It has been well established that the wages of individual workers react little, especially downwards, to shocks that hit their employer. This paper presents new evidence from a unique survey of firms across Europe on the prevalence of downward wage rigidity in both real and nominal terms. We...

Small and medium enterprises have been shown to rely mainly on banks for funding and, unlike larger firms, rarely have direct access to capital markets. This paper looks at the extent to which SMEs avail of a wider range of funding options and how their use differs across firms and countries....

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...

We examine the relationship between exporting experience and the duration of firm export product flows. We find that more experienced firms (in years of exporting) show a higher probability of failure associated with the introduction of new products. Although apparently counter-intuitive, we...

As well as their direct effects on output and employment, the attraction of foreign direct investment is sometimes argued to provide further economic benefits through spillover effects that potentially increase the productivity performance of domestic firms. Empirical evidence on this has...

In this paper, we use firm-level survey data to explore the determinants of SME investment activity and the extent to which observed investment is in line with that suggested by economic fundamentals. In contrast to previous literature which has focused on whether investment gaps exist at a more...

This paper examines the determinants of international trade in services using data on total services trade and a breakdown of the component subsectors between 28 reporting countries and over fifty partner countries. Using a gravity model approach, we find that the income level and size of the...

While differences in capital structure between large and small firms have been extensively researched, relatively less empirical evidence is available explaining cross country differences in the capital structure of SMEs over the life cycle. This is an important gap as many of the theoretical...

In this paper we examine the elasticity of Irish income taxation revenue with respect to aggregate national output - both GDP and GNP. This enables us to estimate the sensitivity of this key taxation aggregate with respect to changes in economic activity. It also allows us to compare the...

This paper uses recently available information on the composition of household assets and liabilities to examine the impact of a tax on household wealth in Ireland under a wide range of assumptions on how such a tax might be designed. We compare results based on models of existing taxes on...