The 1955-56 macroeconomic crisis is a central event in modern Irish history. Yet, despite this centrality, its causes are not clearly understood. In 1955-6, Ireland, which had previously followed British interest rates in lockstep as part of its fixed exchange with the latter, briefly...

This paper studies a natural experiment in macroeconomic history: the Irish bank strike of 1966, which led to the closure of the major commercial banks for three months. We use synthetic control to estimate how the economy would have evolved had the strike not happened. We find that economic...

This paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of UK banking crises over the period 1750 to 1938. We construct a new annual banking crisis series using bank failure rate data, which suggests that the incidence of banking crises was every 32 years. Using our new series and a narrative approach...

Using a new biography of banks, we examine the stability of Irish banking from 1797 to 1826 by constructing a failure rate series. We find that the ultimate cause of the frequent and severe banking crises was the crisis-prone structure of the banking system, which was designed to benefit the...

Agricultural cooperation is seen as a way to solve collective action problems and has been associated with high social capital and other beneficial impacts in the countryside beyond productivity increases. But what if it comes into conflict with existing private concerns? The Irish dairy...

Air pollution is a global public health threat, responsible for more deaths annually than conventional lifestyle risk factors. While the link between particulate pollution and cardiovascular disease is well-established, evidence for gaseous pollutants remains limited. This study estimates the...

What are the insights from historical pandemics for policymaking today? We carry out a systematic review of the literature on the impact of pandemics that occurred since the Industrial Revolution and prior to Covid-19. Our literature searches were conducted between June 2020 and September 2023,...

Analysis of excess mortality holds the potential to revise understandings of key moments in modern Irish history. Yet aside from studies of the Great Famine, it has been neglected by historians of Ireland. Examining rates of excess mortality across post-Famine Ireland reveals that the Land War...

Analysis of excess mortality holds the potential to revise understandings of key moments in modern Irish history. Yet aside from studies of the Great Famine, it has been neglected by historians of Ireland. Examining rates of excess mortality across post-Famine Ireland reveals that the Land War...

There has been widespread debate about whether the way in which we measure economic activity is fit for purpose in the twenty-first century. One aspect of this debate is to move away from measuring a nation's income (GDP) towards monitoring a nation's assets (their inclusive wealth), as a better...