AN IRISH LECTURER has been awarded €650,000 in funding to lead international research projects examining the global financial crisis.

Dr Stephen Kinsella will lead international economic research projects into the global financial crisis, to find out:

• How do we learn from the global financial crisis?
• What models can be developed to better understand future growth in the EU as people within the EU age?
• What is the relationship between debt, and demography? How can we design policies taking aging and indebtedness into account?

The series of international research projects led by Dr Kinsella, who is senior lecturer at Kemmy Business School in the University of Limerick, have received in the region of €650,000 funding to answer these questions.

This is the largest amount of research funding the Kemmy Business School has received since 2009.

(UniversityofLimerick/YouTube)

Speaking to TheJournal.ie, Dr Kinsella said that 10 jobs will be created due to the research. The researchers will be looking at debt and demography – demography being the study of the population.

The researchers will be looking at Ireland’s population, and how the various age groups fare when it comes to debt. “Why this is important for the average person is there are policies in place to help the national debt (the Troika), some firm-level debt (NAMA), but there is no policy to help personal debt,” explained Dr Kinsella.

The approach of other countries to the financial crisis will also be examined, and the aim is to discuss the findings with not just our own Department of Finance and banks, but those of other countries also.

The point of such research is to look at making sure what occurred during this most recent financial crisis does not occur again.

The more we can understand how that happens and how that interacts with the structure of the population, the more we are able to say – look we have had a huge population boom… does that mean we are going to have a huge construction boom in 20 years time?

The research will take place over three years, and up to five years, with more funding being sought. “It is an enormous amount of work,” said Kinsella, who added the researchers will be working 12 hours a day, six days a week.

The research project will develop new models to understand the European economy.

It will make a direct contribution to policy making in Iceland, as a new model for the country will be developed, funded by Rannis, the Icelandic statistics agency.

Dr Kinsella will collaborate with Nobel Laureate, Professor Joseph Stiglitz through the Institute for New Economic Thinking, New York, as part of the research.

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