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Dr. Ronan Lyons
Associate Professor, Economics

Biography

I am an Associate Professor in Economics at Trinity College Dublin, where I am also Director of Trinity Research in Social Sciences (TRiSS) and a PI at the Centre for Economics, Policy & History (CEPH). My research focuses on housing markets, urban economics and economic history and in particular on the intersection of those areas: how housing markets evolve in urban environments over the long run. My academic research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, such as the Journal of Real Estate Finance & Economics, the Journal of Housing Economics, Energy Economics, and Regional Science & Urban Economics. I am a consultant to the IMF on residential property prices, a frequent contributor to national and international media on Irish housing and the broader economy and the author of the quarterly Daft.ie Reports on the Irish housing market. From 2017 to 2022, I was a Board Member of the Higher Education Authority and I was also a member of Ireland's 2022-2023 Housing Commission, advising government on housing policy.

Publications and Further Research Outputs

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Maximilian Günnewig-Mönert, Ronan C. Lyons, Housing prices, costs, and policy: The housing supply equation in Ireland since 1970, Real Estate Economics, 52, (4), 2024, p1075-1102 Journal Article, 2024

Ronan C. Lyons and Elisa Tirindelli, The Rise & Fall of Urban Concentration in Britain: Zipf, Gibrat and Gini across two centuries, The Annals of Regional Science, 74, (1), 2024, p1 - 15 Journal Article, 2024

Tom Gillespie, Ronan C. Lyons and Thomas K.J. McDermott, Estimating the flood risk discount: Evidence from a one-off national information shock, Environmental and Resource Economics, 88, (2), 2024, p1 - 19 Journal Article, 2024

Tom Gillespie, Stephen Hynes, Ronan C. Lyons, The Value of a Sea View: Hedonic Estimates Using 3D Simulation and Natural Language Processing, Land Economics, 2023, p071522-0056R Journal Article, 2023

Alan de Bromhead, Ronan C. Lyons, Social housing and the spread of population: Evidence from twentieth century Ireland, Journal of Urban Economics, 138, 2023, p103603 Journal Article, 2023

Richard Keely and Ronan C. Lyons, Housing Prices, Yields and Credit Conditions in Dublin since 1945, The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 64, (3), 2022, p404--439 Journal Article, 2022 DOI

J. Carroll, R. Lyons and E. Denny, The Impact of Energy Cost Labelling on Property Energy Efficiency Premiums: Preliminary Results from a National RCT with daft.ie, 2019 16th International Conference on the European Energy Market (EEM), Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2019, 2019, pp1 - 5 Conference Paper, 2019 DOI

Francesco Pilla, Salem S. Gharbia, Ronan C. Lyons, How do households perceive flood-risk? The impact of flooding on the cost of accommodation in Dublin, Ireland, Science of The Total Environment, 650, (1), 2019, p144 - 154 Journal Article, 2019 DOI

Andrew Linn, Ronan C. Lyons, Three Triggers? Negative Equity, Income Shocks and Institutions as Determinants of Mortgage Default, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 2019, p1 - 27 Journal Article, 2019 DOI

Rishi Ahuja, Ronan C. Lyons , The silent treatment: discrimination against same-sex relations in the sharing economy, Oxford Economic Papers, 71, (3), 2019, p564 - 576 Journal Article, 2019 DOI

Ronan C. Lyons, Can list prices accurately capture housing price trends? Insights from extreme markets conditions, Finance Research Letters, 30, 2019, p228 - 232 Journal Article, 2019 DOI

Ronan C. Lyons, Credit conditions and the housing price ratio: Evidence from Ireland's boom and bust, Journal of Housing Economics, 42, 2018, p84 - 96 Journal Article, 2018 DOI

Kerri Agnew and Ronan C. Lyons, The impact of employment on housing prices: Detailed evidence from FDI in Ireland, Regional Science and Urban Economics, 70, 2018, p174 - 189 Journal Article, 2018

Housing and Austerity: A Two-Way Street in, editor(s)Emma Heffernan, John McHale and Niamh Moore-Cherry , Debating austerity in Ireland: crisis, experience and recovery, Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, 2017, pp125 - 139, [Ronan C. Lyons] Book Chapter, 2017 TARA - Full Text

Salem S. Gharbia, Ronan Lyons, Owen Naughton, Vincent Farrelly, Francesco Pilla, Attitudes to systemic risk: the impact of flood risk on the housing market in Dublin, 18th Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference MELECON 2016, Cyprus, 18-20 April, IEEE, 2016 Conference Paper, 2016 TARA - Full Text

Sarah Stanley, Ronan C. Lyons, Sean Lyons, The Price Effect of Building Energy Ratings in the Dublin Residential Market, Energy Efficiency, 9, (4), 2016, p875 - 885 Journal Article, 2016 DOI

Ronan C. Lyons, Housing supply in Ireland since 1990: the role of costs and regulation, Journal of the Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 44, 2015, p141 - 155 Journal Article, 2015 URL

Richard S. Grossman & Ronan C. Lyons & Kevin H. O'Rourke & Madalina A. Ursu, A monthly stock exchange index for Ireland, 1864-1930, European Review of Economic History, 18, (3), 2014, p248 - 276 Journal Article, 2014 DOI

Ronan C Lyons, East, west, boom and bust: the spread of house prices and rents in Ireland, 2007-2012, Journal of Property Research, 2014 Journal Article, 2014 URL DOI

Marie Hyland, Ronan C. Lyons & Sean Lyons, The value of domestic building energy efficiency - evidence from Ireland, Energy Economics, 40(C), 2013, p943 - 952 Journal Article, 2013 DOI URL

