Launch of the MSc in Economic Policy Studies for 2014-2016

Posted on: 08 January 2014

Trinity College Dublin’s Department of Economics marked the launch of its MSc in Economic Policy Studies for 2014-2016 with a lecture on unemployment by Professor Jochen Kluve.

An expert on unemployment policy and a former student of Trinity, Professor Kluve is Professor of Empirical Labour Economics at the School of Business and Economics, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Despite the recent improvement in the live register, Ireland’s unemployment rate remains one of the highest in Europe. Designing effective labour market policies post-crisis is an important policy objective and requires an ongoing discourse between economists and policy makers. Professor Kluve reviewed the empirical evidence on various job creation programmes that have been pursued by governments globally, and highlighted the tension that often exists between public demands for action and the evidence of what interventions are successful. His main conclusion pointed to the effectiveness and importance of job search and matching initiatives and improvements in and targeting of training programmes.

Robert Watt, Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, was the key respondent. He endorsed the need for evidence-based policy making, and outlined the steps his department has taken to ensure that new employment policies are evaluated in a rigorous and unbiased way.

The MSc in Economic Policy Studies (EPS) is a two-year, part-time postgraduate programme designed to provide participants with the skills to apply economic perspectives, approaches and related skills to the study of policy issues.

Speaking at the launch, Dr Michael King, Assistant Professor in Economic Policy and course director, announced that the new programme starting in September 2014 will have a special focus on rigorous statistical methods, programme and project evaluation and the policy issues related to monetary authorities and the banking sector. “The programme is continually evolving to meet the changing needs of the Irish public service and economic policymaking in Ireland,” he added.