23/9/2013: Sunday Times 08/09/2013: Irish Demographic Dividend Reversal

This is an unedited version of my Sunday Times article from September 8, 2013.


Back in the heady days of the Celtic Tiger, Irish economics commentariat and banks experts were extolling the virtues of Ireland's 'demographic dividend'.  A confluence of high birth rates, declining mortality and robust inward migration was propelling Ireland toward perpetually rising population counts. With these, the argument went, Ireland faced the ever-lasting expansion of domestic demand and labour supply.

Less than a decade later, the dividend has all but vanished in the maelstrom of rampant emigration. More ominously, as the latest trends suggest emigration is now reaching well beyond the traditionally at-risk sub-categories of the recent newcomers to Ireland and the long-term unemployed. Instead, outflows of professionals and middle-class families are now also on the rise.


Cutting across this nirvana of consensus permeating the Irish society around 2004-2006, few dared to suggest that something major was amiss in the aforementioned theory. Yet, the risks to Ireland's 'demographic dividend' were visible even at the time of the boom. At the peak of the Celtic Tiger and since the beginning of the Great Recession, I wrote about them in Irish media, including in these very pages. The first threat to our long-term population trends even in 2004-2006 period related to the risk of a structural economic slowdown. The second one came from the demographic ageing of the core European states and the resulting inevitable rise in wages premium for younger workers in these economies.

With the onset of the Great Recession, increased job markets uncertainty and declining disposable incomes have acted to boost Ireland’s birth rates, seemingly supporting the argument of some analysts that the demographic dividend was still alive and well then. In 1995-2007, there were 56,423 annual births on average in the Republic. In 2008-2009 average annual number of births stood at 74,183. Changes in the incentives for having children offered by the Great Recession were clearly the factor pushing fertility up. Alas, the latest data covering the twelve months through April 2013 shows that this process is now exhausted with 2013 births counts down 8.7 percent on 2010 peak.

Offsetting the initial rise in births, the Great Recession pushed Ireland back into becoming a net emigration nation once again, for the first time since 1995. Data published by the CSO last week shows that in 12 months through April 2013, total of 89,000 people have left the country. This is the highest number since the records started in 1987. There was a small increase in immigration driven primarily by importation of specialist foreign workers by the booming ICT and IFSC sectors, plus the return of students working on 1 and 2-year visas abroad. Despite this, 2013 marks the fourth consecutive year of net emigration.

Current rates of emigration are running ahead of the 1987-1995 period average. Back then, net emigration from Ireland averaged 14,811 per annum. Over the last four years, the average net outflow of people from this country stood at 30,600 annually.

The twin squeeze of declining birth rates and strong net emigration has resulted in 2013 posting the weakest overall population changes in 23 years. In 12 months through April 2013, Irish population grew estimated 7,700 - one seventh of the annual average for the 1991-2007 period. This brings us dangerously close to a rerun of the 1980s-styled demographic collapse when Irish population actually declined in three years through 1990.

Truth be told, we are probably caught in this 'back to the future' demographic warp already.

Our official statistics show inflow of 29,400 immigrants, excluding the returning Irish nationals and the immigrants from the Accession states, in the 12 months through April 2013. Majority of these are likely to be foreign workers brought into the country temporarily by the MNCs. Moreover, the current CSO estimates are based on PPS numbers, foreign visas issuance, as well as household surveys. These methods are potentially underestimating the numbers of those Irish nationals who have left the country, but still have close family remaining here. Last, but not least, our data is probably also underestimating outflows of the EU12 Accession states’ nationals.

Controlling for the above factors, it is highly likely that we are already experiencing a reversal of the ‘demographic dividend’ and the onset of the zero-to-negative population growth in Ireland since 2011. This has meant that our population today is some 436,000 below where it would have been if the trend established between 2000 and 2007 were to continue.


Ireland's emigration flows and population changes by age and nationality are retracing the structural collapse of our economy: the story of our paralysed and polarised society burdened by debts, taxes, unemployment, lack of opportunities for career advancement and fear for the future.

From 2010 through 2013, the numbers of Irish nationals opting to leave the country net of those returning from abroad have been rising steadily. The net outflow of Irish nationals more than tripled between 2010 and 2013. If between 2006 and 2008, some 32,100 more Irish people returned home than left Ireland, over the subsequent 5 years, 90,700 more Irish people emigrated from the island than moved here.

In addition to the above, there are some new undertones that are emerging in the data over the last two years.

Official data on population breakdown by age groups shows that the bulk of population declines over the crisis in Ireland took place in the 15-29 year olds cohorts. However, since 2011, the 30-39 year olds cohort is also posting declining numbers. These age-related trends are now pushing us toward twin age dependency scenario where the numbers of old age-dependent residents and young age-dependents peak at the same time. Top productivity cohorts - ages 34-54 - grew by 124,000 since 2007, while old and young age dependents cohorts are up 203,600 over the same period of time. Working age cohorts (20 years of age through 64 years of age) accounted for 62.4 percent of Irish population in 2007. This year the ratio is 59.7 percent.

Compared against the age distribution of the unemployment, the latest trends suggest that jobs losses are no longer the sole drivers of emigration. Instead, it appears that emigration is increasingly afflicting those groups of population that are generally more secure in their jobs. The potential reasons for this are household debt overhang and lack of promotional opportunities open to the younger workers here.

While the numbers of emigrants between 15 and 24 years of age remained basically unchanged over 2011-2013 period, the numbers of emigrants between 25 and 44 years of age rose by a third. With this, there was a corresponding rise in families relocating abroad.

With banks starting to move more aggressively against distressed borrowers, these sub-trends are likely to strengthen over time.

Economic and social losses arising from debt crisis are also likely to increase as migrants due to debt and/or career considerations are more likely to carry with them above average skills, productivity and earning potential. In addition, these migrants are less likely to return to Ireland, especially if the debt they leave behind remains on the record against their names.


