Record Details


Field	Value

Title	Wages and Ireland’s International Competitiveness

Creator	O'Farrell, Rory

Subject	wages; competitiveness; Ireland

Description	At the beginning of the crisis in 2008 it was a widely reported view that Ireland had become uncompetitive, leading to calls for wage cuts. Since then wage rates in the private sector have been largely stable. However, Ireland has shown a strong improvement in exports despite a difficult international trading situation. This presents a puzzle. If wages in Ireland were uncompetitive, how could Ireland improve its export position so rapidly, without a general fall in wages? Ireland can best be described as having moved from a position of “super-competitiveness” to “competitiveness”. During the construction boom, exports remained an important driver of growth. Since 2008, the fall in nominal unit labour costs is entirely due to a move away from the labour intensive construction sector. However, while labour costs have been stagnant in Ireland, they have increased amongst our trading partners.

Publisher	The Economic and Social Review

Contributor	—

Date	2015-09-29

Type	info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion —

Format	application/pdf

Identifier	http://www.esr.ie/article/view/401

Source	The Economic and Social Review; Vol 46, No 3, Autumn (2015); 429-458 0012-9984

Language	eng

Relation	http://www.esr.ie/article/view/401/117

Rights	Copyright (c) 2015 The Economic and Social Review

Since 2014