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...

This paper examines the determinants of international trade in services using data on total services trade and a breakdown of the component subsectors between 28 reporting countries and over fifty partner countries. Using a gravity model approach, we find that the income level and size of the...

This paper examines the extent to which bank market power alleviates or magnifies SME credit constraints using a large panel dataset of more than 118,000 SMEs across 20 European countries over the period 2005-2008. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine bank market power and SME...

While differences in capital structure between large and small firms have been extensively researched, relatively less empirical evidence is available explaining cross country differences in the capital structure of SMEs over the life cycle. This is an important gap as many of the theoretical...

The UK exit from the European Union (Brexit) is likely to have a range of impacts, with trade flows likely to be most affected. One possible outcome of Brexit is a situation where WTO tariffs apply to merchandise trade between the UK and the EU. By examining detailed trade flows between the UK...

This paper uses recently available information on the composition of household assets and liabilities to examine the impact of a tax on household wealth in Ireland under a wide range of assumptions on how such a tax might be designed. We compare results based on models of existing taxes on...

In this paper we examine the elasticity of Irish income taxation revenue with respect to aggregate national output - both GDP and GNP. This enables us to estimate the sensitivity of this key taxation aggregate with respect to changes in economic activity. It also allows us to compare the...

The stability of the labour share of income is a fundamental feature of macroeconomic models, with broad implications for the shape of the production function, inequality, and macroeconomic dynamics. However, empirically, this share has been slowly declining in many countries for several...

Information on the frequency, value and composition of household wealth transfers has been fairly limited in Ireland and this paper aims to fill this gap by drawing on the detailed data now available on the pattern of gifts and inheritances from the 2013 Household Finance and Consumption Survey....

We examine the relationship between exporting experience and the duration of firm export product flows. We find that more experienced firms (in years of exporting) show a higher probability of failure associated with the introduction of new products. Although apparently counter-intuitive, we...