The Irish health care system offers a tax financed, universal entitlement to public care at a nominal user fee, nonetheless 50% of the Irish population purchase private health insurance. This paper empirically models the propensity to insure as a function of individual and household...

The Irish health care system offers a tax financed, universal entitlement to public care at a nominal user fee, nonetheless 50% of the Irish population purchase private health insurance. This paper empirically models the propensity to insure as a function of individual and household...

The international financial crisis manifests itself in Ireland not only as a crisis of the banking system, but also as a major fiscal crisis, aggravated by years of soft revenue policy and a housing bubble that has burst spectacularly. The severe drop in economic output results in a crisis of...

The growing integration of international markets raises the question of how, and to what extent, domestic political processes within states continue to matter. The thesis that markets force a ‘race to the bottom’ and the destruction of the welfare state has been discredited; there is...

Ireland’s rate of growth and employment creation during the 1990s far outstripped performance in the rest of the OECD. To what degree is this attributable to chance fluctuations in the international economy, the coincidental alignment of Irish politics and institutions with international...

Reception and implementation of public sector reform ideas varies across countries. Westminster-type systems (Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada) adopted New Public Management ideas most enthusiastically. Ireland was slower to do so. Continental European countries were the least...

The Irish economy has had one of the worst experiences of economic crisis within the EU since the onset of international financial crisis in 2007/8. That the crisis has an international dimension is beyond question. What needs to be explored further is the contribution of domestic political...