The speed and severity of the decline in the Irish fiscal position in recent years raises a number of important issues regarding the assessment of fiscal policy within the EU. From a position of relative strength, with large surpluses and a low debt to GDP ratio, the Irish public finances have...

The sharp decline in the performance of international property markets has been central to the financial distress experienced globally. The Irish housing market experienced particularly strong rates of price increases and heightened activity levels by OECD standards. One reason cited for such...

In this paper a model of dynamic factor demands is presented for the Irish economy. Total costs, labour and capital are modelled on a two-stage basis. First, a static, long-run cost function is specified which allows for the derivation of expressions for optimal labour and capital demand. This...

The rapid increase in credit in an economy is now commonly perceived to be one of the leading indicators of financial instability. This view has been reinforced by the aftermath of the international financial crisis, which commenced in mid-2007. A key policy response has been to focus on the...

This paper presents aggregated cost efficiency scores for a balanced panel of British and Irish credit institutions and relates these scores to loan loss reserves as a first step in investigating their usefulness as possible indicators of financial fragility. The efficiency scores are obtained...

This paper uses information contained within the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) to examine the ability of Irish households to sustain their mortgage repayments. We calculate mortgage repayment to income (MRTI) ratios for a representative sample of Irish households and examine the...