Input-Output tables have become the workhorse data structure when considering global supply chains since, by definition, they measure how production in one countrysector is linked to that in another via trade in intermediate inputs. What traditional input-output tables miss, however, is the role of knowledge. In this paper, we use the well-knownWorld Input-Output Database and construct a corresponding “Knowledge” input-output dataset based on patenting information from PATSTAT. Thus, for 44 countries over 20 sectors for 15 years, we are able to compare linkages via intermediate goods to those created by patent citations. We illustrate that these two networks share strong similarities in terms of the size of activity and linkages yet important differences – most notably the interaction between Asia and the rest of the world – are found. We then conclude by illustrating the link between patents and a measure of intangible capital that can be constructed from the World Input-Output Database, a relation that is a function of tax haven status. This then suggests that there is a likely direct connection between the data found in the production data and those derived from the patent data.

In recent years the finance industry from an academic and practitioner perspective has placed heavy emphasis on the analysis of volatility models. This is understandable given the importance that volatility plays for these agents and the fact that it is not directly observable representing somewhat of a holy grail. In particular, volatility modelling feeds directly into risk management practices.

Empirical evidence strongly suggests that R&D increases a firm’s "absorptive capacity" (its ability to absorb spillovers from other firms) as well as contributing directly to profitability. We explore the theoretical implications of this. We specify a general model of the absorptive capacity process and show that costly absorption both raises the effectiveness of own R&D and lowers the effective spillover coefficient. This weakens the case for encouraging research joint ventures, even if there is complete information sharing between its members. It also implies an additional strategic pay-off to policies that raise the level of extra-industry knowledge.

Empirical evidence strongly suggests that R&D increases a firm’s "absorptive capacity" (its ability to absorb spillovers from other firms) as well as contributing directly to profitability. We explore the theoretical implications of this. We specify a general model of the absorptive capacity process and show that costly absorption both raises the effectiveness of own R&D and lowers the effective spillover coefficient. This weakens the case for encouraging research joint ventures, even if there is complete information sharing between its members. It also implies an additional strategic pay-off to policies that raise the level of extra-industry knowledge.

The paper examines the relationship between cognitive ability at approximately seventeen years of age and academic achievement in a nationwide set of examinations taken prior to this time. The sample comprised 6,216 children who participated in wave 3 of the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) longitudinal study. Other variables assessed included gender, personality measures, household income, parental educational achievement, and school attributes. Up to ten variables made a statistically significant contribution in explaining achievement, but cognitive ability was by far the most important, followed by gender. Entering a cognitive ability measure taken in wave 2 of the longitudinal survey (four years previously) instead of wave 3 produced an almost identical outcome in a multiple regression. While boys outperformed girls on the cognitive measure, girls outperformed boys, with a small effect size, in educational achievement; this might be explained by girls’ higher scores on the dimension, ‘conscientiousness’. Household income was only modestly associated with educational achievement.

This paper studies how a student’s ordinal rank in a peer group affects performance and specialisation choices in university. By exploiting data with repeated random assignment of students to teaching sections, we find that a higher rank increases performance and the probability of choosing related follow-up courses and majors. We document two types of dynamic effects. First, earlier ranks are less important than later ranks. Second, responses to rank changes are asymmetric: improvements in rank raise performance, while decreases in rank have no effect. Rank effects partially operate through students’ expectations about future grades.

Are return migrants 'losers' who fail to adapt to the challenges of the host economy, and thereby exacerbate the brain drain linked to emigration? Or are they 'winners' whose return enhances the human and physical capital of the home country? These questions are the subject of a burgeoning literature. This paper analyzes a new database culled from the 1911 Irish population census to address these issues for returnees to Ireland from North America more than a century ago. The evidence suggests that those who returned had the edge over the population as a whole in terms of human capital, if not also over those who remained abroad.

Activation policies aimed at getting working-age people off benefits and into work have become a buzzword in labour market policies. Yet they are defined and implemented differently across OECD countries and their success rates vary too. The Great Recession has posed a severe stress test for these policies with some commentators arguing that they are at best 'fair weather' policies.  This paper sheds light on these issues mainly via the lens of recent OECD research.  It presents the stylized facts on how OECD countries have responded to the Great Recession in terms of ramping up their spending on active labour market policies (ALMPs), a key component in any activation strategy.  It then reviews the macroeconomic evidence on the impact of ALMPs on employment and unemployment rates.  This is followed by a review of the key lessons from recent OECD country reviews of activation policies.  It concludes with a discussion of crucial unanswered questions about activation.

In professions of public officials, the LGBTIQ identity might serve as a permanently negotiated border between the private and the public. The forced negotiations of one’s identity within the authority bring about specific forms of activism, performed by state officials. The working paper demonstrates results from the empirical research on public officials in Germany and Russia, focusing on the intersection of LGBTIQ identity and belonging to public offices. By doing so, the working paper detects a special meaning of the private/public divide as essential aspect of LGBTIQ-identity articulation and discusses its relevancy for the activism.

How markets perform during famines has long been a contentious issue. Recent research tends to associate famine with market segmentation and hoarding. The evidence of this paper, based on an analysis of the spatial and temporal patterns of price movements during four famines in preindustrial Europe, is that markets functioned ‘normally’ in times of crisis.

