Two ESRI research papers shortlisted for Miriam Hederman O'Brien prize 2024
Two ESRI research papers 'Long-term residential care in Ireland: Developments since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic' and 'A cross country perspective on Irish enterprise investment: Do fundamentals or constraints matter?' were shortlisted for the Miriam Hederman O'Brien Prize by the Foundation for Fiscal Studies.
Long-term residential care in Ireland: Developments since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic
The aim of this report is to examine how COVID-19 impacted the LTRC sector, and the changes in the sector that occurred since the onset of the pandemic. This report is one of a number of outputs from a Research Collaborative in Quality and Patient Safety (RCQPS) funded project1 that examines LTRC and COVID-19 in Ireland. The report will set the scene for later work which seeks to provide recommendations to help ensure the sustainability of the LTRC sector in the medium term.
Read more key findings here.
A Cross Country Perspective on Irish Enterprise Investment: Do Fundamentals or Constraints Matter?
Numerous research papers have used Irish-only data to test for the presence of an investment gap for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this paper, we use cross-country firm-level survey data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys to explore the investment patterns of Irish enterprises in a cross-country context and test whether an investment gap is present when compared to other countries. We use an accelerator model of investment which links capital expenditure to firm output growth and test the sensitivity of investment to this key fundamental for Ireland and other countries. We then estimate whether Irish firms face an investment gap relative to their European peers. We test whether any differences in cross-country patterns are driven by variation in financial factors (such as credit access or indebtedness) or firm quality (managerial experience, website usage, operating profitability). We find that Ireland’s investment in fixed tangible assets is relatively well explained by these factors whereas a clear underinvestment in research and development expenditure emerges. Factors associated with investment in research and development include the degree of foreign technology usage, digitalisation and internationalisation.
Read the journal article here.