Professor Colm Harmon.
According to Professor Colm Harmon, Director of the Geary Institute, the importance of the research lies in the fact that data being created outside of government far dominates the volume of data being created by national statistical agencies. He sees the research agenda of the Institute as pushing against the frontiers of policy research. “Our research focuses on measuring and interpreting economic and social behaviour – how social networks form, how we can design and shape better policy choices, how we can draw on lessons from psychology and even biology in understanding critical issues such as the impact of unemployment on the well-being of individuals. This work is a vital component in increasing our capacity for high level policy research. More importantly it is critical if economics is to make a more complete contribution to policy debates, with a greater understanding of the nature of individual behavior and a better understanding of the institutional determinants of economic outcomes."
A good example of the Geary work is SHARE - a pan European, globally linked, study of the over 50s population. By studying the ageing population through a common dataset across individual countries, governments will have information that helps measure the effectiveness of different policies. Findings from one country can be applied to other countries to improve policy analysis across all countries.
The SHARE research team in Ireland has interviewed 1,500 Irish residents, and while so far the study’s findings have shown that there is a strong correlation between health, behaviour and socio-economic status, there are many blanks in our knowledge. Professor Harmon has noted, “While the threat to the stability of our pension and health care systems has been discussed widely, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. We know little about changing employability of older workers; we know little about how health is changing as later cohorts enter the retirement age. SHARE provides such data and its value as a research infrastructure lies in the combination of health and employment data with economic and social status.”
