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Category Archives: Policy
Research Post at UCD Geary Institute: Preparing for Life
The Early Childhood Research team in the UCD Geary Institute is seeking applications from motivated individuals with an interest in child development and developmental psychology to become the Preparing for Life (PFL) Research Coordinator starting June 2013. The post is … Continue reading
Preventing Youth Violence and School Dropout: striking new evidence
Finding reliable evidence of social policy interventions can be hard. This is because non-experimental evaluations can be difficult to interpret or difficult to generalise from. Experimental evaluations, the so-called gold-standard method of evaluating, are difficult to do for a variety … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Policy
Tagged CBT, interventions, policy, RCT, teenagers, violence, youth
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The economic cost of obesity in Ireland revisited
In an earlier post, I had some thoughts about the economic costs of obesity in Ireland. A lot of different numbers get bandied around. This is partly as there are ways of estimating such costs but also there are different … Continue reading
My presentation today on Fat Taxes
I spoke at this morning’s event on Fat & Sugar taxes organized by the UCD Institute for Food and Health & the Geary Institute. It was a joint effort with Clare Delargy & Colm Harmon. Here are our slides. They … Continue reading
Fat and sugar taxes: will they solve the problem? UCD seminar on June 8th.
Obesity is generally recognized as a major public health problem globally. Ireland is by no means immune to the problem with rising rates of obesity and high rates amongst children. It is a complex multi-factorial problem. Finding effective solutions is … Continue reading
Perverse incentives for economists? I don’t think
PublicPolicy.ie is a new think tank set up to “carry out and support independent research to inform fiscal policy choices in the Ireland, communicate the results effectively and stimulate constructive discussion amongst policy-makers, civil society and the general public”. It … Continue reading
Has the value of life in Ireland fallen by 56%?
Pharmacoeconomics is an area that I have been vaguely aware of but not overly familiar with. Despite its name, the discipline is quite separate from health economics. In Ireland, the main center for this activity of the National Center for … Continue reading
Does financial aid help low income students go to university? Evidence for Italy
It is virtually a universal finding that young people from low income backgrounds are less likely to progress to higher education. It might seem therefore that low income is holding them back and the financial aid will therefore help. But … Continue reading
What is the point of GDP?
There has been a lot of discussion recently about developing alternative aggregate measures of economic performance given the limitations of GDP or GNP. The Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi Commission is a good example. The paper below explores why, despite the … Continue reading
Posted in Policy, research
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Analysing the economic impact of immigration
Immigration is a complex and often divisive issue. People often bring strong value judgements to the question of policy towards immigration should be. But one would hope that at least it might be possible to reach consensus on the facts … Continue reading
Posted in Policy
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