1

Quite an interesting chart from OECD on Ireland and its peers in terms of the spread / reach of the ICT economy. Now, keeping in mind that Ireland is, allegedly, a 'knowledge-based economy' with prime talent in ICT services, attracting huge share of global ICT services firms, etc... why is, then

Or put in words, why is Ireland is one of only 3 countries with shrinking, not growing proportion of workforce engaged in ICT sector?

Per OECD report (link here), Ireland had 3 firms represented in top 250 ICT firms globally, same as, for example South Africa (which is not calling itself a 'global ICT hub' last time I checked). Nonetheless, Ireland's count is large for our relative size. Alas, in 2000 total revenue of ICT firms in Ireland was estimated at USD29.04bn and that rose to USD42.8bn in 2011 - a rise of 47.4% or a growth rate of 3.6% annually. Not spectacular, considering worldwide sector revenue grew 108% over the same period of time expanding at an average annual rate of 6.9% per annum. In other words, Ireland's ICT 'global hub' managed to grow at slightly above 1/2 the global rate of growth.

Just when you thought things couldn't get much worse. Net revenues of the ICT sector in Ireland amounted to USD3.871 billion in 2000. You would expect this to rise dramatically by 2011, especially since globally net revenues grew 127% over 2000-2011 period. But no: Irish ICT sector net revenues have actually fallen USD3.444 billion in 2011.

Now, wait: gross revenues of ICT sector in Ireland underperformed global growth rates by a factor of almost two, while net revenues have shrunk. This hardly constitutes some huge success in attracting ICT FDI and creating a global ICT services hub.

Now, chart below shows just how much of a 'leading' light our FDI magnet in ICT sector really is:

Good news is that "On average, 20% of total BERD investment is focused on the ICT sector. But the data show very large differences across countries. In 2010, ICT BERD accounted for more than a half of total business R&D expenditure in Chinese Taipei, Greece, Finland and Korea. It accounted for more than 30% in Estonia (30%), Ireland (32%), Singapore (36%) and the United States (33%)." The problem, however, is that Ireland has one of the lowest BERD investment overall in the OECD economies, so 32% of a small number can be less than 16% of a larger one...

So here's the outcome:

I will continue blogging on the OECD report tonight, so stay tuned.

5/11/2012: Academic research and market efficiency

Fascinating article on both the issue of markets efficiency (pricing-in of newsflows) and the impact of herding via learning (triggered by academic research) in finance: here.

A nice addition to our discussions both in TCD and UCD courses.

5/11/2012: Lehman Bros & Irish ISEQ - II

And a bit more on indices dynamics:

Some interesting longer term trends from the major indices and VIX revealing the underlying structure of the Irish and the euro area crises. Note: data covers period through September 2012.

Starting from the top, here are indices of major stock prices, normalized back to February 2005 for comparative purposes. Relative to the peak, currently, CAC40 stands at around -41.9%, while FTSE MIB is at -62.5%, FTSE Eurotop 100 at -31.7%, FTSE ALL Shares at -11.22%, DAX at -8.41%, S&P500 at -6.15% and IBEX35 at -48.5%. Meanwhile, 'special' Ireland's ISEQ is at -66.9%.

Chart Index 1.0 and Index 1.1.

Clearly, Ireland is the poorest performer in the class.

Now, it is worth noting that Ireland's stock market is also 'distinguished' by a very 'special' characteristic of being the riskiest of all markets compared, with STDev of returns at 36.45 (on normalized index). Compared to the French market (STDev=22.34 for the period from the start of 2005 through today), Italian market (STDev = 28.95), FTSE Eurotop 100 (STDev = 18.90), FTSE All Shares (STDev = 13.70), German DAX (STDev = 23.05), S&P500 (STDev =14.55) and Spanish market (IBEX STDev = 23.70), Ireland is a risky gamble. Given that the direction of this bet, in the case of Ireland has been down from May 2007, virtually uninterrupted, the proposition of 'patriotic investment' in Ireland's stocks is an extremely risky gamble.

Normalizing the indices at their peak values (set peak at 100), chart below clearly shows the constant, persistent underperformance of the ISEQ.

