Data for the UK show Northern Ireland remains at the bottom of the productivity leaguetable, and that its R&D performance is consistently amongst the lowest across the UKregions. This paper analyses the data from a survey of some 250 matched firms operating inNorthern Ireland (approximately half...

Manufacturing industry in Northern Ireland receives extensive financial support from government with the objective of improving the economic performance of the plants that are directly assisted. Many studies have tried to assess the impact of such assistance, but without the counterfactual...

This paper studies the impact of R&D spending on output as well as forecasting the impact of a regionally enhanced R&D tax credit on the 'user cost' (or price) of R&D expenditure and subsequently the demand for R&D. The example we use of a 'disadvantaged' region is Northern Ireland (partly...

This study uses the Annual Respondents Database to test whether Gibrat's law of proportionate effect holds for the UK manufacturing industry during the period 1973-1998. For a sample of manufacturing industries, four different panel unit root tests were carried out to test the relationship...

Many studies have established the importance of investment in R&D to facilitate innovation and consequently improve firm productivity. Firms decide whether or not to undertake R&D depending on a range of factors such as market orientation, business objectives, competitive advantages and...

This paper uses detailed industry-level data for the UK regions which, based on the standard cross-sectional regression model, suggests that 'strong' convergence was occurring during the period 1963-92, even though plotting these data and considering their variation over time would tend to...

Harris R. and Trainor M. (2007) Impact of government intervention on employment change and plant closure in Northern Ireland, 1983-97, Regional Studies 41, 51-63. Financial assistance to manufacturing industry is an important element of the industrial development policy in Northern Ireland. This...

This paper decomposes aggregate TFP growth in Britain for 1997-2008 to show the contribution of different LEPs and the role played by manufacturing and services and UK- and foreign-owned plants within these LEPs. These contributions are further decomposed to show the role of productivity growth...

Recent work (including that of the author) on the impact of FDI has been based on microlevel (i.e. firms, establishments or plants) data, since this allows much greater control when examining such issues as whether FDI plants are more productive or innovative; whether there are spillovers to...