In March 2004, Ireland became the first country to introduce a nationwide workplace smoking ban. The smoking ban increased the non-monetary cost of smoking by prohibiting smoking in the majority of indoor workplaces. The aim of this paper is to examine whether the extra non-monetary cost of...

On the basis of anonymous (or cross-sectional) analyses, income losses during the Great Recession in a number of European countries were concentrated among the poorest ten per cent of the population. The anonymous approach however, which simply compares the distribution of income at two points...

Increasing the legal age at which individuals can buy tobacco has become an increasingly common policy tool aimed at reducing youth smoking. There remains, however, some debate on whether such policies are an efficient use of resources. Evidence thus far has either (i) relied on local or...

The advent of the Great Recession and the widespread adoption of fiscal austerity policies have heightened concern about inequality and its effects. We examine how the distribution of income in Ireland has evolved over the years 2008 to 2013, using data from the CSO's Survey on Income and Living...

Ireland is one of the countries most severely affected by the Great Recession. National income fell by more than 10 per cent between 2007 and 2012, as a result of the bursting of a remarkable property bubble, an exceptionally severe banking crisis, and deep fiscal adjustment. This paper examines...

Comprehensive modelling of the impact of taxes and tax policy options requires data on the impact at micro-level of both direct and indirect taxes. There are, however, limits on the amount of data that can be gathered by any one survey. With some exceptions, most notably the Living Costs and...

Abstract: Using detailed plan-level data, this paper examines the choice, price and quality of broadband services available to consumers in Ireland over time. We find modest geographical (county level) variation in broadband services. Hedonic regression analysis is used to value various...

Since March 2017, a new income-related housing support for those with a long-term housing need called Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) has been available throughout the state. This paper examines the potential impact on financial work incentives of transferring long-run Rent Supplement...