The impact of the current wave of emigration on our society and economy is likely to be more long lasting than that of the previous emigration waves. This conjecture is supported by a number of considerations.

Today’s emigrants are conditioned by their education, past employment experiences and social values systems to accept the mobile nature of their future careers. In other words, having left Ireland they are unlikely to look back at their homeland as a natural home. Increasingly, Irish emigrants are setting their sights on geographies that are more remote from Ireland than the UK and continental Europe. This puts more stress on their ties to Ireland. The latest data showing that emigrants to countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada tend to show lower returns in recent years. In addition, debt legacy will hold many of them back from returning to Ireland in the future. Age-related considerations with further reinforce this effect, with many emigrants in their mid-30s and 40s today facing a prospect of never again being able to secure a mortgage in Ireland were they to attempt a comeback. Lastly, a major factor in today’s emigration from Ireland is that it involves greater proportion of emigrants who enter their host destinations legally, thus increasing their chances at future naturalisation.

Overall, CSO data confirms the above observations, as fewer and fewer Irish nationals are today returning back home.


Far from being a solution to our economic woes or a temporary safety valve for the economy saddled with high levels of unemployment, current wave of emigration from Ireland is undermining the prospects of economic recovery here. More crucially, by removing more politically and socially disenchanted and activist younger people and families, the emigration is acting to mute the voices of dissent here. With them, the raison d’etre for the robust political, social and economic changes is slipping away too.

BOX-OUT:

Markit-Investec Purchasing Manager Indices for Irish Manufacturing and Services have both posted significant gains in August, compared to July. August PMI for Manufacturing came in at 52.0, showing the fastest pace of economic activity growth for the sector since November 2012. Meanwhile, Services PMI reading of 61.6 was the highest since February 2007. Both indices are subject to significant distortions from the multinational companies based here. However, Services PMI is subject to more severe skews due to the tax arbitrage activities by companies operating in international financial services, ICT services and auxiliary business support services. Nonetheless, caveats aside, the latest data strongly suggests that Ireland has moved out of the triple-dip recession in Q3 2013 and will post growth in GDP for the three months through September. Aside from this, however, the PMIs continue to signal relative weakness in the domestic sectors compared to exports and employment growth signals have weakened in both sectors of the economy. Finally, additional good news were signaled by the improved profit margins in Services, now third month running and marking the first sustained upward momentum in profits in five years. This, however, was not the case in Manufacturing, where input costs rose against basically unchanged output prices.

22/9/2013: Relative v Absolute Income: What Matters to Our Well-Being?

A very important paper by Sacks, Daniel W. and Stevenson, Betsey and Wolfers, Justin, The New Stylized Facts About Income and Subjective Well-Being (January 23, 2013, CESifo Working Paper Series No. 4067. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2205621). Note: emphasis in bold is mine

On foot of decades-long research that "asks people how happy or satisfied they are with their lives", "much of the early research concluded that the role of income in determining well-being was limited, and that only income relative to others was related to well-being".

This is the so-called relative income hypothesis that also engendered a strand of social policy research relating to relative income poverty.

"In this paper, [the authors] review the evidence to assess the importance of absolute and relative income in determining well-being. Our research suggests that"
1) absolute income plays a major role in determining well-being and
2) national comparisons offer little evidence to support theories of relative income and
3) the data show no evidence for a satiation point above which income and well-being are no longer related.

Authors "find that well-being rises with income, whether we compare people in a single country and year, whether we look across countries, or whether we look at economic growth for a given country. Through these comparisons we show that richer people report higher well-being than poorer people; that people in richer countries, on average, experience greater well-being than people in poorer countries; and that economic growth and growth in well-being are clearly related.

Crucial finding is that recent data rejects the so-called Easterlin Paradox: "Easterlin (1974), …asked “Does economic growth improve the human lot?” He answered: it does not. He began by showing that, relative to poor people, rich people within a country report greater well-being, as measured by self-reported happiness, life satisfaction, and related concepts. No-one disputes this observation… His argument was straightforward. If only absolute income matters, then when everyone gets richer, everyone’s well-being should rise. But if only relative income matters, then when everyone gets richer, no one’s well-being should rise, since no one gets richer relative to the average."

Here is the striking conclusion of the authors: "But is Easterlin correct? The accumulation of data over recent decades shows that Easterlin’s Paradox was based on empirical claims which are simply false. In fact rich countries enjoy substantially higher subjective well-being than poor countries, and as countries get richer, their citizens experience ever more well-being. What’s more, the quantitative relationship between income and well-being is about the same, whether we look across people, across countries, or at a single country as it grows richer. This fact turns Easterlin’s argument on its head: if the difference in well-being between rich and poor countries is about the same as the difference in well-being between rich and poor people, then it must be that absolute income is the dominant factor determining well-being."

Basic illustration of the above across countries:

Basic illustration across and within countries:

This is a paper that challenges the fundamentals of our understanding of the relationship between income, happiness, income inequality and absolute v relative poverty.


Note: I wrote about the related paper here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/05/452013-higher-income-vs-higher.html

22/9/2013: WLASze Part 2: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and Zero Economics

This the second part of WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics (part 1 is linked here). Enjoy!


Financial crises tend to have profound and long-run impacts on the societies they visit. This much should be pretty clear to the readers of this blog (from economics side of my musings). However, no man is an island and, thus, no art is an island either… What about financial crises impact on arts? Did gloom-n-doom of the Great Depression result in the darkening abstraction in arts, ultimately leading to the emergence of urbanist photography and design, as well as early abstract expressionism? Motherwell's Spanish Republic studies (http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79007) as culmination of darkness and pain?

Or Kline's torn dynamism?

