IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eso/journl/v37y2006i2p215-243.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ireland’s Great Depression

Author

Listed:
  • Alan Ahearne

    (J. E. Cairnes Graduate School of Business and Public Policy, NUI Galway)

  • Finn Kydland

    (University of California Santa Barbara)

  • Mark A. Wynne

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas)

Abstract

We argue that Ireland experienced a great depression in the 1980s comparable in severity to the better known and more studied depression episodes of the interwar period. Using the business cycle accounting framework of Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (2005), we examine the factors that led to the depression and the subsequent recovery in the 1990s. We calculate efficiency, labour, investment and government wedges and evaluate the contribution of each to the downturn and subsequent recovery. We find that the efficiency wedge on its own can account for a significant portion of the downturn, but predicts a stronger recovery in output than occurred. The labour wedge also helps account for what happened during the depression episode. We also find that the investment wedge played no role in the depression.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan Ahearne & Finn Kydland & Mark A. Wynne, 2006. "Ireland’s Great Depression," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 37(2), pages 215-243.
    • Handle: RePEc:eso:journl:v:37:y:2006:i:2:p:215-243
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.esr.ie/Vol37_2/05_ahearne_article.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2006
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barro, Robert J & Sahasakul, Chaipat, 1986. "Average Marginal Tax Rates from Social Security and the Individual Income Tax," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 555-566, October.
    2. David Carey & Harry Tchilinguirian, 2000. "Average Effective Tax Rates on Capital, Labour and Consumption," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 258, OECD Publishing.
    3. Barro, Robert J & Sahasakul, Chaipat, 1983. "Measuring the Average Marginal Tax Rate from the Individual Income Tax," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 419-452, October.
    4. Balke, Nathan S. & Wynne, Mark A., 1995. "Are deep recessions followed by strong recoveries? Results for the G-7 countries," Working Papers 9509, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    5. Suparna Chakraborty, 2004. "Accounting for the 'Lost Decade' in Japan," Macroeconomics 0408009, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Petre Caraiani, 2016. "Business Cycle Accounting for Peripheral European Economies," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 63(5), pages 468-496, November.
    2. Simona E. Cociuba & Alexander Ueberfeldt, 2008. "Driving Forces of the Canadian Economy: An Accounting Exercise," Staff Working Papers 08-14, Bank of Canada.
    3. Zheng, Jinghai & Bigsten, Arne & Hu, Angang, 2009. "Can China's Growth be Sustained? A Productivity Perspective," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 874-888, April.
    4. Brian Lucey & Charles Larkin, 2012. "Risk Tolerance and Demographic Characteristics: Preliminary Irish Evidence," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp406, IIIS.
    5. Renzo Orsi & Francesco Turino, 2014. "The last fifteen years of stagnation in Italy: a business cycle accounting perspective," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 469-494, September.
    6. Jinghai Zheng, 2008. "On Chinese productivity studies," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(2), pages 109-119.
    7. Erasmus Kersting, 2008. "The 1980s Recession in the UK: A Business Cycle Accounting Perspective," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(1), pages 179-191, January.
    8. Roman Sustek, 2011. "Monetary Business Cycle Accounting," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(4), pages 592-612, October.
    9. Hansen, G.D. & Ohanian, L.E., 2016. "Neoclassical Models in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eso:journl:v:37:y:2006:i:2:p:215-243. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Martina Lawless). General contact details of provider: https://www.esr.ie .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.