Importing, Exporting and Productivity in Irish Manufacturing

The impact of international trade on firm productivity is tested by accounting for firms' import as well as export status for a large panel of Irish manufacturing firms. Two-way traders and exporters-only are found to be the most productive firms, with a significant gap between them and importers-only and non-traders. tfp is calculated using a modified version of the Olley and Pakes (1996) estimator, taking account of a four-category trade status. Selection of the most productive firms into exporting or importing is not found in any robust sense. Fixed effects, as well as Propensity Score Matching with Difference in Differences, are used to calculate productivity improvements from entering into international trade. These improvements are found to be highly contingent on export status, with import status being unimportant. The key finding of the paper is that the gains from trade, for Ireland at least, appear to lie on the export side. Interestingly, quitting trade leads to a mirror image effect to that of entry for all trade statuses.Trade orientation, heterogeneous firms, productivity

Business Networks and inward FDI Policy

I outline the effect of business networks on trade, FDI and wel- fare in a two-country, two-firm duopoly. The network effect, following Greaney (2002), is modelled as a marginal cost disadvantage facing a firm from Foreign in selling to Home. Unlike traditional trade costs, this cost cannot be avoided by investing in Home. My main addition is a Nash game between governments in which they subsidise the fixed costs of inward FDI. While the network effect is shown to lead to favourable outcomes for the Home firm, I show that once government subsidies to the fixed costs of FDI are included and welfare functions analysed, the network effect leads to asymmetric outcomes unfavourable to Home. This result can help inform the debate on countries' (in particular Japan's) international trade and investment relations.Foreign Direct Investment, Network effects, Government Subsi- dies

Outsourcing and Firm Productivity in Irish Manufacturing

The causality from outsourcing, defined as the procurement of inputs from outside the boundaries of the firm, to productivity is tested for a large panel of Irish manufacturing firms. Theory suggests that as firms outsource more 'non-core' activities to specialized providers, productivity due to the firm benefiting from cheaper or higher-quality inputs and from reallocation of resources towards higher value-added activities. The international outsourcing case adds another dimension in the form of input variety, quality and technological embeddedness. I test the above hypothesis using a "System GMM" estimator to control for endogeneity in the panel and allow for a lagged dependent variable to be a regressor. International outsourcing is found to lead to productivity gains, but upon closer inspection it seems that firms? international orientation and type of industry both matter.Outsourcing, Productivity, Firm Structure

International Outsourcing's Role in International Technology Diffusion - The Irish Case

This paper analyses how international outsourcing affects plant productivity, with the major contribution lying in the identification of heterogeneous effects for firms with differing internationalisation status. The results point to a striking pattern: the status of being an outsourcer matters strongly for indigenous non-exporters, while for exporters and foreign affiliates, tfp increases are lower, insignificant and sometimes negative. On the other hand, a higher intensity of outsourcing matters for both exporters and foreign affiliates, but not for indigenous non-exporters. Similarly, in dynamic analysis, indigenous non-exporters are found to increase tfp for two periods after entering into international outsourcing, while indigenous exporters experience one more weakly significant period of growth. The key message of the paper is thus: outsourcing's role as a channel of technology diffusion is most pronounced when it serves as a first exposure to international markets.Outsourcing, Productivity, Firm Structure

Access to credit amongst SMEs: Pre and post-crisis evidence from Eastern Europe

Given the imminent re-structuring of the Irish banking sector, an issue of substantial policy importance is that of access to credit for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). As a compliment to ongoing efforts to improve our knowledge of this area using Irish firm-level data, we turn to Eastern Europe in an attempt to understand the effect of the crisis on firms’ credit access. Having matched countries from this sample to Ireland on the basis of the evolution of key macro variables between 2005 and 2009, we show how firm-level credit access has been significantly hampered using firm-level data from the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The results present a worrying picture, with the percentage of firms suffering from adverse credit conditions increasing significantly in Latvia and Estonia, the two countries with the most similar macro pattern to Ireland over the period of interest. We show using matching techniques that a firm in 2009 is 15% more likely to be credit constrained than a near-identical firm in 2005. We provide suggestive evidence that this is a result of credit rationing rather than an improvement in prudential lending practices in the banking sector.

