This paper analyses regional unemployment in Poland to explore whether unemployment outcomes reflect regional employment compositions and employment restructuring. It shows that the dynamics of regional labour demand in Poland have pushed unemployment inflows in a systematic way by changing the...

This paper looks at the issue of access to the arts in terms of the very unequal attendance at and audiences for the high arts by educational grouping. The meaning of equal access is analysed, recent data for two countries, namely the United States and Ireland, are examined and new evidence is...

Not only has development assistance overall been falling in volume terms, but the share of this ODA going to improving agriculture and nutrition in developing countries has also fallen. This paper investigates the reasons for the declining commitment of donors to these areas and whether this can...

This paper looks at the issue of the taxation of tobacco: why such taxes are imposed, the structure of these taxes in the EU and the issues to which they give rise. The effects of tobacco and the various measures used by government, including taxation, have been very much in the news in 1997....

This paper argues that the Irish economy is characterised by high levels of industrial concentration and weak competition. Competition rules introduced in 1991 and strenghthened in 1996 have had a significant effect in many markets, but those with the most extremely anti-competitive markets have...

Irish policy towards foreign direct investment has evolved since the 1950s as a strategy driven primarily by the use of fiscal incentives to enhance the profitability of locating in Ireland, with grants as required to achieve a particular bargaining advantage in competing against alternative...

This paper reviews the demands of developing countries in the new round of WTO agricultural negotiations which began in Geneva in March 2000 based on the submissions to the Special Session up to November 2000. Two issues of principle are identified. The first is the developing country demand for...

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between public infrastructrue and international capital flows. Out of a sample of thirty countries a cross-sectional econometric model is constructed to estimate the effects. Different components of infrastructure variables are tested in...

This paper develops an empirical model of bilateral exchange rate volatility. We conjecture that for developing economies, external financial liabilities have an important effect on desired bilateral exchange rate volatility, above and beyond the standard Optimal Currency Area (OCA) factors. By...