Talk:Celtic Tiger

Citation for the 1995 start date?

The accepted start date on this page of the Celtic Tiger is 1995. It is referenced in several sections (e.g. the "downturn" section mentions the 2002 downturn occurred after "seven years" of increases). However, the first usage of "Celtic tiger" is credited to a 1994 Morgan Stanley report (dead link btw) – wouldn't it have been going for a few years if someone in 1994 is referring to it by name? Or perhaps was that usage just same name "Celtic Tiger"/different context? The "How Ireland Became the Celtic Tiger" article uses 1990 as a 'starting point' for its measurement of Irish economic increases (not saying that's the beginning, but at least the starting point of his measurement). Another source, the New York Times article "For Insurance Regulators, Trails Lead to Dublin" suggests it was the 'early 90s'. Anyway great work on this page! Just wondering how the first reference to Celtic Tiger could be made before the movement started in earnest. --JC 22:01, 28 Feb 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.96.6.146 (talk)

Corporate tax graph

People, this graph is quite weak in my view. What year are the data from? What is the source? The figures for high end countries look suspiciously high.... --PogiZoli (talk) 02:15, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

older entries

There should really be a mention of the growth in employment in the causes. Most of the litreature identifies it as a primary driver of growth. Went up from about 1.2m to 1.8m from 1994-2005. I'd also be careful with using productivity growth as a driver of growth. The big NFI due to transfer pricing distorts it as a real measure of growth.

umm.. what does this mean? "The USA grew only 0.3% in April, May and June 2002 [b]when compared to [/b]the same months in 2001. " -- Cogent 03:14, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This got featured without any mention of who drew the tiger and when it first appeared? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 09:37, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Has the tiger got to be gray? @@ It clashes with the green, and IMHO it looks ugly... =S

There should be a detailed mention of the impact of being the Number 1 receiver per/head of EU funds helped (and helps) the Irish economy. I don't know the exact stats, but its considerable (there is mention of the EU in the article, but its rather brief) CJWilly

No doubt it has had an affect but Ireland has been a net contributor to EU funds now for the last couple of years -Paul

Oi. Much of the data (especially the Celtic Tiger 2 section) looks outdated by two to three years. If there was a resurgeance, then it needs some updating, pronto. If not, then the speculative section should be removed entirely. 2004? Forecasts for 2005? It's 2007; please update/clean. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.122.209.106 (talk) 21:31, 15 March 2007 (UTC).

Before updating it to reflect current trends there must be a decision as to what peroid the phrase actually refers to. It's not just a a nickname for Ireland or its economy but refers to growth during a particular time but a set of sepcific causes. AleXd (talk) 14:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

There's an inherent problem with writing about recent events as history - we're still living them. Things like "Celtic Tiger 1" and "Celtic Tiger 2" are faddish periodizing of events that we are still yet living through. We cannot book-end them because we can't tell the future, or understand our present historically. I'm going to rename the section, "Post-2003 resurgence." --sony-youth^pléigh 16:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I think though economists are generally agreed that the growth peroid after 2001/2, maybe 2003 was of different causes than before. The phrase "tiger economy" means a very fast growing economy that is driven by manufacturing exports. Since growth has now slowed and consumption and construction make up large parts of GDP.AleXd (talk) 23:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Cartoon

Nice cartoon and all that, but the caption doesn't ring true to me: "Cartoon of the Celtic Tiger - the press media in Ireland use pictures of green striped tigers to symbolise or sometimes mock the Celtic Tiger". They do? Having lived in Ireland throughout this period I'm not aware of a single example of this. --Ryano 10:18, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Great that you like my little cartoon. I live in Mullingar, County Westmeath and have been there right through the boom and I've seen plenty of cartoon tigers in the newspapers and business magazines. In particular the Irish Independent's business supplement on a thursday uses celtic tiger cartoons virtually ever couple of weeks on page 2 (the uusual place for economic commentary). I've also seen it on a more irregular basis in other periodicals. CGorman 18:53, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I must admit I rarely look at the Indo. --Ryano 22:14, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I usually read it on weekdays... but its a disgrace on Sundays, theres never any news in it on a Sunday apart from tabloid rubbish. On a Sunday I usually read the Sunday Times, which althought over-british, contains excellent business, culture and property supplements. Anyways I think I recall seeing the tiger image in Business Plus magazine sometime ago and probaly in some other magazine, can't remember which thought. I actually created the image to prep the article for the FA status and for main page. CGorman 20:22, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Dot-com