Although all of these post-date the war, they are hardly infused by the giddy optimism of the 1950s and experimentation of the 1960s, instead carrying the pre-Vietnam fear and memory of the past, foreboding the replay of the previously experienced or at least a threat instead of foretelling a new era…Or more immediate deepening of German expressionism? The sombre consolidation of Bauhaus outside Weimar?

Enough of the argument here… Instead, back to the current events. Here's an interesting post based on Franco “Bifo” Berardi talk at Pratt Institute on his book The Uprising: Poetry and Finance, "which considers poetry as a salve in the wake of the international financial crisis. Or, as reviewer David Cunningham puts it now in considering the book for the UK’s Radical Philosophy journal, the book “posits a parallel between ‘the deterritorialization effect’ which has, on the one hand, ‘separated words from their semiotic referents’ and, on the other, separated ‘money from economic goods.’” Read and judge for yourself:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/11/audio-now-online-from-franco-berardi-talk-on-the-uprising-on-poetry-and-finance/?woo


On a brighter side of things, crises teach us (or attempt to teach us) to distill things more to the basics, to the necessary, striking out the superfluous. This can be a torturous process, but it can also be a path to beauty. Modern Japanese architecture, having faced the demons of severe constraints, often shows the emergence of angels of beauty out of the challenge of pushing organic spaces into contained sites. Two brilliant examples:

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/16/house-in-fujizakura-by-case-design-studio/
Cool, tranquil, beautiful and, yet, too individualistic for being inhabitable - a shell for a hermit crab of sorts…

And via deezen.com another example - this one a perfect balance of view, space, light and yet jigsawed into a challenging site…

http://www.dezeen.com/2013/09/11/alley-house-by-apollo-architects-associates/

There is a fundamental difference between 'compressed' European architecture and Japanese architecture. This difference arises from two distinct drivers for challenges of space. In European context, some (not all) of the spacial challenge rests on the basis of desire to appear to be 'environmentally conscious' - in other words, we often tend to build rural houses on micro scale to pretend that this 'helps the environment'. This gives our small rural houses architecture a forced, fake dimension. In the case of Japan, physical space constraints generate organic, unforced, organic effort to design spaces on intimate scale. End result, even urban architecture in Japan is often truly a balance of space, design, liveability, tradition and subtle, even modest distinction.


The testaments to the 'fake' constraints in the Western World are abandoned spaces - which in my view (aside from presenting a challenge as to why we need severe spatial constraints of design in the firs place) carry almost intrinsic artistic beauty in and by themselves. I wrote about this before in previous WLASze posts… so here are few more links documenting abandonment:
http://www.boredpanda.com/abandoned-places/

H/T for the above to @nicolematthews1

and more: http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2013/01/30-of-the-most-beautiful-abandoned-places-and-modern-ruins-ive-ever-seen/


Abandonment is no threat, however to the greats of European art. Grand Palais in Paris is hosting the first in 40 years retrospective of George Braque. To me, Braque is ahead of the other great, associated closely with him - Picasso, especially in the context of defining fauvism and cubism.
http://www.france24.com/en/20130920-rare-braque-exhibition-opens-grand-palais-paris-picasso

Picasso and Braque... and Mark Tansey's take on their dual significance:

And from cubism (a quasi-scientific approach to space, light and positioning in painting) to physical positioning in a stream of light. Here's a massively important paper:
"By Bernoulli’s law, an increase in the relative speed of a fluid around a body is accompanies by a decrease in the pressure. Therefore, a rotating body in a fluid stream experiences a force perpendicular to the motion of the fluid because of the unequal relative speed of the fluid across its surface. It is well known that light has a constant speed irrespective of the relative motion. Does a rotating body immersed in a stream of photons experience a Bernoulli-like force? We show that, indeed, a rotating dielectric cylinder experiences such a lateral force from an electromagnetic wave." In other words, light has the same properties as air and water in their ability to create, for example, support drag that holds airplanes in the air...

Here's a popular link: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519471/optical-bernoulli-forces-could-steer-objects-bathed-in-light-say-theorists/

From the authors: "The forces obtained here are only a fraction of the incident radiation pressure and seem to require infeasible rotation rates, but we expect that they can be resonantly enhanced by techniques similar to those that have been used by other authors to enhance scattered power for a given particle diameter. Mie resonances are already visible in Fig. 4, but much stronger resonant phenomena can be designed… Material dispersion will contribute an additional source of lateral force… Such enhancement mechanism, …may permit the future experimental observation and exploitation of optical “Bernoulli” forces.

We are far away from 'flying on light' but we know that theoretically it is feasible… And more… can light create 'vacuum' as a flow of water does?.. Injection pump for light anyone?..


And to conclude, a splash of hydraulic / fluid dynamics art from the Science Gallery (Trinity College), this time in Canada: http://www.therecord.com/whatson-story/4117146-big-splash/ Surface Tension, watery exhibition from @ScienceGallery opened in @THEMUSEUM in Kitchener, Ontario. Congrats to all involved! Great to see SG spreading its wings around the globe. Note, I covered SG latest exploits in Dublin here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/08/382013-wlasze-part-1-weekend-links-on.html.

22/9/2013: Two articles on the Great Recession

Two recent posts on the Great Recession in the US worth reading:
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug13/recession-never-ended8-13.html
and
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-26/guest-post-detroitification-it%E2%80%99s-government-stupid

The former argues pretty cogently that "The reality is that the recession never ended for 95% of U.S. households, and by many metrics the recession has deepened."