Chart Index2.0

Now, let's take a look at the core driver of global fundamentals: risk aversion as reflected in VIX index. In general, rising VIX signals rising risk aversion and should be associated with falling stock valuations. Once again, for comparative reasons, we use indexed series of weekly returns for 1999-September 2012. Up until the crisis, Irish stock prices behaved broadly in line with the same relationship to VIX that holds for all other major indices. Chart below illustrates this for FTSE Eurotop 100, but the same holds for other major indices. VIX up, risk-aversion up, stock indices, including ISEQ, down.

Chart VIX1.1

Around Q1 2009 something changed. ISEQ lost any connection with 'reality' of the global markets and acquired life of its own. Or rather - a zombie life of it own. No matter what the global appetite for risk was doing, Irish stocks did not have much of a link with global investment fundamentals.

Another interesting point of the above chart is that Lehman Brothers were not a trigger for Irish crisis (as many of us have been saying for ages, despite the Government's continued assertions to the contrary). Irish market peaked in the week of May 21st, 2007, Lehman Brothers folded on September 15th, 2008, with most of the impact in terms of our indices occurring at September 15th-October 6, 2008, some 16 months after Irish markets began crashing. Prior to Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, ISEQ dropped from a peak of 147.3 to 61.6, while following the Lehman Brothers and until the global stock market trough of March 2, 2009, ISEQ fell to roughly 31.9 reading. So even in theory, Lehman bankruptcy could have accounted for no more than 29.7 point drop on the normalized ISEQ, while pre-Lehman drivers collapsed ISEQ by 85.7 points. 

More revealingly, ISEQ steep sell-offs through out the entire crisis have led, not followed, sell-offs in major indices. In other words, if Lehman caused the global market meltdown, then ISEQ 'caused' Lehman bankruptcy. Which, of course, is absurd.

There are many other stories that can be told looking at the Irish Stock Exchange performance, especially once higher moments to returns distribution are factored in, but I shall leave it to MSc students to explore.

5/11/2012: Lehman Bros & Irish ISEQ

Here's an interesting little factoid. The theory - usually advanced by the Irish Government - goes that Lehman Brothers bankruptcy has been a major driver of the Irish crisis. I have disputed this for ages now and more and more evidence turns up contrary to that when more and more data is considered.

Now, here's a new bit.

Suppose Lehman Bros did contribute significantly to the Irish crisis gravity. In that case, given Lehman Brothers bankruptcy contributed adversely to the global markets, we can expect a dramatic contagion from the global markets panic to Irish markets. One way to gauge this is to look at the changes in correlations between the measure of overall 'panic' in the international markets and the behaviour of the returns to Irish stock market indices.

Let's take ISEQ index for Irish markets and VIX for a measure of the panic sentiment in the global markets. Let's take weekly returns in ISEQ and correlate them to weekly changes in VIX. I use log-differencing in that exercise and 52 weeks rolling correlations.

What should we expect to see? If the 'Lehmans caused Irish crisis or worsened it' theory holds, we should expect correlation between ISEQ weekly returns and changes in weekly VIX readings to be negative (VIX rising during the crisis signals rising risk aversion in the markets). For Irish markets to be influenced significantly, or differently from other markets around the world, such negative correlations should be larger in absolute value than for other countries.

What do we see? Here is a table of averages:

Contrary to the hypothesis of 'Lehmans caused Irish crisis', we see that throughout the period of the crisis, ISEQ suffered shallower, not deeper, spillover from global risk aversion to equity valuations, save for Spanish IBEX index. In other words, evidence suggests that Irish 'disease', like Spanish 'disease' was driven more by idiosyncratic - own market-specific - factors rather than by global panic.

Here's the chart, showing just how consistently closer to zero ISEQ correlation to VIX was during the post-Lehman panic period:

And here is a chart showing skew in the distribution of weekly returns which shows that during the crisis, Ireland's ISEQ suffered less from global markets 'bad news' spillovers (at the point of immediate global markets panics, such as Lehmans episode), but exhibited  a much worse negative skew than other peers in the period from June 2010 through Q1 2012.

5/11/2012: Bank credit to SMEs - demand side

My paper with Javier Sánchez Vidal, Ciaran Mac an Bhaird and Brian M. Lucey "What Determines the Decision to Apply for Credit? Evidence for Eurozone SMEs" is available here.