The level and growth rates of Total Factor Productivity estimates have been extensively used as a means of assessing the level of efficiency in production across regions as well as a source of the observed differences in economic performance. This paper, focusing on a sample of 242 EU NUTS2 regions spanning the 2000-2020 period provides a time series of TFP estimates, based on a new dataset of regional level capital stocks, and documents significant heterogeneity in terms of TFP developments across regions and groups of regions. The evidence suggest that TFP can account for up to 80% of the observed income differences, while it is made evident that during the period covered by the sample convergence in terms of TFP was weakened.

The stability of the labour income share has been regarded as a key component of modern macroeconomic analysis. However, a number of recent studies have challenged this apparent stability, documenting a global decline of the labour share. This paper assesses the developments in the non-housing labour income share for the EU member-states during the 1995-2018 period. Our descriptive analysis shows that, for this sample, the labour share has remained relatively constant, exhibiting a slight increase toward the end of the sample period. Using recently developed panel time series estimators that can account for the heterogeneous impact of macroeconomic shocks, we empirically test the impact of capital deepening, the size of the government, globalization and financialization on the labour share. Our results indicate that both relative prices and government size appear to be significant determinants of the labour share, while globalization and financialization do not have a significant effect.

In this paper, we implement a new measure, the rental equivalence approach, in estimating the cost of Irish housing for the purposes of the consumer price index (CPI). The cost of housing composes both the cost of owner occupier housing (OOH) as well as the cost of renting. This work, which is in conjunction with the Central Statistics Office (CSO), follows earlier work, which reviewed the different, existing approaches taken by the CSO in estimating the cost of housing. The rental equivalence approach - used to calculate the cost of OOH - seeks to isolate the consumption element of owning a home, which is consistent with its usage in the CPI. The proposed approach also benefits from the usage of existing rental indices, which are compiled and estimated by researchers in the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) for the Rental Tenancy Board (RTB).

Assessing the contribution of intangible investment to growth is a challenging and complex task for any country. However, it has become increasingly difficult to determine both the exact magnitude of economic performance and its composition in the case of the Irish economy. This is mainly due to the impact of certain distortionary transactions by a select number of multinationals operating in the Irish jurisdiction. In this paper we address this issue by assessing, in a detailed manner, the contribution of intangible and tangible assets to the Irish growth story. We control for distortions in the official investment data series while also incorporating intangible assets which are not currently included in the National Accounts. Our results show that the observed unprecedented increase in the official intangible investment has a relatively minor contribution to the actual Irish labour productivity growth. Once the distortions are filtered out, Irish labour productivity growth is driven by tangible capital. More interestingly, non-national accounts intangible capital has a sizeable procyclical impact on labour productivity growth.

The present working paper aims to describe the data sources and methods used to develop the Territorial Economic Data viewer (TEDv), as well as to explain the purpose and usefulness of the different dashboards available in the current version of the tool. Additionally, this paper includes practical examples with policy lessons that can be drawn from the available information, as well as a glossary of the indicators within the TEDv.

This paper examines the manner in which owner-occupiers housing costs are incorporated in the official inflation index. In particular, the focus is on the net acquisitions and the payments approach, which are currently used by the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The paper provides a detailed overview of the two approaches, along with some suggestion for further refinement.