The years before the financial crisis saw a dramatic build-up in private debt levels in several countries and this increase was particularly marked in Ireland. In this paper, we look at whether outstanding debt taken out by small and medium sized enterprises in Ireland constrains current...

As the productivity of the European economy shows signs of slowing down, many hopes are pinned on digital technologies to reverse this trend. This study uses data from the EIBIS 2019 survey to examine whether the adoption of different digital technologies (such as advanced robotics, 3D printing,...

China's economic structures, business dynamics and individual management decisions are not determined by the country's formal institutional arrangements alone. China's society, its politics and business are rather governed by powerful informal mechanisms that complement and sometimes overrule...

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...

Empirical evidence suggests that international ownership of local firms supports firm performance and growth through various channels such as financing, technology transfer, and improved access to international markets. This is particularly true for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that...

Publicly traded family businesses in Europe do business with a longer-term perspective and more successfully than companies that are not family businesses – and the greater the influence of the founding family, the better their performance. This is the conclusion reached by the study of an...