Not much mention of the dot-com bubble, which coincided with the Celtic Tiger pretty much. While there are indeed other factors in the Celtic Tiger growth, I would suggest that the dot-com boom was a major factor. (Surely some editors from Ireland remember the massive IT spending by companies that previously had little computing equipment, and more by those who already had some IT and expanded their web presence, network infrastructure, and megalomaniac paperless office schemes?)

zoney ♣ talk 15:58, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Zoney! Great to see you are still addicted to the wiki! I agree more could be said about the IT bubble, but im just too thinly spread to do it myslef at the moment (Wikinews is booming!) Althought it most be remembered the IT bubble was a global thing that effected every country not just Ireland. CGorman 13:23, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

It's important because Irish growth was very linked with the world economy. There has also been alot of IT manufacturing and services in Ireland.AleXd (talk) 14:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Shocked and Appalled

That the Causes section doesn't mention the Stuttgart Effect :) --Kiand 18:44, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Economist Covers

Does anyone have a copy of the covers of the economist magazine from 1988 and 1997 which featured Ireland. One read "Ireland: poorest of the rich" and the other "Ireland: Europe's shining light." I like the cartoon tiger but think he looks more like a logo than an actual demonstration of the boom. --sony-youth 18:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:NDP IRELAND.GIF

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Discussion of Politics versus Economic determinants

There are certain sections that discuss desirable social aims of government, and outcomes for economic policy. This article should confine itself to describing what exactly the "Celtic tiger" is, it's determinants e.g. was Ireland merely catching up as predicted in the Solow model?, EU money?, Open Economcy strategy? removal of barriers to trade?, increased liberalisation of markets?, English speaking?, Educiaton system?

All these and more have been proposed as factors in the boom.

If you can factually say that a result of the boom peroid has been an increase in inequality then this can be stated in a "results" or "effects" section later, or a description of the economy as it now stands. There is no doubt though that poverty has reduced since the early nineties.

     AleXd (talk) 13:58, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Criticism of government management of the boom

This section is completely uncited. A number of claims shouldn't be there, "opposition criticise SSIA", given that the scheme is now over an objective, retropsective evaluation should be possible. Although there may be problems in the health service, their mention in an article about an economic pheonmeon is irrelevant. Finally, perhaps all these things weren't done becuase they were doing other things. Perhaps some of these should be in the future challenges section.AleXd (talk) 23:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

The section is written by someone with an ideological interest in privatisation. The claim, for example, that Iarnrod Eireann is "oversubsidised" does not stand up to even the most casual international comparison. The writer equates "progress" with privatisation in his/her discussion of transport, as though this was a neutral position, and reveals his/her bias most clearly by attributing the failure of broadband penetration to the "former state monopoly Eircom", in order to avoid mentioning the fact that it was the privatised monopoly that Eircom became that was responsible for this failure. Pleidhce —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.99.108.254 (talk) 15:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

There are some serious problems with POV in the whole article. The section on "wealth re-distribution" for instance. You could argue that there is a consensus that liberal economics policies are superior, and thus years of monopoly provision of telecoms resulted in underinvestment which is just now being reveresed. AleXd (talk) 03:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

There is no such consensus, AleXd, and it would have no place in an encyclopaedia. Pleidhce (talk) 01:07, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Dihcotomy of external internal factors?

3Q: Allo',

I have noticed that the factors responsible for the Celtic tiger could possibly be slit into to groups. Factors that were the direct result of policy-makers (and/or anything inherent in the economy/demography etc)and factors that were advantageous to the Irish economy but did not result directly from Ireland itself.

The corporate tax policy is an exmple of the former and the EU funds an example of the latter.

The reasons for my proposal are as follows:

Firstly it may help to illustrate the 'interplay' of factors to a reader (particularly a lay person in terms of economic policy/and the economy in general). This will break the information down into more digestible chunks.

Secondly, there are three factors that have relevance that should be mentioned.

1.)The US economy was coming out of a slump (or recession; I'm not sure how it was defined exactly). Despite all the Irish policies and tax incentives, the fact that US businesses faced a less risky market contributed to their relocation to Ireland. 2.) The EU single market. Again this provided an incentive for foreign direct investment to locate in Ireland. It works best when you consider that as well as speaking English, being educated (but not enough to demand a high salary), unemployed (again reducing the workers power to seek payment increases) Ireland could provide a springboard into a tarrif-free market place with over 160million people - or thereabouts. 3.) The Irish Pound was quite a strong currency prior to the mid-ninties. Prior to the boom the currency was devauled (more than once I think). Exports were therefore cheaper and one would think easier to sell to other countries(both for domestic companies and the multi-nationals).

