I propose to identify the most important reasons touted to explain the Celtic Tiger' and evaluate each on its merits.
Important Prerequisites For Growth.
Before the advent of the Celtic Tiger', Ireland had already had some key ingredients to support rising economic growth: an underemployed and potential labour force (through increased female participation and a stock of emigrants willing to return, given better job prospects) important for plugging gaps in labour supply and maintaining growth; ample energy supplies; an improved physical infrastructure including an underutilized transport network; a competent and honest public service.
Human Capital.
Clearly, plentiful human capital, supply of a young, English speaking, well educated pliable labour force was important to sustaining growth. Human capital investment certainly helps growth in a crucial way, and there is no dispute that in Ireland in recent years more young people graduated, more women entered the workforce and more emigrants returned home. In terms of attainment in higher education, Ireland ranks second highest in the EU, next to Belgium. The boom would not have gathered momentum and been sustained without it.
The argument concerning our well-educated workforce has been overdone, for two reasons. The first hinges on the distinction between the social and the private return on education. Indeed in the 1970s and 1980s emigration of so many of those with third-level qualifications points to a waste of resources spent on education. The claim that schooling has boosted growth tends to rest assumes that it had no opportunity cost and maybe less investment in schooling at times in the past would have been the more sensible option.
The second reason why the case for investment in human capital has been oversold is.
that, for all the hype about Ireland's highly educated workforce, recent international.
comparisons show it in a less than stellar light.
