imf ( 2024 ). [ 12 ] gutierrez and philippon ( 2023 ), autor, dorn, katz, patterson and van reenen ( 2020 ). [ 13 ] eurobarometer survey, may 2024 [ 14 ] see melitz and toubal ( 2014 ) on language barriers and trade, and bronnenberg, dube and gentzkow ( 2012 ) on persistence of brand preferences and implications for entry barriers. [ 15 ] see aghion, bergeaud, boppart, klenow and li ( 2023 ) for a formal model and quantification of this mechanism. [ 16 ] peter ( 2021 ) : equity frictions and firm ownership. [ 17 ] de fiore and uhlig ( 2011 ) and di vito, fuentes, leite ( 2023 ) ( ecb occasional paper series ) [ 18 ] see haltiwanger, scarpetta and schweiger ( 2014 ). [ 19 ] chodavadia, kerr, kerr and maiden ( 2024 ). [ 20 ] in 2010, the united states hosted 41 percent of total skilled migrants in the oecd, with australia, the uk and canada accounting for an additional 29 percent. all other oecd countries accounted for 30 % of total skilled migrants ( kerr, kerr, ozden and parsons ( 2016 ) ). [ 21 ] see decker and haltiwanger ( 2023 ) and decker and haltiwanger ( 2024 ). [ 22 ] see figure 7 in soyres, herrero, goernemann, jeon, lofstrom, and moore ( 2024 ). " why is the us gdp recovering faster than other advanced economies?, " feds notes. [ 23 ] see oecd ( 2024 ). [ 24 ] see giupponi, landais and lapeyre ( 2022 ) for a discussion of us and eu social insurance policies during the pandemic. ©2024 central bank of ireland

the subsequent fall in prices did not affect these sellers : their gains were “ in the bag ”. in contrast, the purchasers at bubble prices experienced losses when prices fell. as most of the purchases were funded by debt accumulation, many of these borrowers – whether household or corporate – found themselves with negative equity and, in the wider downturn, many soon also became unable to service their debt. when borrowers defaulted, these transactions ultimately resulted in losses also for the banks ’ shareholders ( and sub debt holders ), and – notoriously – for the government which stepped in to prevent other creditors of the banks losing. naturally, much attention has rightly focused on the €40 billion or so of ultimate losses assumed by the government under that heading. a broadly similar amount was lost by bank shareholders, etc. and there are two other big categories of capital gain and loss : i think the aggregate gains by irish property sellers are plausibly of the same order of magnitude, as are the aggregate losses being nursed by borrowers. but, large though these four categories of winnings and losses from property transactions at bubble prices are, they need to be considered alongside the even larger and still growing bis central bankers ’ speeches accumulated difference between income in the actual irish economy and that in the counterfactual scenario. i won ’ t pretend to have precise figures on how aggregate income and employment would have panned out in the counterfactual scenario of no property bubble, but the broad outlines are clear. the counterfactual no - bubble irish economy would have grown much more slowly than actual in the period up to 2007, and much faster in the post - crisis years. for example ( according to one simulation ) some 130, 000 fewer houses would have been completed over that period, with total employment about 60, 000 smaller by 2007, and despite less migration into ireland, the unemployment rate would have drifted more than 2 percentage points higher than actual. lower revenue would have pushed the government accounts into deficit and a higher debt ratio at the outset of the global financial crisis. household incomes would have been much lower too, with per capita personal consumption running about 8 per cent lower than actual in 2007. of course, different households were affected in differing degrees, resulting in large distributional shifts which are the subject of important ongoing research. heading into the global recession, then, the irish economy would have been smaller, with more moderate wage rates and a somewhat higher government debt and deficit. it would have