The latter has a handy guide to its core arguments as per drivers for the Great Recession:

"The reason why the economy is not recovering and will not recover can be explained in five simple points:

1. Wealth and standard of living increases can only be achieved by producing more, not less.
2. Capital increases are required to produce more. Wage gains are directly tied to productivity gains and more capital enables productivity to rise. 
3. The private sector uses and expands capital. 
4. Government destroys capital. It confiscates it from the private sector and uses it for consumption, effectively reducing the supply. Jobs, income and growth that otherwise would have developed do not. The rare exception is if government “invests” in capital projects like roads, infrastructure or meaningful education. If properly chosen, this government spending can assist in the production of capital.
5. The proportion of assets and capital confiscated has increased greatly over the last century. At some point, the capital and wealth left behind in the private sector is inadequate to reproduce itself. That is when economic growth turns negative and standards of living decline. Long before that point growth rates diminish."

At a very general level, the above 5 points are fine. More fine detail would add the role of credit/leverage, as I argued here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/08/2282013-why-this-time-things-might-be.html

And a nice chart to sum it all up:

21/9/2013: Human Capital & Social Mobility: Capital Tax v Education Spending Reforms

A new paper Human Capital, Social Mobility and the Skill Premium (September 18, 2013, CESifo Working Paper Series No. 4388. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2327435) by Angelopoulos, Konstantinos and Malley, James R. and Philippopoulos, Apostolis produces fascinating insights into the relationship between human capital, physical capital and skills/wage premium.

The main drivers of the skill/wage premium are commonly recognised to be: 

1. Skills-complementary technical change (SBTC - B standing for 'biased'), "which raises the demand for skilled labour, and the relative supply of skilled versus unskilled labour". Economic policy can influence this channel by increasing R&D and innovation which lead to increased technology contribution to the economic activity and in turn generate demand for complementary skills.
2. "Occupational choice of economic agents, usually focusing on the distinction between entrepreneurs and workers, and its implications for social mobility." Here, economic policy too can have an impact via, say labour markets regulations and interventions, as well as general taxation policies.
3. Direct policy impact via stimulating "capital accumulation via tax reforms" and direct "labour markets …intervention".

In contrast, "although education policies and tax policies have been considered as important determinants of social mobility, their impact on the joint determination of social mobility and the skill premium has generally not been studied."

Human Capital, Social Mobility and the Skill Premium "develops a dynamic general equilibrium model to highlight the role of human capital accumulation of agents differentiated by skill type in the joint determination of social mobility and the skill premium."

The authors find that "the model with endogenous social mobility can capture the empirical co-movements of the skill premium, the relative supply of skilled to unskilled workers and aggregate output in the U.S. data from 1970-2000." The study shows "that the model predictions for these empirical co-movements are improved when we allow for positive externalities from skilled human capital on social mobility." In other words, skill premium for skilled and unskilled workers tends to rise/fall jointly (co-move) and this co-movement is strengthened when increased social mobility of skilled human capital is associated with increased social mobility of unskilled human capital.

The authors' "policy results first show that endogenous social mobility creates additional incentives for the agents which enhance the beneficial effects of policy on aggregate outcomes and wage equality."

"Second, that important dynamic effects of policy on the skill premium are captured by allowing human capital accumulation to affect social mobility. In particular, post reform, the skill premium is higher in the short- to medium-run than in the long-run."

"Third, that although all policy reforms considered lead to an increase in output and social mobility, their implications regarding the skill premium differ. In particular, the skill premium increases after a capital tax cut and decreases after an increase in spending on education for unskilled agents and in spending on education for skilled

agents."

In other words, the authors show that "endogenous social mobility and human capital accumulation are key channels through which the effects of capital tax cuts and increases in public spending on both pre- and post-college education are transmitted."

Note: in my view this tends to support the idea - outlined by me in my TEDx Dublin talk last Saturday - that we are witnessing migration to the age of tech-enabled human capital away from the skills-enabled tech capital. 

"In particular, social mobility creates additional incentives for the agents which enhance the beneficial effects of policy reforms. Moreover, the dynamics of human capital accumulation imply that, post reform, the skill premium is higher in the short-to medium-run than in the long-run."

Note: in the context of my TEDx Dublin theme, the above reinforces my concept of new policy paradigm of C.A.R.E. (policy dimension aimed at establishing a comprehensive economy that is capable of Creating, Attracting, Retaining and Enabling human capital).

"Regarding all three results above, the effects of public spending on education for skilled agents are dependent on the externality that skilled human capital has on social mobility. In particular, a negative externality generally reduces many of the positive effects of this policy reform."

What about a capital tax cut? 

The "improvement in aggregate outcomes" following tax cut "also implies increased wage inequality. The reason is that the policy-induced increase in the capital stock is skill-biased because capital complements skilled labour more than unskilled. Hence, …the skill premium increases with the capital stock post-reform."

However, this "increase in the skill premium works to encourage the accumulation of unskilled human capital, as a means to increase social mobility to capture the higher returns associated with skilled employment. In turn, …the resulting increase in the relative skill supply acts to lower the skill premium. In fact, the reduction in the skill premium starts taking effect 20-30 years after the reform, when the increase in the share of skilled labour is sufficiently strong to counterbalance the increase in the capital stock."

Note: in my TEDx Dublin talk context, the above relates to the changes in underlying drivers for growth I highlighted in the chart - in particular, the lags we are experiencing in terms of the Age of Tech translating with a delay into future wage premium erosion (some might argue we are already witnessing this today). 

Education spending increase for unskilled workers: "As expected, the stock of human capital for unskilled labour increases and this raises output in all models and social mobility in the models that allow for endogenous skill accumulation. In turn, this increase in the relative supply of skill leads to a decline in the skill premium in the medium- to long-run. However, initially, the skill premium increases …because the labour productivity gains, brought about by the increase in human capital, also increase the return to physical capital and thus lead to increased capital stock, which tends to increase the skill premium." 

Over time, "when the relative skill supply has increased sufficiently, the skill premium starts to decline. In this case, in fact, the increase in the share of skilled in the population is sufficiently strong to decrease the skill premium in the long-run."

