Ireland Is Still Waiting for the Fruits of Austerity

Ireland has been repeatedly touted as a success story by advocates of austerity. However as Floyd Norris points out in a nice piece today, the widely touted turnaround is mostly a quirk in the data.

For tax purposes, several large UK companies have moved their headquarters from the UK to Ireland. This changes nothing in terms of Ireland's actual GNP, in the sense of money flowing to people living in Ireland, but it does lead to an increase in reported GNP. The profits of these UK companies n...