Economic and Social Research Institute

About: Economic and Social Research Institute is a nonprofit organization based out in Dublin, Ireland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & European union. The organization has 425 authors who have published 1530 publications receiving 41567 citations.

Investment in Education and the intractability of inequality

Abstract: Investment in Education, initiated in 1962 and published in 1965, has been described as ‘probably the foundation document’ of modern Irish education (Clancy 1996) and a ‘landmark both in the nation...

A Hirsch measure for the quality of research supervision, and an illustration with trade economists

Abstract: There is a growing literature measuring research excellence in economics. The h-index is noteworthy in combining quantity and research quality in a single measure of researcher excellence, and its ability to be extended to measure the quantity and quality of the researchers in a department. We extend the use of the first successive h-index further to measure the quality of graduate education, specifically excellence in research supervision, based on publication and citation data for individual researchers ascribed to their graduate supervisors.

Gender and Education

Abstract: In looking at gender differences in educational outcomes, it is important to distinguish between three sets of outcomes: (i) educational participation and attainment, that is, how far young women and men go within the educational system; (ii) educational achievement, that is, how well young men and women perform (for example, in terms of grades) at a given level of the educational system; and (iii) field of study, that is, the type of course taken within the educational system.

Explaining Social Class Differentials in Smoking: The Role of Education

Abstract: Rates of smoking have decreased dramatically in most Northern European countries over the last fifty years or so, but this decline has not been uniform across the population and there have actually been increases in smoking among lower income and social class groups. Although smoking differentials cannot account for the wide social class inequalities in mortality and morbidity in these countries, they are a contributing factor. This paper argues that the social structuring of smoking rates suggests that social and economic processes may have a major role in starting and quitting behaviour. We test four hypotheses: The first holds that social class differentials in smoking reflect the direct impact of different levels of knowledge about the risks of smoking across educational groups. The second that social class differences reflect the indirect affect of educational differentials acting through educations influence on risk perception and future orientation. The third hypothesis also invokes future orientation, but attributes differences in this variable to socio-economic disadvantage. The last hypothesis holds that differential rates of smoking across social classes actually reflects the indirect affect of social deprivation on the push factors to smoke such as lack of control and psychological stress. Our analyses shows little support for the first hypothesis with knowledge differences accounting for no more than 10% of the class differential. Tests of the role of future orientation show that this plays almost no role. The last hypothesis gains most support. Measures of disadvantage and deprivation account for half of the differential in class smoking.

Increasing the State Pension Age, the Recession and Expected Retirement Ages

Abstract: In March 2010, the Irish government announced that the age at which the state pension is paid would be raised to 66 in 2014, 67 in 2021 and 68 in 2028. One typical objective of such policy reforms is to provide an incentive for later retirement. The question we address in this paper is whether the expected retirement ages of Irish individuals aged 50 to 64 changed as a result of the policy announcement. The data we use are from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Our findings show that there was no noticeable break in expected retirement ages before and after 3 March, 2010 (the day on which the policy announcement was made). Also during 2010, the economic news became increasingly bad as the full scale of the fiscal and banking crises in Ireland emerged. The data suggest that there was a reduction in the proportion of people planning to retire at age 65 after 30 September, 2010, the day that the full scale of the banking crisis emerged.