Brendan Burgess
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AE-BN212 - Economic Policy in an era of perceived political constraints
Tutor: Joseph Durkan
Course Start Date: 02/02/2015
Course End Date: 23/03/2015
No. of Sessions: 8
Start Time: 19.30
Duration (Hours): 2.00
Location: Belfield
Fee: €155
[broken link removed]
Course Description
1. Compulsory Health Insurance (CHI)
The original case for CHI was based on a desire to eliminate two major defects of the system in operation in Ireland: the two tier aspect and the fact that public healthcare expenditure was directly affected by the state of the public finances. The proposals by government for the introduction of CHI has strayed very far from these issues.
2. Water Charges
Companies and many rural households must pay for the water they use, either by payment by volume used or with a flat charge. Most urban households do not have to pay for water used. While for these households water appears to be a free resource, delivered water for human use is not, as there are significant costs associated with delivery. Charging for water represents an attempt to equate the marginal costs of water provision to households' marginal benefits and represents a rational use of resources. There are simple effective ways for dealing with the income distribution costs of introducing water charges that do not involve a major administrative burden.
3. Income Inequality
Income inequalities in employment has always sent signals about labour markets. In some cases these signals are reflecting newly growing areas of labour demand and are important in encouraging people into these areas, as with software. Entrepreneurship, where successful, can also provide very significant rewards. In other cases income inequalities may reflect restrictive practices limiting entry or access restrictions on numbers entering a profession, as with medical training, or may reflect poorly functioning markets for goods and services, allowing participants to enjoy excess profits and incomes as with many cartels. Inherited wealth is also a source of income inequality. This topic explores the causes and consequences of inequality.
4. Indexing public pensions to inflation rather than incomes
Estimates of the present value of future unfunded public pensions has led to some proposals to relate changes in public pensions over the remaining lifetime of pensioners to changes in consumer prices rather than to the pay levels in the grade at retirement. Policymakers need to consider more than just the simple arithmetic of these exercises. Indexing only to consumer prices, while incomes increase, will lead to a relative deterioration of retirees living standards over that period and relative to median income will increase the numbers at risk of poverty. The procedure will also lead to different retirement incomes for people on the same grade and preretirement income depending on the year they retire.
5. Why debt sustainability matters
The duration of the Great Recession and the very slow rate of recovery in the Eurozone has led to many calls for an end to the cuts in public expenditure and the increased charges and taxes that have occurred. This topic shows that if no action was undertaken the interest payments associated with rising debt would overwhelm society.
6. Banking regulation-extremes: from excessive to inadequate
The purpose of bank regulation based on banking systems' inherent tendency to illiquidity and poor lending. Some of the regulation imposed up to late 1980's was excessive forcing banks to hold excess primary and secondary liquidity, though beneficial in reducing firm and sector exposure. The replacement of this by a more relaxed approach coupled with a belief that risk was unimportant at commercial bank level and accounting conventions that encouraged excess lending were partly behind the collapse of the banking system.
Tutor: Joseph Durkan
Course Start Date: 02/02/2015
Course End Date: 23/03/2015
No. of Sessions: 8
Start Time: 19.30
Duration (Hours): 2.00
Location: Belfield
Fee: €155
[broken link removed]
Course Description
1. Compulsory Health Insurance (CHI)
The original case for CHI was based on a desire to eliminate two major defects of the system in operation in Ireland: the two tier aspect and the fact that public healthcare expenditure was directly affected by the state of the public finances. The proposals by government for the introduction of CHI has strayed very far from these issues.
2. Water Charges
Companies and many rural households must pay for the water they use, either by payment by volume used or with a flat charge. Most urban households do not have to pay for water used. While for these households water appears to be a free resource, delivered water for human use is not, as there are significant costs associated with delivery. Charging for water represents an attempt to equate the marginal costs of water provision to households' marginal benefits and represents a rational use of resources. There are simple effective ways for dealing with the income distribution costs of introducing water charges that do not involve a major administrative burden.
3. Income Inequality
Income inequalities in employment has always sent signals about labour markets. In some cases these signals are reflecting newly growing areas of labour demand and are important in encouraging people into these areas, as with software. Entrepreneurship, where successful, can also provide very significant rewards. In other cases income inequalities may reflect restrictive practices limiting entry or access restrictions on numbers entering a profession, as with medical training, or may reflect poorly functioning markets for goods and services, allowing participants to enjoy excess profits and incomes as with many cartels. Inherited wealth is also a source of income inequality. This topic explores the causes and consequences of inequality.
4. Indexing public pensions to inflation rather than incomes
Estimates of the present value of future unfunded public pensions has led to some proposals to relate changes in public pensions over the remaining lifetime of pensioners to changes in consumer prices rather than to the pay levels in the grade at retirement. Policymakers need to consider more than just the simple arithmetic of these exercises. Indexing only to consumer prices, while incomes increase, will lead to a relative deterioration of retirees living standards over that period and relative to median income will increase the numbers at risk of poverty. The procedure will also lead to different retirement incomes for people on the same grade and preretirement income depending on the year they retire.
5. Why debt sustainability matters
The duration of the Great Recession and the very slow rate of recovery in the Eurozone has led to many calls for an end to the cuts in public expenditure and the increased charges and taxes that have occurred. This topic shows that if no action was undertaken the interest payments associated with rising debt would overwhelm society.
6. Banking regulation-extremes: from excessive to inadequate
The purpose of bank regulation based on banking systems' inherent tendency to illiquidity and poor lending. Some of the regulation imposed up to late 1980's was excessive forcing banks to hold excess primary and secondary liquidity, though beneficial in reducing firm and sector exposure. The replacement of this by a more relaxed approach coupled with a belief that risk was unimportant at commercial bank level and accounting conventions that encouraged excess lending were partly behind the collapse of the banking system.