The Irish Hare is set to complete its second lap

Here is a chart from Honohan and Walsh (2002) showing Ireland going through a 25-year imbalance cycle from 1975 to 2000.  Internal imbalances are shown through the unemployment rate with external imbalances shown through the balance of payments current account deficit (these are shown using the reverse sign so positive numbers indicate deficits).

Back in 2009, Honohan pondered whether the hare was heading off on another lap.  He was right (and first raised the possibility with co-author Walsh as early as 2007). 

Anyway, here is an update of the imbalance chart using the modified current account rather than the headline one.  Outturn data from the CSO is used for 2004 to 2017 with figures for 2018 to 2020 coming from the latest Department of Finance forecasts included with Budget 2019.

The latest lap began with the current account deterioration from 2004 (though it should be noted that the range of the horizontal axis in the second chart is about half that of the first).  The current account did begin to improve after 2008 but this was coincident with the explosion in unemployment (same axis range in both charts) as consumption and, most notably, investment fell. 

Since 2012, we have been closing the loop through rapid falls in unemployment and improvement in the current account.  The current account did deteriorate in 2017 though this may have been an MNC effect related to the acquisition of stocks.  The latest forecasts from the Department of Finance show a continued erosion of the current account surplus from that point as a result of consumption and investment rises.  The forecasts have us getting us back to where we were in 2004 sometime next year or the year after so the final closing of the loop as shown above is still a forecast rather than an outturn.

If it does happen the hare will set a new PB: cutting the the lap time 25 years to 15 years (albeit, as noted by Honohan, the course was shorter this time). What’s in store for the celtic hare? Hard to know.  But let’s hope it takes a breather before heading off on its third lap.

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