Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey's excellent The Rise of Free Trade (RFT) gathers together speeches, contemporary writing and extracts from parliamentary debates relating to British trade policy between 1815 and 1906 (the year in which free trade was consolidated by a decisice General Election victory...

The authors address the question of whether the volume of manufacturing trade between Norther Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is more or less than might be expected in the light of international experience. They estimate a gravity equation for bilateral trade between 28 developed countries...

This paper investigates the effects of different degrees of wage setting centralisation on (1) the incentive of a MNE to locate in a host country, (2) the optimal level of investment it decides to commit to its foreign operation, and (3) the host country's welfare.

In Irish manufacturing, the foreign sector accounts for about one half of employment and some 60 per cent of gross output. The Irish experience therefore provides us with a textbook case study of the effects on an EU host economy of export-oriented FDI. We explore in this paper the structural...

This paper analyses the welfare implication for a developing country of using union legalisation as a policy instrument to attract inwards foreign direct investment. While its presence may discourage a foreign multinational (MNE) from locating in the host country, unionisation is an important...

This is a paper about intercontinental trade, since factor proportions differ far more between continents than within. Long distance intercontinental trade was also the economic event which motivated the theoretical work of Bertil Ohlin.

In this paper we have presented a theoretical analysis of the Mercantilist Trade Restrictiveness Index and compared its empirical performance with other measures of trade policy.

Trade theorists have come to understand that their theory is ambiguous on the question : Are trade and factor flows substitutes? This paper uses history to fill the gap.

Why, after more than a half-century of under-performance, has the Irish economy finally found its feet? A recent authoritative study suggests five factors, without attempting to rank them: shifting demographic structure, increasing human capital, infrastructural investment, a benign...

In this paper we look at one aspect of the growth trade relations as between the EU and the CEEC states, which reflects the pattern of trade. We argue that there is some evidence to support the proposition that a facet of this development reflects the different regulatory regimes in eastern...