"The dynamic processes of human capital accumulation and social mobility have non-trivial implications on the …determination of …skill premium-social mobility" co-movements. Long-run: wage inequality is reduced along with increased social mobility. Short-run: wage inequality increases.

Summary: 

(1) In the long-run, "government spending on unskilled education, by increasing the labour productivity of unskilled labour and increasing their skill accumulation, raises output, reduces wage inequality and improves social mobility. However, "the increase in government education spending crowds out private consumption." In the short-run, unskilled education increases lead to increased inequality and social mobility declines.

(2) "…Increases in government spending on the education of the skilled agents has positive effects on output and consumption, as well as encouraging social mobility, despite the reduction in the skill premium. This occurs because, by supporting the productivity of the skilled, the government indirectly increases the potential future benefits of the unskilled, if they succeed in climbing the social ladder. However, these results are sensitive to whether externalities of skilled human capital on social mobility are positive or negative. The former enhance the positive effects on social mobility, wage inequality, and welfare, whereas the latter reverse them for social mobility and wage inequality and lower them for welfare."

(3) "Wage inequality effects of capital tax cuts are significantly dampened by the increase in the relative skill supply, which follows the increased returns to upward social mobility, while, at the same time, the aggregate efficiency effects of the capital tax cut become stronger."

21/9/2013: WLASze Part 1: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and Zero Economics

This is the first post of WLASze: Weekend Links on Arts, Sciences and zero economics for this week. Enjoy and stay tuned for more.


Last week I wrote about the 'discovery' of the van Gogh painting (here). This week, it's another discovery, this time via MOMA archives - of Mies van der Rohe's designs: http://it.phaidon.com/agenda/architecture/articles/2013/september/19/mies-van-der-rohe-plans-found-in-moma-archive/
Amazing. Mies is an architect of depth framed by the simple, distilled geometry and contextualised by industrial simplicity of materials. Images in the article clearly prove his fascination with and mastery of perspective.

Example? http://www.miessociety.org/legacy/projects/friedrichstrasse-office-building/

Example built?
http://theartstack.com/gurdgiev/collections/architecture#/artist/mies-van-der-rohe/the-farnsworth-house

Example everyone should see at least once: http://www.miessociety.org/legacy/projects/neue-nationalgalerie/#1


On the topic of mastery of perspective - an uneven (in quality) series of aerial photographs via the Foreign Policy magazine: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/19/birds_eye_view_awesome_aerial_pictures_world
The opening shot is striking, as is number 7:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/19/birds_eye_view_awesome_aerial_pictures_world#6
JEFF PACHOUD is a superb photojournalist, but the series of Mushers competition is something to behold as art. Here's another shot from the series:

And on a theme of uncovering the long lost…http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519391/internet-archaeologists-reconstruct-lost-web-pages/
Who knew there was such a field as 'Internet Archaeology'… Next, we might get a 'Applied Feminism' studies or 'Useful Economics' too?.. or am I being too optimistic?..


Via the same source, MIT Technology Review, comes another and even more fascinating piece of research:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519306/most-influential-emotions-on-social-networks-revealed/
Apparently, the leading emotion of the social networks is anger. Not love (this still remains physical, one assumes, and personal) or empathy (which probably is not that 'powerful' in the number of its expressions in daily lives of human beings) but anger… Oh, well, don't tell Irish politicians about this research or they will renew their calls to 'regulate' and 'improve' 'the internet thingy' that 'those young people are using all of the time'…

In the above: (a) is the network structure, in which each node stands for a user and the
link between two users represents the interaction between them. In (b) each node is coloured by its emotion. Red stands for anger, green represents joy, blue stands for sadness and black represents disgust. The regions of same colour indicate that
closely connected nodes share the same sentiment.


On science (applied stuff) side, here's Google foray into something really pioneering and ambitious: pushing out death… http://www.businessinsider.com/google-is-launching-a-company-that-hopes-to-cure-death-2013-9
Someone in Google got the Elon Musk Syndrome and I like it! Next, Apple will need something breaking too, seriously breaking. But I am afraid that absent Steve Jobs, the company will continue stamping out marginalised improvements, undeterred by the fact that the fad has moved to the mass markets with lower leadership quotient (e.g. 'Big in Japan' moment is nearing for Apple). Just think: a decade ago, you'd expect a car company producing a Model 5S after a Model 5, while you would have expected Apple to think up a Hyperloop. Now, we have the inverse.


"Common sense is particularly well adapted to handling the complexity of everyday situations. We get intro trouble when we project our common sense to situations outside the realm of everyday life." Got you interested? Superb review of the "Everything is obvious once you know the answer" book by Duncan J. Watts:
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2011/07/is-everything-obvious-once-you-know-the-answer/
And once you've read the review, read this: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/09/2092013-did-capitalism-fail-by-roman.html
Visualising common sense is a hard thing, but here's a good simple graph example:
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2013/09/longer-sentences-and-prison-growth-part-1.html by an old colleague of mine from the UofC, Prof John Pfaff


When it comes to history, records are certainty… and here is a fascinating visualisation (interactive) of the 100 years worth of meteorites recorded in our archives: http://visualizing.org/full-screen/56202


Some interesting, compositionally and occasionally dynamically, infrared landscape photography by David Keochkerian:
http://emorfes.com/2013/07/22/surreal-infrared-landscape-photography-by-david-keochkerian/

20/9/2013: "Did Capitalism Fail?" by Roman Frydman and Michael D. Goldberg

Here is an essay that is a must-read, especially if you are my student in TCD or UCD:

via @ProSyn: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-2008-crisis-and-the-failure-of-economics-by-roman-frydman-and-michael-d--goldberg

Did Capitalism Fail?

Few quotes setting the stage:

The Global financial crisis "was not so much a failure of capitalism as it was a failure of contemporary economic models’ understanding of the role and functioning of financial markets – and, more broadly, instability – in capitalist economies."

