Planning and employment in a small economy: the Republic of Ireland

The dissertation can be considered in three parts. Part I is a review of the evolution and uneven development of the Irish economy for recent decades. A main reason in undertaking this is to bring to the fore some of the neglected features of that development and its distinct characteristics. It is argued that abstracting from the course and stage of development of Ireland has enabled orthodox economists to transpose, indiscriminately, to this country the analysis and prescriptions offered for more advanced economies. Yet it is precisely when the long-term growth and employment performance is unravelled that the unemployment experience cannot be regarded as a temporary aberration. Part 2 appraises critically the theory of indicative planning and then examines the three, 1959-'72, planning experiments in Ireland. Despite the early abandonment of the later plans their theoretical framework and techniques have been, generally, exonerated from any responsibility for the ensuing difficulties . While we examine the origin and empirical content of the purely pragmatic explanations for 'failure' greater attention is paid to the methodology and the activities of the planners. This line of inquiry provides an insight into the ambiguous status of targets and weak implementation of Irish plans, and an explanation why the habitual neglect of theory led, on occasions ,to serious contradictions. Part 3 focuses on the ideas presented in earlier sections that argue for an alternative planning approach to the industrial sector. This is carried out in two stages. First, we examine the long-term association between the growth of manufacturing output and employment (or productivity) drawing from the experience of 44 industries for subperiods between 1953 and 1974. At this point an opportunity is taken to compare the results to those obtained by investigators, notably P. J. Verdoorn and N. Kaldor, for other countries. Second, we make use of the derived statistical associations to estimate, inter alia, the path of industrial output growth required for expanding employment in the next decade

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

1978

Author dc:creator

• Katsiaouni, Olympios

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/1cc8443b-e1d7-4ec4-a2eb-6f4db40a1b4f/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.42200

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/295130