The failure to recognise the importance of competition policy and the non- traded sector in economic development has contributed to a situation in Ireland in which the implementation of an activist competition policy has proceeded at a slower pace than is required. This pace has been supported...

This paper empirically analyses price dispersion between brand within product catgories in the Independent grocery sector. The methodology adopted allows us to discriminate between the impact which various structural demand and supply side features have on price dispersion in both traditional...

This paper analyses the sectoral distribution of US investment across EU member countries. We attempt to determine whether investment is sectorally concentrated by country and whether there seems to be any evidence of increased sectoral specialisation in US investment as the EU market has become...

Economic theory proposes that consumers are primarily concerned with increasing the mean and reducing the variance of the payoff when choosing between products the return to which is uncertain. This approach fails to explain the popularity of Lotto and other forms of gambling. The highly skewed...

This paper gives an account of the R/S statistic and its known properties. It assesses the adequacy of the asymptotic distribution of R/S in the case of samples of small and moderate size, and suggests an improved approximation based on the beta distribution. The results indicate that the...

Regional goals have always played an important part in Irish industrial policy. This paper examines the employment performance of two sub-regions (designated and non-designated areas) as defined by industrial policy. By employing the job flow methodology as pioneered by Davis and Haltiwanger...

Using a variant of shift-share analysis, this paper examines how the changing commodity structure and market destination pattern of Irish exports has influenced the share of Irish exports in world exports over the 1972-90 period. Results show that up until 1985 the success of Irish exporters in...

Non-standard or atypical employment in Irish manufacturing more than doubled between 1987 and 1995. This paper attempts to analyse empirically the nature of non-standard employment in Ireland using plant-level data for 1995. We focus on firm characteristics as explanatory factors. Our...

We estimate the factors that affect the life expectancy of plants operating in the manufacturing sector of Ireland over the period 1980-1994. Our results suggest that real exchange rate appreciations have caused a great number of infant mortalities in domestic plants both in the traditional and...

Customers carrying out a costly search among dealers for the best bid or offer are unable to tell whether an unfavorable quote reflects a change in market fundamentals or whether they have met a high margin dealer. The optimal search strategy in the presence of a futures market is shown to have...