"These models provided the supposedly scientific underpinning for policy decisions and financial innovations that made the worst crisis since the Great Depression much more likely, if not inevitable."

A "flawed assumption – that self-interested decisions can be adequately portrayed with mechanical rules – underpinned the creation of synthetic financial instruments and legitimized, on supposedly scientific grounds, their marketing to pension funds and other financial institutions around the world."

Contemporary economists’ reliance on mechanical rules to understand – and influence – economic outcomes extends to macroeconomic policy as well, and often draws on an authority, John Maynard Keynes, who would have rejected their approach. Keynes understood early on the fallacy of applying such mechanical rules. “We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle,” he warned, “having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand.”

The “New Keynesian” models …assumed that an economy’s “true” potential – and thus the so-called output gap that expansionary policy is supposed to fill to attain full employment – can be precisely measured. But, to put it bluntly, the belief that an economist can fully specify in advance how aggregate outcomes – and thus the potential level of economic activity – unfold over time is bogus."

Years ago I run a series of interviews with Roman Frydman, one of the co-authors of the essay I quoted from. I should dust it out - it was recorded before the crisis hit and I recall Frydman's clear explicit warning about the build up of overconfidence on behalf of the financial system and its regulators that cut across his thinking so elegantly developed, together with Goldberg, in Imperfect Knowledge Economics (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8537.html). 

20/9/2013: Ireland's Credit Risk Scores Improve Again

With some weak domestic economy figures out for Q2 2013, let's finish the week of Irish news with some positives. Euromoney Country Risk survey updates are in today and Ireland again posted improved scores:

Update: In a related news, Moody's put Ireland on stable outlook tonight: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/20/us-ireland-moodys-outlook-idUSBRE98J10C20130920

20/9/2013: Domestic Economy: Continuing Its Sextuplet Dip in Q2 2013

Total Domestic Demand is defined as :

• Consumer Spending on goods and services + 
• Government Spending on Current (as opposed to capital) goods and services + 
• Gross Fixed Capital Formation (basically gross investment) + 
• Change in Stocks of goods and services in the economy. 

In a more old-fashioned way, it is Investment + Consumption + Net Government Spending.

Put differently, this is the domestic economy (excluding exports net of imports, and outflows of income to the rest of the world net of inflows of income from the rest of the world).

Now, here are the quarterly changes in the domestic economy from 2007 on, for real (constant prices) seasonally adjusted series:

I define 'dips' in the above series similar to the official definition of a recession: two consecutive q/q downward movements. Remember, we have been told since Q2 2010 that the Irish economy has 'stabilised' and even 'returned to growth'. Since then we had: eight quarters of contraction and four quarters of growth in Total Domestic Demand.

The two core drivers downward in the domestic economy on q/q basis are:

On the good news side, q/q increase in Personal Consumption component (above) and external trade (below):

And external trade showing strong performance on q/q basis, which, alas, only partially offsetting the decline recorded in Q1 2013...

And this concludes my analysis of the QNA for Q2 2013.

20/9/2013: H1 2013 QNA: Domestic Economy vs External Trade

In the previous two posts I looked at Q2 national accounts for Ireland in terms of headline GDP and GNP figures, y/y and q/q changes in the first post; and half-yearly figures analysis in the second post. The headline conclusion was that:

• Q2 2013 real (constant prices) GDP performance is weak, but posits some growth, pushing us out of official third dip recession. 
• Irish real GNP fell 0.1% in Q2 2013 compared to Q2 2012, having only marginally reversed the 6.01% y/y rise recorded in Q1 2013. 
• Broadly-speaking, H1 figures show continued economic performance within the new structural range of slower economic activity that set on with the 'recovery' of H2 2010 (the Celtic Canary period).
• Crucially, moving to less volatile half-yearly figures, Y/Y Irish real GDP fell 1.10% in H1 2013, marking a second consecutive 6-months period of declines (it was down y/y 0.75% in H2 2012 as well). 
• Y/Y Irish real GNP rose 2.87% in H1 2013, marking third consecutive 6-months period of increases in GNP.
• At current rates of growth (that is taking 3-year average, since current annual rate is negative), it will take us until 2029 before we can reach real levels of GDP consistent with the pre-crisis levels. 

Now, let's take a look at the underlying components of GDP and GNP from the expenditure side of the national accounts. Since we have half-yearly data, we might as well focus on longer-term, more stable series. For this purpose, let us also look at nominal (not real) values, so we have some idea as to actual activity on the ground, reflective of price changes, as well as volumes changes. There are several reasons for doing this:

1. Nominal values, expressed in current prices are actually linked to what we get paid, what we pay for and what the economy produces;
2. Nominal values are also reflective of what the Government spends, collects and what the potential for debt servicing is when it comes to economy's output; and
3. Nominal values are free from the impact of the inflation adjustments, which are made based on 'average' households and firms, rather than on what we do observe in the economy itself.

There are drawbacks to this analysis, so like everything else in economics, this is not intended to be 'completely and comprehensively' conclusive.

As can be seen from Chart above, Personal Expenditure on Goods and Services rose 0.4% y/y in H1 2013 - which is good news. However, the same was down on H1 2011 (recall that the Government is keen on claiming that consumer confidence and consumption spending rose during its tenure, which is obviously contradicted by the data we have). Compared to peak pre-crisis performance (peak referencing output peak, not specific series peak), we are down 10.61% on H1 2007.

Understandably, Government spending (net of tax receipts) is down when it comes to current goods and services (as opposed to capital goods and services): -2.11% on H1 2012, -4.27% on H1 2011 and -12.46% on H1 2007. You might think this is 'huge', but y/y over the first 6 months of 2013 our net current Government spending is down only EUR 278 million and when it comes to vast/deep cuts since 2007, H1 2007 spending was cut EUR1,754 million by the end of H1 2013.

