The people we call entrepreneurs are the ones who make the economy dance. Without them, there’s no products, sales or demand for workers ...

Chinese exports to the EU increased by nearly 28 per cent in January and February of this year alone. Chinese exporters shut ...

Irish homes are powered overwhelming by imported gas. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, most of Europe’s gas comes from the Gulf or the US. Indeed, disruption to gas rather than oil might hit ...

Half Julius Caesar, half Mattress Mick, Donald Trump has just declared economic war on the rest of the world, but what exactly did he say? Whisper it quietly, but in Ireland, given how bad things ...

It’s keep-the-head-down time. In the week when Donald Trump’s latest hissy fit has led to the imposition of 10 per cent tariffs across the board, no country wants to appear on his mercantilist radar ...

Not that many people know that The Wizard of Oz, one of America’s most-loved films, is based on the arcane economic world of monetary policy. L Frank Baum’s novel is a disguised critique of the folly ...

One of the joys of writing a weekly column is the unusual tributaries explored, often sparked by real-world events. Today I’ve been watching old clips of The Godfather, in particular Marlon Brando’s ...

Demography is destiny. The single most important statistic in any developed economy is the population size. When planning for the future, the most critical forecast concerns the number of people in ...

From a macroeconomic perspective, maybe for the first time ever, the major problem in Ireland is a supply side problem: demand is surging, but supply is not responding. It is not a case of deficient ...

In late August 1989 I travelled to Czechoslovakia by train via East Germany to witness the 21st anniversary of the 1968 Prague Spring. People spoke about the beauty of Prague but few Irish people had ...

In 1992, I moved into a flat on Parliament Street in Dublin city centre. Back then, the four residents of the refurbished 18th-century building were the only people living on the street. Yes, you read ...