A real options model is used to explain why Irish farmers have been slow to switch from traditional farming to forestry despite numerous government incentives. In the theoretical model our results depend on profits from traditional farming relative to forestry. Under reasonable parameterisations...

Output per worker can be expressed as a function of technological efficiency and of the capital-output ratio. Because technology is exogenous in the Solow model, all of the endogenous convergence dynamics take place through the adjustment of the capital-output ratio. This paper uses the...

We review the recent performance of the Euro area economy, focusing in detail on the separate roles played by labour input, capital input, and total factor productivity (TFP). After a long period of catching up with US levels of labour productivity, Euro area productivity growth has, since the...

After 10 years of unprecedented increases in both prices and activity levels, the Irish housing market appears to be entering a period of some uncertainty. In the early part of 2007, Irish house prices, for the first time in recent history, experienced negative growth rates - leading indicators...

The widespread nature of the recent international house price boom suggests that the underlying forces behind this sustained price increase may be common across countries. Many OECD countries have, over the past decade, witnessed sustained increases in living standards while housing...

Despite the widespread popularity of the Solow growth model, much of the recent empirical work based on the classic framework misrepresents a crucial feature of the model. Namely, the growth rate of technological progress, assumed to be exogenous in the Solow model, is often identified as being...

The signing of the Kyoto Protocol and the official recognition of forestry’s capacity to sequester carbon has prompted considerable interest, within the European Union, in forestry as a competing land use application. However, despite large increases in grants to forestry, afforestation rates,...

This paper uses a multivariate autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity model to investigate the effect of British grain prices on their Irish equivalents. We find that in the long run the law of one price holds and in the short run the model captures the salient features of Irish grain...

We review the recent performance of the Euro area economy, focusing in detail on the separate roles played by labour input, capital input, and total factor productivity (TFP). After a long period of catching up with US levels of labour productivity, Euro area productivity growth has, since the...