This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service,

the programme that looks at the numbers in the news and in life.

I'm Charlotte and I'm Simon Mabin.

Later in the program we'll be looking behind the hype of mobile phone app Pokemon Go.

But first...

Something happened on July the 12th, which came as a great surprise to many economists.

The Irish Central Statistics Office released figures that showed the country's economy had grown by a fantastic amount.

In fact, Ireland's GDP grew by 26% in 2015, according to these new figures.

Just to put into context how huge that is, India's economy grew by about 8% last year, China

by 7% and Germany's by just 1.5%.

But as soon as these figures were published, there was instantly, shall we say, skepticism?

Honestly, I thought this is bullshit.

This is Stephen Kinsella, senior lecturer in economics at the University of Limerick.

Honestly, I was really shocked.

I am a macroeconomist and I look at this stuff all the time and I couldn't believe the figures.

And he wasn't the only one. The famous economist Paul Krugman called it leprocorn economics in a tweet.

So what happened here? In a nutshell, economists aren't sure how much of this economic activity is actually taking place in Ireland.

Since the 1950s, Ireland has had an open economy to encourage foreign investment.

The government has offered various incentives for businesses including low rates of corporation tax and tax breaks.

For that reason, many big multinational companies, especially in tech and pharmaceuticals have headquarters in Ireland.

The value of these multinational companies is huge.

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