Mr. Ronan Lyons

Biography

I am an economist based at Trinity College Dublin. As an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics there, my work is a mixture of teaching and research. As a researcher, I am interested in why certain regions thrive and how we as humans make economic decisions. My main fields of academic research are economic history, housing markets and urban economics. You can read more about me and my background here and about the academic research I undertake here. My contributions to the media and public debate are here and other blog posts are here. To find out more about my professional and consulting services, click here. Students looking for materials relating to modules I teach should look here and on mymodule.tcd.ie.

Research Interest

Economic activity and human welfare are spread remarkably unevenly in the world. To understand this, economics needs to recognise the importance of both time and place. On the one hand, the persistent gap between wealthy and poor countries is a consequence of the Industrial Revolution that began around the turn of the 18th Century. On the other hand, the fact that the almost all income and wealth is concentrated geographically on a tiny fraction of the world's land underscores the huge - and perhaps growing - importance of location and clusters. As a result, my research is focused on both economic history and economic geography. There are five areas where my research is currently focused. Firstly, much of my research examines the economics of housing markets. Housing constitutes both the biggest item of expenditure and the most popular investment class and is therefore central to understanding economic cycles, such as the "Great Recession" starting in 2007. The Irish housing bubble of 1995-2007 and the subsequent crash represent a unique opportunity to understand not just the internal mechanics of the housing market, including the central role of consumer expectations, but also how housing relates to the rest of the economy, in particular the financial sector and credit conditions. Clearly, housing demand is important but so too is the supply of housing, which remains poorly understood internationally and this is another area of focus in my research. Lastly, I am interested in the links between housing and labour markets. Related to this, I am interested in what we can learn from the housing market about how people value what are typically termed non-market services. It is no secret that houses close to good schools or transport links are more expensive than those that are not. Economic techniques can reveal how much the average household values a whole range of amenities, including natural and cultural amenities and market depth. While fiscal policy has traditionally been based on costs, rather than the ratio of costs and benefits, high levels of debt throughout the developed world mean that the focus of policymakers must shift to understanding social return on public spending, rather than seeing it as a black box. In this context, the valuation of amenities moves from being an interesting phenomenon to the foundation of solid fiscal policy. My final area of focus in economic geography is sustainable and behavioural real estate. If making your home more energy efficient has both an income effect (lower bills) and a wealth effect (your home is more valuable), why don't all homeowners upgrade their homes? Is this explained by imperfect capital markets, with banks unwilling to lend for such purposes, or imperfect rationality, with households not budging until they are nudged. My interests in economic history are quantitative and relate to income and wealth. They can be broken down into two main areas. The first is relative factor returns: how much did a skilled worker earn, relative to an unskilled worker or an acre of land? How and why did this vary across countries and over time? Income inequality is a major policy concern, both within and across economies, and understanding the contribution of factors such as trade and technology over the long run can inform current debates. Lastly, I am interested in constructing long-run series in income and wealth. Over recent years, I and other have been building a dataset of Irish equity prices from the 1800s. The relationship between equity returns and returns on other assets, such as property or human capital, is pivotal in understanding how the economic system as a whole, which is beyond anyone's control, functions.