Ronan C. Lyons, The real value of house prices: what the cost of accommodation can tell policymakers, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 41, 2012, p71 - 91 Journal Article, 2012 DOI

Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications

Housing Market: Supply, Pricing and Servicing Issues in, editor(s)O'Hagan, J. and O'Toole, F. and Whelan, C. , {The Economy of Ireland: Policy Making in a Global Context, London, Bloomsbury Publishing}, 2021, pp349 - 373, [Ronan C Lyons] Book Chapter, 2021

Ronan C. Lyons, Ireland in 2040: Urbanization, demographics and housing, Journal of the Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 47, 2018, p122 - 128 Journal Article, 2018

Housing Market: Supply, Pricing and Servicing Issues in, editor(s)John O'Hagan and Francis O'Toole , The Economy of Ireland - Policy & Performance, Dublin, Palgrave MacMillan, 2017, pp309 - 334, [Ronan C. Lyons] Book Chapter, 2017

The spread of rents in Ireland, over time and space in, editor(s)Lorcan Sirr , Renting in Ireland, Dublin, Institute of Public Administration, 2014, [Ronan C. Lyons] Book Chapter, 2014 TARA - Full Text URL

Shailendra Mudgal, Lorcan Lyons, François Cohen, R Lyons, D Fedrigo-Fazio, Energy performance certificates in buildings and their impact on transaction prices and rents in selected EU countries, Brussels, European Commission, 2013 Report, 2013 URL

Inside a Bubble & Crash: Evidence from the valuation of amenities in, editor(s)Morten Balling & Jesper Berg , Property prices and real estate financing in a turbulent world, Vienna, SUERF, 2013, pp108 - 133, [Ronan C Lyons] Book Chapter, 2013

Ed Burke and Ronan Lyons (editors), Next Generation Ireland, Dublin, Orpen Press, 2011 Book, 2011 URL

Research Expertise

Projects

  • Title
    • H2PINA - Historical House Prices in North America, 1900-1960
  • Summary
    • Building a dataset of sales and rental listings for North American housing markets, for the period 1900-1960, from newspaper archives
  • Funding Agency
    • Trinity College Dublin
  • Date From
    • May 2015
  • Date To
    • April 2016

Keywords

Economic Geography; ECONOMIC HISTORY; Urban Economics

Recognition

Representations

Commissioner, Irish Housing Commission 2021-2024

Board Member, Higher Education Authority 2017-2022

Council Member, Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland (SSISI) and Honorary Secretary (2018-2022). The Society has been in existence since 1847 and, through its public meetings each year, provides a unique meeting ground for discussion between decision-makers in the public service, business, trade union, academic and research communities. Since 2017

Invited appearance at Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning, Community & Local Government, on the topic of short-term lettings June 2018

Reviewer, European Research Council (Starting Grant) 2022

Committee member, Dublin Economics Workshop (2016-2022; Chair, 2016-2018). Responsible for organising high-profile annual policy conference, where speakers include government Ministers and top civil servants as well as international experts. 2016-2022

Member of the Editorial Board of Financial Research Letters 2016-2020

Member, Department of Housing 'Housing Needs & Demand Assessment' Advisory Group 2019

Reviewer, American Economic Journal: Applied Since 2023

Member, Department of Housing 'Technical Working Group on Apartment Planning Policies' 2017

Invited appearance at Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness, on the topic of addressing Ireland's housing crisis May 2016

Reviewer, Journal of Housing Economics Since 2022

Reviewer, Applied Economics Since 2024

Reviewer, Real Estate Economics Since 2021

Review, International Journal of Central Banking 2021

Invited appearance at the Oireachtas Finance Committee, on the topic of mortgage finance and insurance November 2014

Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems Since 2023

Reviewer, Energy Economics Since 2012

Reviewer, Oxford Economic Papers Since 2013

Reviewer, International Review of Financial Analysis Since 2014

Journal of the Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland: Reviewer, since 2015. Editorial Board, 2018-2022. Since 2015

Reviewer, Explorations in Economic History Since 2015

Reviewer, Financial History Review Since 2015

Reviewer, Economic History Review Since 2016

Reviewer, International Tax and Public Finance Since 2016

Reviewer, Journal of European Real Estate Research Since 2016

Reviewer, Journal of Property Research Since 2016

Reviewer, Regional Science & Urban Economics Since 2016

Reviewer, European Review of Economic History Since 2017

Reviewer, Economic & Social Review Since 2017

Reviewer, Journal of Real Estate Finance & Economics Since 2017

Reviewer, Journal of Real Estate Research Since 2017

Reviewer, Yale University Press 2017

Reviewer, African Tax Institute Working Paper Series 2018

Reviewer, Journal of Economic History Since 2019

Reviewer, Journal of Urban Economics Since 2019

Reviewer, Journal of Development Economics Since 2019

Reviewer, Scandinavian Economic History Review Since 2019

Reviewer, Land Use Policy Since 2019

Reviewer, Enterprise and Society Since 2020

Reviewer, Energy Journal Since 2020

Awards and Honours

Barrington Medal 2015

Foley-Béjar Scholarship, Balliol College (Oxford) 2011

Foundation Scholarship, Trinity College (Dublin) 2000

Depfa Bank Scholarship 2001

Memberships

American Economic Association January 2012

American Real Estate & Urban Economics Association January 2013

Economic History Association January 2014

Urban Economics Association 2015

Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland March 2015

Irish Economic Association January 2014

Economic History Society January 2014

Economic & Social History Society of Ireland January 2014 – December 2019

Royal Economic Society September 2013 – December 2018

European Economic Association January 2012 – December 2015