Here's the paper I wrote for last weekend's Trinity Economic Forum. My argument is pretty simple. Learning economics is really hard. Applying economics to the real world is even harder. You need to work hard not to fool yourself. Models and data are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the aforementioned. Even better: use models, data, and `everything else’ to learn about the economy. Call this ‘informed intuition’. This is most useful when actual policy advice has to be given.
I was also asked to talk about Ireland's approach to austerity. My slides are here, the idea was to provoke an argument with the audience, which worked rather well thanks to Seamus Coffey's reply to my talk. I enjoyed the forum, and hope it will become a fixture in the calendar from now on.