Meanwhile, Gross Fixed Capital Formation (basically investment in the economy) is down 9.40% in H1 2013 compared to H1 2012, down 14.09% compared to H1 2011 and down 67.73% compared to H1 2007. The reductions in capital investment jun H1 2013 compared to H1 2007 are ten-fold the size of reductions in current Government spending at EUR17,542 million. For another comparison, reductions in personal expenditure on goods and services by households over the same period is EUR4,757 million.

Put in different terms, domestic economy is still falling, with no stabilisation in sight.

Next: external trade and GDP & GNP series:

Exports of goods and services - the only part of the economy that was booming (+15.94% in H1 2013 on H1 2007 and +5.44% on H1 2011) are hitting some bumps. H1 2013 posted a decline in total exports of 0.67% y/y. Meanwhile, imports of goods and services were up 0.08% y/y. As the result of this, our trade balance fell 2.32% y/y in Q2 2013 and is down 3.15% y/y for H1 2013. This is not good, as key Exchequer projections and debt sustainability analysis require healthy growth in trade surplus, not a decline. But more on this below…

GDP at current prices fell 1.49% in H1 2013 compared to H1 2012 and is down 0.28% on H1 2011 and down 15.26% on H1 2007. Recall that our real GDP fell 1.10% y/y in H1 2013. In other words, there is no growth in actual underlying activity. This is pretty bad. Actual euro notes we have in the economy's 'pockets' at the end of H1 2013 (as imperfectly measured by GDP) were fewer than at the end of H1 2012 and H1 2011. And these fewer euros were not worth more, either. I wouldn't call this 'stabilisation'.

Net factor income outflows abroad are falling as well and I commented on these in the previous posts.

GNP expressed in current market prices is 2.32% ahead in H1 2013 compared to H1 2012 and 2.92% ahead of H1 2011. This is good news, especially since GNP is a more accurate reflection of our real economy's output (also rather imperfect) than GDP. Not so good news: GNP is still down 17.53% on H1 2007. 

Chart below drills into the composition of our external trade:

The above clearly shows the massive swing of our external trade activities from goods sectors to services sectors. And on imports of goods side it shows the legacy of the consumption bust, which remains one of the two largest drivers for improved external trade statistics we see on national accounts.

Finally, total domestic demand: the measure of the economy that covers all domestic activities of private and government consumption and investment combined, plus chafes in stocks.

As the above shows, domestic economy continues to suffer losses in activity: Total Domestic Demand fell 0.95% in H1 2013 compared to H1 2012 and is down 3.05% on H1 2011. Compared to H1 2007, Total Domestic Demand is down 27.41%.

Summary: Bad news: Despite improvements in real variables in Q2 2013, domestic economy continued to contract in H1 2013, with domestic demand down compared to H1 2012, driven by declines in Net Government Current Expenditure and in Gross Fixed Capital Formation. Good news is that decline in domestic demand was ameliorated by a marginal increase in Personal Expenditure on Goods and Services. On the bad news side, exports of goods and services fell in H1 2013 compared to H1 2012. These changes, together with domestic demand movements resulted in GDP falling in H1 2013 compared to H1 2012. Lower rate of profits repatriation out of Ireland by the MNCs has resulted in an increase in GNP in H1 2013 compared to H1 2012.

In simple terms, if Irish economy were a student asking for a report card for H1 2013, I don't think there would be much on it worth boasting about. Let's hope H2 2013 will be different for the better.

19/9/2013: First Half 2013: Irish GDP and GNP growth divergence

CSO published Q2 national accounts for Ireland today and these are worth detailed analysis, which I will break up into a series of posts next. 

In the previous post, I covered headline GDP and GNP figures, y/y and q/q changes. As a reminder, the headline conclusions were that:

• In Q2 2013 Irish real GDP fell 1.17% on Q2 2012, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of real GDP contractions, the longest period of continuous contractions since the end of Q2 2010. 
• Irish real GNP fell 0.1% in Q2 2013 compared to Q2 2012, having only marginally reversed the 6.01% y/y rise recorded in Q1 2013. 
• On quarterly basis, seasonally-adjusted Q2 2013 real GDP rose 0.45% on Q1 2013, ending the third spell of the recession that lasted from Q3 2012 through Q1 2013. The expansion, however was weak and well below the one recorded during the previous recovery periods. 
• I am continuing to expect that Q3 2013 will post stronger performance than Q2 2013 with possible GDP q/q upside of closer to 1%.

Now, let's move onto H1 (first half of 2013) analysis.

Q2 2013 release allows us to look at half-annual GDP and GNP changes, something that removes some of the quarterly volatility and also brings us closer to the analysis that is relevant from the budgetary perspective. Remember, budgets are not based on quarterly forecasts, but annual ones.

H1 2013 GDP at constant prices seasonally adjusted fell 0.47% on H2 2012, marking the third consecutive half-yearly period of declines. Last time we had a half-yearly period of growth was in H2 2011.

H1 2013 GNP grew 2.17% over H1 2013 compared to H2 2012, marking the third consecutive 6-months period of growth. In other words, GNP perfectly countermoves against GDP. Why? Because of the changes in transfers of earned profits by the multinationals. 

Here's an interesting thing. The chart above shows three periods of Irish growth history (I am being sarcastic/humorous here, so no offence intended): 

1. The Celtic Tiger period - for which we have consistent data here is only covered by the period from 1997 through 2000: averaged H/H growth rates of 4.49%;
2. The Celtic Garfield period - which lasted roughly from 2001 through H1 2007; Celtic Garfield period growth averaged 2.51%; and
3. The Celtic Canary period (as the proverbial one in the EU's economic model coal mine) that started with the imaginary 'recovery' of 2010 and is running currently: averaged growth of 0.24% (do remember, that excludes the period of massive contraction between H2 2007 and H2 2009 when the average rate of growth was -2.0% H/H)

You can see that the slowdown in growth is not only due to the crisis, but appears to be structural in nature. The Canary part is because Irish economy's fundamentals are such that we should be growing at 3.5-4.5 percent annually. Yet we are growing at - say averaging Celtic Garfield and Celtic Canary periods - at 1.35-1.4 percent annually. This is the slowdown toward the European levels of growth for Ireland... something to think about?

