The structural fund interventions play a crucial role in improving the social and economic cohesion of the EU. A particular focus of the structural funds is on those regions that lag behind to the extent that their GDP per capita is below 75 per cent of the EU average - Objective 1 regions. In...

Our research tests the difference in investment efficiency between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms and then evaluates the effect of privatisation and equitisation policies on the investment efficiency of former state owned enterprises (SOEs). We use a novel dataset from Viet Nam...

There is an unequal supply of health and social care across counties in Ireland, according to new ESRI research funded by the Health Research Board (HRB). It finds that the commuter counties of Kildare, Meath and Wicklow had the lowest supply overall of ten primary, community and long-term care...

New ESRI research, funded by the Health Research Board, finds that older people are discharged from hospital more quickly in areas with more home care and residential care services.

Can improving local infrastructure in underdeveloped areas encourage entrepreneurial activity? If so, which infrastructures and by how much? This paper analyses the impact on new business establishments of broadband infrastructure, motorways, airports and railways and a range of other local...

In the past the first expenditure to be cut during an economic downturn was capital expenditure. However, the cuts in capital expenditure of the late 1980's and 90's had left Ireland with an infrastructure deficit. This note highlights a number of important issues, which should be considered...

Existing environmental accounts for the Republic of Ireland are at the national level. This is fine for continental and global environmental problems, but information at a finer spatial scale is needed for local environmental problems. Furthermore, the impact of environmental policy may differ...

The single largest project under the Irish National Development Plan (NDP) 2007-2013, is the construction of a Metro system. Despite the fact that this is the largest project under the NDP and the government's transport strategy, Transport 21, no cost benefit analysis on the project has been...

Only a few research papers have analysed the spatial distribution of economic activity in Ireland. There are a number of reasons for this, not least the fact that comprehensive data on the location of economic activity by sector across all sectors has not been available at the highly...