I can provide some references but it may take a while (busy life is all i'm not writing the stuff) unless anyone else has some info. They will also be quite recent as with a phenomenon so big hindsight often reveals more than contemporary observation.

Referring back to the initial point of splitting the factors/causes into to sections: If this information is added there will be quite a list and I'm sure other people may have research/academia to highlight other causes. Therefore I think to give the article more "readability" (coined 01/03/2008) it should be divided as I have proposed.

Looking forward to your feedback. Q3 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.254.147.100 (talk) 15:58, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

hi could someone post a link to where i can find statistics for eu corporate tax rates for different states as shown in the bar chart? regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.136.139.253 (talk) 14:19, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Consequnces

The sub article "Consequnces" doesnt contain a single refrence. And it states a lot of facts. It would help to know that what I am reading is reliable fact.Crakker (talk) 00:12, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Imminent recession forecast

Imminent recession forecast section was removed without discussion. It is a correctly cited published statement by a goverment established body and its removal was unwarranted and is reinstated accordingly. 23:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

"downturn"

This article should not become a discussion of the continuing state of the Irish economy, obviously it is a question of economic history, what constitute the Celtic Tiger? but the article should not be continously updated with developments in the finanical news.AleXd (talk) 03:57, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Causes: Tax

The statement below is misleading and should be altered for a number of reasons:

"Between 1997 and 2004, Charlie McCreevy, the Minister for Finance, pursued fiscal policies such as low taxation[2] and contributed to a dramatic reduction in public debt over the boom years.[3] He was voted Ireland's best Minister for Finance in 2004 by Finance magazine.[4]

1. The initial statement is biased as some of the relevent low taxation policies were implemented before Mc Creevey became Minister for Finance, so the Statement could more accurately read:

"Between 19XX and 2004, low (corporate?) taxation policies were pursued by sucessive Minister's for Finance such as Charlie Mc Creevy"

Also the reference quoted does not back up the statement above and does not mention Charlie Mc Creevy. It says:

"In 1956, as economic policy was reversed and free trade replaced protectionism, the first step to encourage foreign direct investment in Ireland was the inducement of low corporate tax rates. And all parties in all governments have held that policy line ever since, not least against some strong external pressure (including from the EU) to force us to change it. "

[2] (http://www.independent.ie/opinion/editorial/lowtax-policies-created-the-tiger-485406.html)

2. The National debt has not been reduced at all during the boom, what has improved is our debt to GDP ratio. To date only the interest has been paid as the article referenced states. This reference in no way supports the claim made.

[3]http://www.business2000.ie/cases/cases_7th/case21.htm

3. The link to Reference [4] is broken. A new reference needs to be found.

Also a short information of how the taxes were before 1997 (to see how it changed) would be nice. --Larsenat (talk) 03:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Celtic Tiger - deceased

Historian Richard Aldous in an article in a national newspaper said that the Celtic Tiger is dead. User Sarah777 has deleted this cited comment by a reliable source on the spurious basis of "political commentary" . I have reverted accordingly Zubenzenubi (talk) 23:59, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

RIP Tiger. --candle•wicke 03:29, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

As the Tiger is like Cleese's parrot if I did delete then the deletion was likely merited. Must take another look.....Sarah777 (talk) 00:10, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Causes: SSIA

Cited article from 2004 predicts spending binge on SSIA maturity, fact is altogether different:

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/ssia-holders-resist-spending-splurge-after-accounts-mature-69604.html

Also suggests lack of consumer confidence as early as 2006, which is significant as lead-in paragraph suggests effects not appreciated until 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 73liam (talk • contribs) 18:19, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Irish living standards

I don't think "Irish living standards" by which I think one would read GDP per capita adjusted for PPP were ever the second highest in Europe. GNP per capita maybe but that's a different thing.

Nope, the other way around, GDP possible, GNP definately not (GNP is way lower in Ireland, see statistics of Eurostat for example). But that's a problem here, since the GNP is actualy more presenting the living standards than the GDP. --Larsenat (talk) 03:41, 9 January 2010 (UTC)