Structural change in six Irish farming enterprise sectors is projected into the future using the Krenz (1964) modified version of the Markov Chain technique. In this paper, the application of the technique is based on the assumption that all those forces that influenced agricultural structural...

An examination of ERM parities demonstrates that several currencies were misaligned due to disparate performance regarding inflation. Overvalued currencies partly explain the existence of economic imbalances, such as large fiscal and current account defecits and high unemployment. These...

This paper uses micro-data to examine the relationship between R&D activity and employment growth. The R&D and employment data used are drawn from a survey of the Irish manufacturing sector undertaken by Forfás, the policy and advisory board for industrial development in Ireland. By...

From its inception in the late 1940s, Irish industrial policy has attempted to disperse industrial plants across regions, thereby avoiding the problem of rural-urban migration experienced by many developing countries. Analysing a large sample of companies which established in Ireland in the...

This paper looks at the arguments for and against admission charges to national museums and provides some new evidence relating to the effects of charges. This debate is set in the context of the policy objective of access: the vast majority of the population do not attend national museums and...

Concern over budgetary costs has been the traditional driving force behind changes to the EU's Common Agricultural Policy. While the recent MacSharry reform of this policy was more related to external pressures arising from the need to reach an agreement on agriculture in the GATT Uruguay Round,...

This paper attempts to apply some simple economic analysis to a single national cultural institution, namely the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. The first point made is that the Abbey operates within an active and fairly large theatre market in Dublin. Second, it is seen that the Abbey accounts for...

This paper analyses the impact of the Competition Act 1991, largely by focusing on the decisions of the Competition Authority during its first three years. The Act, which was based on Articles 85 and 86 of the Treaty of Rome, introduced a prohibition based system of competition law in Ireland....

In postwar Europe aviation markets were controlled by bilateral agreements which confined the market to one airline per country. The airlines charged the same fares and divided the markets. Economists from Adam Smith to William Baumol recommend that governments should not ban new entrants or...