Although largely absent from modern accounts of the Industrial Revolution, watches were the first mass produced consumer durable, and were Adam Smith’s pre-eminent example of technological progress. In fact, Smith makes the notable claim that watch prices may have fallen by up to 95 per cent over the preceding century; a claim that this paper attempts to evaluate. We look at changes in the reported value of over 3,200 stolen watches from records of criminal trials in the Old Bailey court in London from 1685 to 1810. Before allowing for quality improvements we find that the real price of watches in nearly all categories falls steadily by 1.3 per cent per year, equivalent to a fall of 75 per cent over a century, a rate considerably above the growth rate of average labour productivity in British industry in the early nineteenth century.

This paper looks at the concept of consociational government (or the principle of fully-fledged power sharing) as it has evolved in recent comparative studies of the politics of divided societies. It describes the stages through which this concept moved to the centre of the political agenda in Northern Ireland, based on contributions by policy makers, academics, journalists and others. It reviews the difficult history of efforts to translate this principle into practice, noting the challenge posed by strong political cultural resistance to any principle other than the majoritarian, Westminister model. It looks at the stages by which powerful objections to consociation—in particular from unionists—gave way to a more matter-of-fact acceptance of this principle, and considers the factors which lay behind this transition.

This paper proposes a theoretical analysis of the private provision of care within public hospitals and assesses its impact on the quality and cost of healthcare. We also capture this policy’s impact on the number of outpatients that are seen and the number that are cured. We show that the private income gathered by consultants engaged in dual practice has a negative impact on the level of care being provided as it incentivises consultants to focus on the number of patients seen. However, the private fees generate lower healthcare costs. Hence the removal of private practice in public hospitals is only optimal when the benefit associated with curing patients is large enough. The impact on waiting lists is ambiguous. Considering that consultants may differ in their ability, we show that the optimal contracts enable senior doctors (with more experience) to get a greater private income than junior doctors when discrimination between senior and junior physicians is allowed. When discrimination is not allowed, it is optimal to offer a uniform contract. Proposing distinct contracts, as currently done in Ireland, increases healthcare costs due to incentive compatibility issues.

Concern about climate change and dependence on fossil fuels is inducing countries to develop and deploy renewable energy technologies. Heat pump systems, which extract heat either from the air, water, or ground sources, are among the viable options for space heating and domestic hot water production in the residential sector. In this paper, we develop an agent-based model to analyze the adoption process of heat pump systems and the underlying diffusion factors. Uniquely, we use a recent nationally representative Irish household survey data to derive parameters for decision rules for technology adoption in the model. In this research, we explore how financial aspects, psychological factors and social networks influence the adoption and diffusion of heat pump systems. We also discuss how individual household socio-demographic characteristics, building characteristics, geographical location of household and policy incentives affect the adoption process. The research should be of interest to policymakers, as we use the model to test the impact of various policies on technology adoption rates.

In April 1806, Valentine Browne Lawless, the second baron Cloncurry, noticed his young wife Eliza walking arm-in-arm with his friend, Sir John Bennett Piers, a notorious womanizer, spendthrift and gambler. His suspicions aroused, Cloncurry confronted his wife, who confessed to having an affair with Piers, then staying as a guest on their estate at Lyons, Co. Kildare. A miniature portrait of Piers and a lock of his hair were found among Lady Cloncurry’s possessions. Piers, unsurprisingly, made a hasty departure, but wrote several times to Cloncurry denying the affair and making vague offers to duel. Cloncurry and Piers had been friends since their school days; furthermore, Piers owed Cloncurry a sum of money. While nothing, presumably, could entirely assuage the hurt feelings and wounded pride of the husband in such circumstances, the subsequent award of £20,000 damages by a King’s Bench jury may have helped. Represented by John Philpot Curran and Charles Kendal Bushe, he sued Piers for ‘criminal conversation’. Meanwhile, Lady Cloncurry, having been portrayed as ‘an artless and weak girl of nineteen’, left the country, her reputation in tatters, and later gave birth to a son presumed to be Piers’. Criminal conversation or ‘crim con’ was a ‘notorious’ civil action which allowed a cuckolded husband to recover damages from his wife’s lover. It evolved out of de facto blackmail agreements in the late seventeenth century and gained popularity among the English nobility in the eighteenth century until its abolition by the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, but because this Act did not extend to Ireland, Irish crim con actions endured until the twentieth century.

The relational realities of nurturing constitute a discrete site of social practice within and through which inequalities are created. The affective worlds of love, care and solidarity are therefore sites of political import that need to be examined in their own right while recognizing their inter-relatedness with economic, political and cultural systems in the generation of injustice. Drawing on extensive sociological research undertaken on care work, paid work and on education in a range of different studies, this paper argues that Fraser’s three-dimensional framework for analyzing injustice needs to expanded to include a fourth, relational dimension.The affective relations within which caring is grounded constitute a discrete field of social action within and through which inequalities and exploitations can occur. Social justice issues are not confined to questions of redistribution, recognition or representation therefore; they also involve discrete sites of relational practice that impact on parity of participation, a principle which Fraser identifies as key to determining what is socially just.