This study examines the decision by firm owners to apply, or not, for intermediated debt. Based on a sample of SMEs in 9 European countries over the period 2009-2012, we examine firm characteristics, institutional and cultural factors. We focus our analyses on two distinct groups of firms, those...

In this paper we investigate the return relations between major asset classes using data from both the US and the UK. Our first objective is to examine time variation in conditional correlations to determine when these variables act as a hedge against each other. Secondly, we provide evidence on...

We examine the three interlinked Irish crises: the competitiveness, fiscal and banking crises, showing how all three combined to lay a lethal trap for Ireland. Starting from a point of economic balance, a series of poor government decisions led to the country once dubbed the “Celtic tiger”...

The author develops a model of optimal taxation in the presence of consumption and labor supply references, which extends the model of Ljungqvist and Uhlig (2000). The paper shows that under the assumed ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ style peer-group effects, in both consumption and labor...

We present a review of the Irish banking collapse, detailing its origins in a confluence of events. We suggest that the very concentrated nature of the Irish banking sector, which will emerge from the policy decisions taken as a consequence of the collapse, runs a risk of a second crisis. We...

This paper examines residential sale mechanisms from an appraisal perspective and empirically tests for differences in the valuation process for auctioned and private treaty sales. We test the hypothesis that agents use different criteria in preparing the guide prices for auctioned housing, with...

The following paper presents a set of philosophical arguments that extend the standard set of property rights under the classical libertarian perspective to include the individual rights to ownership, management and transfer of risk and uncertainty. The paper shows that an extension of property...