The financial crisis has brought to the fore concerns regarding small- and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) capacity to access traditional bank lending. Using European firm-level data on SME access to finance since the onset of the financial crisis, we find that bank-lending constrained SMEs are...

The years before the financial crisis saw a dramatic build-up in private debt levels in several countries and this increase was particularly marked in Ireland. In this paper, we look at whether outstanding debt taken out by small and medium sized enterprises in Ireland constrains current...

In this paper, we use new survey data on the Irish SME population to trace out the impact of the pandemic on firms' revenues, their capacity to adjust their cost base and their usage of policy supports. Between March and October 2020 over 70 per cent of firms experienced some fall in turnover...

In this paper, we use a novel survey module to consider investment in health-related expenditures by SMEs following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland. Using a unique dataset designed to capture expenditure on public health measures, we explore the heterogeneity in expenditure across...

This paper models the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Irish SMEs and extrapolates forward their performance as restrictions ease. Our baseline scenario shows a steady recovery path for the median firm. However, indicators of financial difficulties remain persistently high with the...

Despite the increasingly wide-spread nature of macroprudential regulations, relatively few studies have assessed the implications of such policies on key household finance decisions. In this paper, we investigate the impact on Irish household perceived savings constraints of macroprudential...

The global financial crisis heralded a new era of macroprudential mortgage regulations such as loan-to-value and loan-to-income restrictions. Such measures safeguard the financial system but can lead to credit access difficulties, in particular for first-time buyers. In this paper, we examine...

The credit bubble experienced by the Irish residential and financial sector immediately prior to the global financial crisis (GFC) was one of the largest experienced across contemporary western economies. The Irish property market had witnessed a significant increase in activity as the economy...

In this paper, we explore the impact of recent interest rate increases on the Irish economy and chart out the potential impact using scenarios for the period 2023- 2025. We use the COSMO macroeconometric model of the Irish economy to test the impacts through credit markets and the real economy,...