This week's Economics Seminar will be given by Dr Edel Doherty, NUI Galway, on "Identifying labelling issues in discrete choice experiments: an application to recreational site choice" at 2.00pm on Friday September 28th in in Lecture Hall 1 (St Anthony's part of the Cairnes Building).

Chair of the Fulbright Commission in Ireland, Ms. Una Halligan, congratulates Dr. Stephen Hynes of the J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics on being awarded a 2012/2013 Fulbright Scholarship at a ceremony held recently in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin. Dr Hynes will undertake research at the Center for the Blue Economy (CBE) in the Monterey Institute of International Studies, California, in the area of marine economics and ecosystem service valuation.

The BMW Regional Assembly together with the Socio Economic Marine Research Unit (SEMRU) at NUI Galway hosted the inaugural meeting of the MARNET project at the J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics, NUI Galway on July 11th and 12th 2012. MARNET (Marine Atlantic Regions Network) is a 2.5 year collaborative transnational project involving maritime regions from the Basque country of Spain, Brittany in France, Stirling in Scotland, Porto in Portugal as well as the Border Midland and West region of Ireland. The BMW Regional Assembly is lead partner of the MARNET project which will map the value of the Atlantic marine economy through the development of reliable and comparable socio economic data. The €1.3m project involves the participation of marine researchers as well as Regional Authorities across the Atlantic Area. In Ireland the expertise of the Marine Socio Economic Unit at NUI Galway will be crucial in developing a framework from which new added value activities within the marine sector can be developed to add to the 17,000 jobs already supported by marine related activities in Ireland. MARNET will also complement the integrated plan for the Marine Economy launched in February 2012 by Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Mr. Simon Coveney, TD. The Plan aims to grow the marine sector and move from generating only 1.2% of GDP from this vast and diverse marine resource, which covers an area 10 times the size of Ireland’s land mass. Local Authorities with marine interests will benefit from the MARNET project through the development of practical initiatives aimed at growing the marine sector at a local level. The Project is part funded by the ERDF through the EU Interreg Atlantic Area Programme 2007-2013.

The 2011 Census shows that more than two out of every five people aged 65 and over lives in a rural community. Surprisingly, relatively little is known about the situation of this important demographic group. The Rural Ageing Observatory at NUI Galway’s Irish Centre for Social Gerontology is seeking to fill some of the gaps in knowledge on rural ageing. This week it launched the first two reports in a series that, in time, will provide vital information about the ageing population in rural Ireland. The first of the short reports focuses on key demographic trends and issues facing rural older people. The second report summarises evidence relating to income, poverty and deprivation of Ireland’s older rural population. Launching the reports, Professor Thomas Scharf, Director of the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology said: “More than 200,000 people over the age of 65 live in rural communities across Ireland. In the autumn, the government will be launching its National Positive Ageing Strategy. It’s important that this is a strategy for older people wherever they live – in rural as well as in urban communities. Greater awareness of the circumstances of rural older people, in particular, is essential if the right policy measures are to be adopted.” Both reports are available online at www.icsg.ie

The J.E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics at NUI Galway is delighted to host a three day intensive course on 'Discrete Choice Modelling' that will be taught by Professor William Greene of New York University. The course will take place on July 4th, 5th and 6th 2012. Discrete choice models have become an essential tool for the analysis of individual choice behaviour and can be applied to choice problems in a wide variety of diverse fields including environmental management, urban planning, transportation, energy, telecommunications, and healthcare. This course will present the most recent developments in theory and methods of estimation for discrete choice models. A number of applications from different areas of the professional literature to illustrate these techniques will be discussed. The course will include lectures by Professor Greene each morning. In the afternoon, Professor Greene will guide participants as they do some hands-on analysis using data sets and a familiar computer package. Professor Greene currently holds the Toyota Motor Corp Chair in the Department of Economics, Stern School of Business, New York University where he has taught since 1982. He has also been a visiting professor at several universities including Oxford University, University of York and Sydney University. He is the author of two popular software packages, LIMDEP and NLOGIT, and has written two textbooks, Econometric Analysis (now in its 6th edition) and Applied Choice Analysis. He has published approximately 100 articles in leading journals such as Econometrica, Journal of Econometrics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Political Economy, and the American Economic Review. The course fee is €350. Places are limited to 50 so early booking is recommended. The fee includes refreshments throughout the course. View more details (including how to register for this workshop).