http://hdl.handle.net/2262/62033 2017-11-03T02:55:03Z http://hdl.handle.net/2262/58931 Benchmarking, social partnership and higher remuneration: wage settling institutions and the public-private sector wage gap in Ireland Kelly, Elish; McGuinness, Seamus; O'Connell, Philip This paper uses data from the 2003 and 2006 National Employment Surveys to analyse the public-private sector wage gap in Ireland. In particular, we investigate the impact of awards implemented under a number of wage setting institutions on the pay differential. These include the pay increases awarded by the Public Service Benchmarking Body in its first report and the increases given to higher-level posts in the public sector by the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector, Reports No. 40 and 41. The pay increases that were awarded under the Social Partnership process in Sustaining Progress and the Mid-Term Review of Part Two of Sustaining Progress are also captured in the data used. Furthermore, we assess the impact of pensions on the gap. The results indicate that the public sector pay premium increased dramatically from 9.7 to 21.6 per cent between 2003 and 2006. Furthermore, we found that by 2006 senior public service workers earned almost 8 per cent more than their private sector counterparts, while those in lower-level grades earned between 22 and 31 per cent more. The public premium results derived in this paper relating to March 2006 predate the payment of the two most recent Social Partnership wage deals, along with the pay increases awarded in the second Benchmarking exercise and by the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in Reports No. 42 and 43. The results presented raise serious questions with respect to the justification for any further boosts to the pay levels of public sector workers. Finally, the study highlights the importance of correcting for differences in pension coverage between public and private sector workers when making any assessment of the public-private sector pay differential. Policy paper 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2262/58803 Fiscal policy and international competitiveness: evidence from Ireland Galstyan, Vahagn; Lane, Philip R. Our goal in this paper is to investigate the relation between government spending and the long-run behaviour of the Irish real exchange rate. We postulate that an increase in government consumption should be associated with real appreciation, while the impact of government investment is ambiguous. Empirically, we find that an increase in government consumption indeed appreciates the real exchange rate while an increase in government investment is associated with real depreciation. Accordingly, the level and composition of government spending matters for Irish external competitiveness. 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2262/58763 The distributional impact of a carbon tax in Ireland Verde, Stefano F.; TOL, RICHARD S. J. We study the effects of carbon taxation and revenue recycling across the income distribution in Ireland. Price changes of fuels and all other final goods and services are taken into account. If applied only to the emissions not covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, a carbon tax of ???20/tCO2 would cost the poorest households around ???3.5/week and the richest ones ???5/week. The tax is regressive, therefore. However, if the revenue is used to increase social benefits and tax credits, households across the income distribution can be made better off without exhausting the total carbon tax revenue. Policy paper 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2262/58761 A relative impact ranking of political studies in Ireland Benoit, Kenneth; Marsh, Michael Against a background of the Irish government?s concerns with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the British government?s wishes for a more quantitative Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), our study conducts a relative impact assessment of the study of politics, government, political science, and international relations in Ireland. Impact is measured as citations from the publications of permanent staff in eight Irish politics departments, based on data compiled in April 2008 from two leading academic indexes ? ISI?s Web of Science and Scopus ? as well as the now popular Google Scholar. We discuss some of the criticisms that naturally arise in a study of this nature. Then, following similar exercises in other disciplines (e.g. economics), we use the impact measures to compare and rank individual scholars as well as departments. We also explore the extent to which the choice of different indexes, and different measures, influences the results that we obtain. While there are differences, in particular between indexes based purely on articles and those that access books and other material, the results from the different indexes are strongly correlated. 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z