Ireland's unique population history has attracted a great deal of attention. The post-Famine decline in the population -especially in the twenty six counties that now form the Republic- has been studied intensively. The historical process of change in regional and urban-rural distribution of the...

This paper examines the change in welfare in IReland over the 1987-1994 period by investigating whether Lorenz and Generalised Lorenz dominance can be observed for household expenditure data. It also calculated bootstrapped standard error measures for Lorenz and Generalised Lorenz curves and...

This paper uses the General Household Survey data for the UK to study earnings discrimination between natives and migrants. The key result is that the main source of discrimination is ethnicity rather than migrant status per se.

I analyze in this paper procurement from agents protected by limited liability. I model limited liability as a verifiable bargaining tool that enables the agents to induce renegotiation when the contracted price does not cover the project's cost. I show that the determination of the optimal...

In this paper we review the Irish economy's recent economic record and explore the explanations that have been offered for its improved performance since the mid-1980s.

This paper analyses inequality in Ireland via a decomposition of the Gini coefficient by source of income. Using data from the Irish Household Budget Survey of 1987, seventeen components of disposable income are identified and their contribution to inequality evaluated. Their contribution to...

The relatively widespread use of poverty measures is analysed and their properties compared with other definitions of welfare. Using a synthetic data set but one which shares some properties of the Irish income distribution of 1987, a number of changes in incomes are simulated and their impact...

I argue that increased foreign competition can affect technical choice and skill differentials even when actual imports do not rise significantly. I present a model of General Oligopolistic Equilibrium ("GOLE") in which a reduction in import barriers (whether technological or policy-imposed)...

This paper examines how time to build alters strategic investment behaviour under oligopoly. Facing demand uncertainty, firms decide whether to invest early or wait until uncertainty has been resolved. A game that captures time-to-build investment is contrasted with another one in which...

This paper uses two sets of cross-country micro datasets to analyse individuals’ participation in voluntary and community activities and organisations. Analysing countries in the International Adult Literacy Survey and focusing on the impact of human capital I find a consistently positive...