Next, take a look at the levels of activity based on 6 months figures:

And now, let's talk about year-on-year changes in H1 2013:

• Y/Y Irish real GDP fell 1.10% in H1 2013 (in other words, against H1 2012), marking a second consecutive 6-months period of declines (it was down y/y 0.75% in H2 2012 as well). 
• Y/Y Irish real GNP rose 2.87% in H1 2013, marking third consecutive 6-months period of increases in GNP.
• Overall, H1 real GDP (non-seasonally-adjusted) was up 1.65% on H1 2010 when we first heard about the 'recovery' of Irish economy or 'stabilisation'. Thus over 3 years, our GDP grew 1.65% - producing average annual rate of growth of 0.55%. Not exactly stellar, but better than nothing.

Our current H1 2013 GDP is down 7.98% on peak levels, so we are still far away from recovering to pre-crisis levels in real terms. In fact, at current rates of growth (that is taking 3-year average, since current annual rate is negative), it will take us until 2029 before we can reach real levels of GDP consistent with the pre-crisis levels. When someone says we have a lost decade, what they really mean - in real GDP terms - is that we are likely to have lost 23 years. And that does not count the opportunity cost of foregone growth. That is one hell of a long 'lost decade'.

To summarise the above: Good news is: real GNP is up 2.87% y/y, and up for the third consecutive 6-month period. Bad news is: our real GDP is down 1.1% y/y and this marks second consecutive 6-month period of declines.

I expect growth to be positive in H2 2013, with y/y around 1.0-1.2%.  Which should push our full year growth closer to zero.

Stay tuned for more analysis of QNA results.

19/9/2013: Irish GDP and GNP: Q2 2013 & the 'end of the third recession'

CSO published Q2 national accounts for Ireland today and these are worth detailed analysis, which I will break up into a series of posts next. 

Starting with the headline GDP and GNP figures:

In Q2 2013 Irish real (constant prices) GDP fell 1.17% compared to Q2 2012, compounding the previous fall of 1.04% y/y recorded in Q1 2013. On an annual basis, this marks the fourth consecutive quarter of real GDP contractions, the longest period of continuous contractions since the end of Q2 2010. Currently, real GDP stands 7.83% below the historical peak.

At the same time, Irish real GNP fell 0.1% in Q2 2013 compared to Q2 2012, having only marginally reversed the 6.01% y/y rise recorded in Q1 2013. Despite a surprisingly robust rise in Q1, Q2 2013 real GNP stood 10.40% lower than pre-crisis peak.

The swing in the direction between GDP and GNP was driven in Q2 2013 by a 5.85% drop in the outflows of transfer payments to the rest of the world compared to Q2 2012, which compounded a massive 28.26% decline in the transfer payments recorded in Q1 2013. In other words, GNP improvements appeared to have been sustained by a massive parking of MNCs profits in Ireland. The reasons for this are unknown, but we can speculate that the MNCs are holding back profits from transferring out of Ireland due tot ax considerations and due to subdued global investment activities. It remains to be seen what happens to the GDP and GNP were the MNCs to begin once again actively exporting retained earnings.

Note: shaded periods show episodes of more than 2 quarters consecutive contractions (here on y/y basis, so these are not official recessions)

On quarterly basis, seasonally-adjusted series:

Q2 2013 real GDP rose 0.45% on Q1 2013, partially compensating for the 0.59% contraction in Q1 2013 and ending the third spell of the recession that lasted from Q3.2012 through Q1 2013. The expansion, however was weak and well below the one recorded during the previous recovery periods. For example in Q1 2010, the end of the second recessionary dip, GDP expanded by 0.82%. The end to one-quarter drop of Q2 2010 led to a GDP rise of 1.08% in Q3 2010, the end of one quarter contraction in Q4 2010 was followed by 1.48% expansion in Q1 2011 and 1.38% expansion in Q2 2011, even the end of Q1 2012 quarterly decline was marked by a 0.48% expansion in Q2 2012. In previous episodes, recovery that was associated with growth rates at below 0.7% q/q was swiftly followed by the subsequent quarter contraction in GDP. This suggests underlying weakness in the GDP performance in Q2 2013, although my personal expectation is that Q3 2013 will post stronger performance than Q2 2013 with possible GDP q/q upside of closer to 1%.

On GNP side, seasonally-adjusted real GNP fell 0.37% in Q2 2013 in q/q terms, ending two consecutive quarters of quarterly growth (Q1 2013 growth was robust 2.2% q/q and Q4 2012 growth was weak at 0.32%).

Two charts:

Note: shaded periods show episodes of more than 2 quarters consecutive contractions (here on q/q basis, seasonally adjusted, thus representing official recessions).

On historical comparison basis, table below summarises latest movements in GDP and GNP:

So a summary: we are officially out of the third dip of the Great Recession. This is a good news. 

Bad news is that this data is once again being paraded around as a sing of 'stabilisation' of economic activity. Alas, the first time we've heard this 'stabilisation' argument was in Q1 2010, when the main - longest and deepest - second dip ended. Since then, Irish economy has managed to grow by just 2.63% in real GDP terms and only 3.54% in real GNP terms. Since the onset of the recovery, we have posted average quarterly growth of only 0.18% (seasonally-adjusted figures) and this effectively means that the economy is in a stabilisation pattern closer to coma than to a sustained recovery.

Good note to all of this is that, as mentioned above, I do expect stronger activity to be recorded for Q3 2013 and possibly for Q4 2013 as well.