The Council of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, under the auspices of the Barrington Trust (founded in 1836 by the bequest of John Barrington), has awarded UCD financial economist Dr Cal Muckley the 2010/2011 Barrington Medal in recognition of his research into the economic cost of terrorism in Northern Ireland (1970–2007).
The annual award recognises promising new researchers in the economic and social sciences in Ireland. This year celebrates the 162nd anniversary of the lecture series and Dr Muckley delivered the 124th Barrington Lecture on 24 March in the Royal Irish Academy.
Each year, the lecture focuses on a topic with current relevance to economic or social policy in Ireland. In this year’s lecture ‘Terrorism, Tourism and FDI: Estimating a lower bound on the Peace Dividend in Northern Ireland’ Dr Muckley estimates the economic cost of terrorism with regard to foreign direct investment and tourism in Northern Ireland during periods extending from 1970 through to 2007.
Analysis undertaken as part of the research study indicates that for initiatives reliant on foreign direct investment as well as for the tourism sector, a fatality as a result of terrorism has a minimum economic cost of £3.69 million pounds sterling.
It is widely accepted that a variety of factors influence both the level of FDI and revenues from tourism to an economy. As Northern Ireland is a small regional geographic area, its foreign capital and revenue inflows may show significant sensitivities to political instability. Estimating the economic cost of terrorism is vitally important as it has implications for whether the Northern Ireland Assembly should pursue a strategy of intervention with respect to terrorist activity in Northern Ireland and, if so, to what extent it should allocate resources to pursue this strategy.
Dr Muckley said: “With regard to future research, the findings presented here may be extended to include the economic cost of a fatality caused by terrorism to real domestic tourist revenues or real total tourist revenues rather than looking exclusively at real foreign tourist revenues. In addition, it may be worthwhile also looking at the economic cost of terrorist incidents rather than only those fatalities which have resulted from terrorist incidents. Finally, it may be valuable to consider the economic cost of fatalities as a result of terrorist incidents in Northern Ireland in terms of implications for employment.”
Dr Cal Muckley is a lecturer in finance and econometrics at the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.
