Rebecca Stuart

Money, Interest Rates and Prices in Ireland, 1933-2012

In this paper we assemble an annual data set on broad and narrow money, prices, real economic activity and interest rates in Ireland from a variety of sources for the period 1933-2012. We discuss in detail how the data set is constructed and what assumptions we have made to do so. Furthermore, we estimate a simple SVAR model to provide some empirical evidence on the behaviour of these time series. Money supply shocks appear to be the most important drivers of both money and prices. Interest rate shocks, which capture monetary policy, play an important role driving output and, of course, interest rates. The GDP shocks, which raise prices, seem of less importance.

UK shocks and Irish business cycles, 1922-79: UK SHOCKS AND IRISH BUSINESS CYCLES

This article examines the transmission of UK and global shocks to the Irish economy over the period 1922–79, using annual data for consumer prices and real GDP in a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. UK aggregate demand and supply shocks have large and significant effects on Irish CPI, but smaller effects on Irish real GDP. A historical decomposition indicates that UK aggregate supply and demand shocks played a more important role than domestic shocks in the evolution of Irish CPI. In contrast, the evolution of Irish real GDP is driven more by idiosyncratic domestic shocks than by UK shocks.

Unemployment and inflation in Ireland: 1926–2012

Since the 1970s, the overarching view in the literature has been that a Phillips curve relationship did not exist in Ireland prior to the 1979 exchange rate break with Sterling. It was argued that, as a small open economy, prices were determined externally. To test this relationship, we study the determination of inflation between 1926 and 2012, a longer sample period than any previously used. We find that the difference between unemployment and the NAIRU is a significant determinant of inflation both in the full sample and in the subsamples spanning the periods before and after the Sterling parity link.