"The leprechauns are in Luxembourg, not in Ireland"

Great article by Colm MCarthy in today's Indo.

CSO made look silly for sticking to the rules

The Irish economy, on all credible indicators, grew by about 5pc last year. The GDP growth rate could even have been a little higher. But it could not have been 26.3pc, the amazing figure computed by the Central Statistics Office.

The CSO explained that it followed faithfully the rules laid down by Eurostat, the statistical arm of the European Union and it appears that the CSO has indeed calculated the figures by the book. National statistical offices do not make these numbers up, it follows harmonised procedures laid down by international agencies. In Ireland's case the rules are contained in a manual called ESA 2010, binding on EU members and authored by Eurostat in Luxembourg.

Actually this is a very good litmus test... When one hears of Nobel laureates (Paul Krugman) tweeting about leprechaun economics, it gives you a whole new level of disrespect and scepticism for the pronouncements of those same economists on any other subject.
Is it too much to expect professors of economics to know the basis of GDP statistics???

I think it's a great article.

But most of the criticism in the media has been of the CSO. I hadn't heard the argument that it was Eurostat's fault. Paul Krugman was not alone in this to be fair to him.

It shows what a good guy McCarthy is, rather than how useless the others are.

The other aspect of it is that his comment came in a tweet. I think it's dangerous to be tweeting instant responses to stuff.

The CSO and the Central Bank should not publish meaningless statistics without also publishing the adjusted figures or, at least, pointing out that they are meaningless.

Brendan

odyssey06 said:

Actually this is a very good litmus test... When one hears of Nobel laureates (Paul Krugman) tweeting about leprechaun economics, it gives you a whole new level of disrespect and scepticism for the pronouncements of those same economists on any other subject.
Is it too much to expect professors of economics to know the basis of GDP statistics???

Click to expand...

I've no time for Krugman. I've heard him speak about Ireland's housing bubble a few times and he rarely gets his facts straight.