Credit Access for Small and Medium Firms: Survey Evidence for Ireland

The extension of credit to SMEs in Ireland has been identified as a necessary condition for economic recovery and job growth. The debate on whether the reduction in credit to this sector is caused by credit rationing by banks or a lack of credit demand on the part of SMEs has received much attention in media and policy circles. Owing to a lack of relevant available micro-data, research on this issue in Ireland has been sparse to date. The aim of this paper is to provide evidence using recently available firm-level data from the Central Statistics Office and the European Central Bank. Using the CSO data, we find a moderate decline in credit applications, coupled with a very large increase in credit rejection rates. Using firm-level production data, we find no evidence that the accepted firms have been pooled according to firm performance - more productive and fast-growing firms are as likely to be rejected as any other firm. Using the ECB data, we show that Irish firms are 15 to 18 percent more likely to be rejected for credit than a comparable Eurozone SME. We show also that Irish firms are less likely to have had decreased credit demand than other Eurozone SMEs in the 2009-10 period.

Democratic Accountability and the Relative Obstacles to Foreign Investment

This paper considers the relationship between democratic accountability in de- veloping countries and the policies they use to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). We isolate two policy areas that governments of developing countries use to attract FDI: the tax burden on firms and the regulatory standards within which they operate. Countries that maintain high business taxes can only attract FDI by offering a less regulated business environment, which may have associated po- litical costs. The extent to which democratic accountability constrains leaders in their tax/regulatory policy choices is our main line of analysis. The novelty of the paper is that it endogenously determines policy choices within a political economy framework that recognizes the trade-offs between attracting FDI and maintaining political control. Examination of firm-level survey data from foreign firms operating in eastern Europe and central Asian economies confirms our model's main conclusion: regulation is seen to be a relatively larger obstacle to doing business in countries with greater democratic accountability. --

Does Bank Market Power Affect SME Financing Constraints? ESRI Research Bulletin 2014/1/5

This paper investigates the impact of bank market power on investment financing constraints experienced by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It uses a large sample of approximately 118,000 SMEs across 20 European countries over the period 2005-2008. Our main contribution is to test the degree to which firms are financially constrained and investigate how such financial constraints vary by the degree of market competition between domestic banks

New survey evidence on COVID-19 and Irish SMEs: Measuring the impact and policy response. ESRI Working Paper 698 April 2021.

In this paper, we use new survey data on the Irish SME population to trace out the impact of the pandemic on firms’ revenues, their capacity to adjust their cost base and their usage of policy supports. Between March and October 2020 over 70 per cent of firms experienced some fall in turnover with a median fall of 25 per cent compared to 2019. The impact of the shock appears uncorrelated with past firm performance which highlights its exogenous nature. Expenditure fell by 8.5 per cent on average with 40 per cent of firms cutting spending. Losses were incurred in over 30 per cent of enterprises with a further 30 per cent just breaking even. We find that about 61 per cent of SMEs received wage subsidies, 20 per cent of firms used tax warehousing while fewer than 6 per cent of firms used lending initiatives. Policy support take-up is more likely among those more affected by the downturn, while the smallest firms appear less likely to use support than larger firms

Synthesis and Anti-Candida Activity of Cobalt(II) Complexes of Benzene-1,2-Dioxyacetic Acid (bdoaH2). X-Ray Crystal Structures of [Co(bdoa)(H2O)3] ⋅3.5H2O and {[CO(phen)3](bdoa)}2⋅24H2O (phen = 1,10-Phenanthroline)

Co(CH3CO2)2⋅4H2O reacts with benzene-1,2-dioxyacetic acid (bdoaH2) to give the Co2+ complexes [Co(bdoa)(H2O)3]⋅H2O (1a) and [Co(bdoa)(H2O)3] ⋅3.5H2O (1b). Subsequent reaction of 1a with 1,10- phenanthroline produces [CO(phen)3] bdoa⋅10H2O (2a) and {[CO(phen)3](bdoa)}2⋅24H2O (2b). Molecular structures of 1b and 2b were determined crystallographically. In 1b the bdoa2-- ligates the metal by two carboxylate oxygens and two ethereal oxygens, whereas in 2b the bdoa2- is uncoordinated. The Mn2+ and Cu2+ complexes [Mn(bdoa)(phen)2]⋅H2O (3) and [Cu(pdoa)(imid)2] (4) were also synthesised, 1a-4 and other metal complexes of bdoa H2 (metal = Mn2+, Co2+ ,Cu2+, Cu+ ) were screened for their ability to inhibit the growth ofhe yeast Candida albicans. Complexes incorporating the 1,10-phenanthroline ligand were the most active