We use mean-variance analysis to demonstrate the importance of a hitherto neglected benefit of enticing MNEs to locate in small and medium-sized countries. During the 25 years from 1974 to 1999, over 1000 foreign MNEs have located in Ireland, and they have raised their share of all manufacturing...

This paper analyzes effects of exchange rate changes in a small open economy whose labor market exhibits hysteresis. The model is used to critique the response of the Irish authorities to the exchange rate crisis of 1992-93 that resulted from the sharp depreciation of sterling relative to the...

Wages frequently remain high in industries thrown into permanent decline. Previous analyses based on arbitrary wage rigidities have concluded that some degree of subsidization of the declining industry is warranted on efficiency grounds. The present paper proposes as an alternative an efficient...

Geographical diversification describes the degree to which a firm’s operations in a particular industry are dispersed across countries. This paper presents evidence on the geographical diversification within the EU of the 290-odd largest manufacturing firms in Europe. We also explore how...

The information technology sector in Europe, comprising the production of computer hardware and software, is disproportionately located on the continent’s western periphery. The vast bulk of computers sold in Europe in the 1990s were assembled either in Ireland or Scotland, while Ireland also...

Many previous studies have shown that the localisation of firms can be an important factor in attracting new foreign direct investment into a host country. What has been missing in this literature thus far, however, is an investigation into the reasons why industry clusters attract firms. We...

Ireland’s dramatic economic boom of the 1990s has been referred to as “the era of the Celtic Tiger”. In a little over a decade, real national income per head jumped from 65 percent of the Western European average to above parity, unemployment tumbled from double to less than half the...

For a given degree of wage stickiness, there is an inverse relationship between the price-level and employment effects of a nominal shock. Various contributors to the literature on optimal currency areas have extrapolated from this to argue that the real effects of exchange rate changes are...

FDI and the activities of foreign affiliate firms have grown dramatically in recent decades, both in absolute terms and as a share of world GDP. Most explanations of this phenomenon focus on the impact of the macroeconomic environment on the choices facing individual firms over whether or not to...

The Investment Development Path (IDP) hypothesis holds that a country’s net outward direct investment position is systematically related to its level of economic development. Ireland is an interesting test case because of the importance of inward FDI over the last three decades, the country's...