http://hdl.handle.net/2262/61998 2017-11-03T02:38:55Z http://hdl.handle.net/2262/60769 Labour market rents and Irish industrial policy Walsh, Frank This paper examines the issue of whether harmonising taxes across the traded and nontraded sectors is desirable. Preferential treatment for the traded sector might be justified if either the output response of subsidies are higher in the traded sector or if the jobs generated in the traded sector are ?better? than those in the non-traded sector. I examine these two issues using a simple two sector small open economy model to analyse the first question and input-output analysis to analyse the second. I conclude that there is no compelling argument for lower taxes on the traded sector. 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2262/60133 Irish house prices: will the roof cave in? Roche, Maurice J. In the last few years there have been many comments made in the media about the Irish housing market boom. This paper focuses on two of these comments. The first comment is that some economists have suggested that a speculative bubble might be present in Irish house prices. The second comment is that some housing market analysts have asked whether a crash similar to what happened in the British housing market in the late 1980s would occur in Ireland. Many of these analysts suggest that it is highly unlikely that a similar slump would occur in the Irish housing market. Given that bubbles have a habit of bursting one might think that these remarks are contradictory. We reconcile these two comments using regime-switching models of real secondhand house prices in Britain and Ireland. The models are estimated and tested to explore whether speculative bubbles, fads or just fundamentals drive house prices. Our main findings suggest that there was a speculative bubble in Britain in the late 1980s and in Ireland in the late 1990s. We estimate that the probability of a crash in Britain reached its highest value of about 5 per cent in the last few quarters of 1989. We also estimate the probability of a crash in the Irish housing market to have increased to around 2 per cent by the end of 1998. 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2262/60129 Irish house price indices ? methodological issues Conniffe, Denis; Duffy, David This paper reviews the international literature on house price indices, looking at the basic methodologies employed, the variables chosen for the indices and the functional forms used. Ideas are sought for future improvements to an Irish index and tentative assessments are made of how Irish results correspond to published research findings. Although the recent vintage of hedonic house price indices in Ireland warrants caution in reaching conclusions, there are interesting correspondences with published results. Some issues are identified that will require resolution to achieve further progress. 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z