As student numbers in the Irish higher education system continue to grow, the escalating funding crisis within the system needs to be urgently addressed. This conversation must also consider the dynamic relationships and funding limitations possessed by a range of system stakeholders including...

The ICL model as outlined in current policy discussions cannot work in Ireland due to the high probability of default. The Irish system is neither small enough or large enough to make an ICL work. As it stands in any ICL scenario a minimum of 10 years of losses would have to be absorbed by the...

Purpose – This chapter examines the roles and challenges for the Irish economy in the aftermath of the collapse of the Celtic Tiger and the onset of the 2008 economic crisis. Specifically it does review the role that Government, the Central Bank of Ireland, and the Financial Regulator had...

This paper presents an exploratory analysis of the funding mechanisms for higher education across sixteen countries which builds upon existing work on educational institutions, educational outcomes and welfare regimes. We focus upon the current financing dilemma within the Irish higher education...

We examine the response of a broad set of digital assets to US Federal Fund interest rate and quantitative easing announcements, specifically examining associated volatility spillover and feedback effects. We classify each digital asset into one of three categories: Currencies; Protocols; and...

We examine the literature on the financial economics of precious metals from a bibliometric and scientometric perspective. We surface the main trends and authors in the area over the last two decades, and provide estimates of the density of the networks of researchers and research. Clear...

Blockchain technology appears to be ready to revolutionise a broad number of industries. However, the blockchain itself contains a number of inefficiencies and areas for improvement, namely: transaction fees and transaction speeds. Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) address, and improve on these...

We examine the existence and dates of pricing bubbles in Bitcoin and Ethereum, two popular cryptocurrencies using the Phillips et al. (2011) methodology. In contrast to previous papers, we examine the fundamental drivers of the price. Having derived ratios that are economically and...

We analyse, in the time and frequency domains, the relationships between three popular cryptocurrencies and a variety of other financial assets. We find evidence of the relative isolation of these assets from the financial and economic assets. Our results show that cryptocurrencies may offer...

Annual electricity consumption for cryptocurrency mining is growing yearly, driven by the increasing difficulty in mining. Total carbon production from mining now likely exceeds that generated by the entire nation of Portugal. This is a feature, not a bug, in cryptocurrencies. This paper...