Paul Krugman: An Irresponsible Austerity Narrative Endures

The Financial Times published an interesting article on May 16 about problems with Ireland's gross national product (not gross domestic product) accounting. Essentially, measured income is being inflated by foreign companies with no real activity in Ireland that, nonetheless, find ways to make profits materialize in a low-tax jurisdiction.

We sort of knew this was happening — that, for example, a lot of the apparent rise in productivity was just a shift to pharmaceutical companies that add little to the Irish economy. But a new report from the Economic and Social Research Institute suggests that the problem is bigger than realized.