Eleanor Doyle

University College Cork | UCC · Economics -

Purpose Effective policy to support business ecosystems should build on evidence-based analyses of firm-level activities and outcomes. This paper aims to contribute to this requirement and makes three contributions. The first contribution is to extend the application of the network capital concept to a variety of eight distinct linkage categories (...

Rising concentration across many developed economies has seen issues of competition and market power take centre stage. This report contributes to that debate by examining the role of technology in altering the balance of competition between large and small firms. It focuses on digitalisation as a potential driver of enhanced benefits to scale, by...

Economic activity is embedded in the reality of a given region and its market structure. This regularity also materializes in agri-food markets. Location plays an important role in building competitive advantage because geographic proximity, resulting from location decisions of entities operating within an industry, is a significant condition for s...

This paper analyses the impact of specialisation, diversity, amongst other factors, on sectoral employment growth across Irish regions, for the period 2006-2012. A fixed effects estimator is utilised to analyse these effects across 26 (2-digit level) sectors. Results indicate that specialisation had a positive impact on employment growth, while the...

The areas of Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and innovation are under-explored in research generally, and specifically in sustainability-oriented research. In this paper we propose a practice-based concept of Compliance-Innovation and set out its significance for sustainability. Development of the concept is based on a literature review and e...

For almost thirty years the cluster concept and cluster policy have retained strong traction across both academic and policymaking circles. In this paper we select issues of current relevance, particularly for policymaking, from contexts of the evolution of understanding of the concept, the experience of implementing policy and on-going research. T...

Objective: This article offers an extensive review of Sustainable Competitiveness as an integrating concept bridging current understandings around sustainable development and encompassing the aspects of economic, social and environmental sustainability. Research Design & Methods: Concepts related to sustainable development are reviewed and their r...

Regional employment growth has become an area of increasing interest to academics and policymakers alike over recent years. To date little empirical research has been undertaken in regards to the relationship between economic diversity and regional employment growth with even less research considering the potential for regional spillovers. This pap...

Motivated by ongoing research into the cluster concept that considers dynamic features of economic development and the cluster life cycle, differences between traded clusters and local activity across different spatial scales are examined for Ireland. Using recent cluster definitions for Europe, this paper presents clustering patterns within the Ir...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to offer clarity on a central concept introduced in Porter’s The Competitive Advantage of Nations , i.e. the cluster. The authors situate the concept introduced by Porter (1990) relative to two of its antecedents, the industrial district and industrial complex. Placing the cluster in a historical context permits...

For the practitioner doctorate program offered at the School of Economics, University College Cork, Ireland, the focus is on enhancing effectiveness of participants’ professional and organizational practice. For this to happen consideration of “personal elements of knowledge” (Polanyi, 1966, p. 11) is required, that is, knowledge as experienced, ac...

Motivated by a gap in the literature linking compliance and innovation, this paper develops the novel concept of Compliance–Innovation (C–I). Based on a review of the literature and interviews with experienced practitioners, we characterise C–I as a transformational process to drive organisational improvements in sustainability and competitiveness....

The organisational capacities to absorb, adapt and reconfigure resources in response to market challenges, regulatory reform and complex stakeholders and their expectations is necessary to achieve the strategic growth businesses need. Through the Mind-of-the Product (MotP) concept we outline how the variety of targets demanding business attention c...

A next major impetus for strategic growth can be funded through Compliance-Innovation a transformational process through which conformity with all requirements – compliance – drives innovations in quality. The current lack of integration of Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC), Innovation, IT and Strategy results in lost opportunities for growth. I...

Motivated by the important role of trade in driving and reflecting economic transformation, we focus on the export structure of two small export-oriented economies, Ireland and Finland 2000–2009, from the perspective of the sophistication of both economies’ exports, i.e., the extent to which high-value products characterise each country’s export pr...

Strategic growth can be delivered through Innovative Compliance a process through which conformity with requirements-compliance-drives improvements in quality, productivity and competitiveness. In this process GRC is an engine for growth by facilitating commercialisation of knowledge and business sustainability. The integration of Governance, R...

This paper offers an empirical examination of the determinants of a nation's ability to produce commercially viable innovations, measured as Patents Granted across a sample of 23 advanced economies. The approach employed is based on estimating National Innovative Capacity that focuses on the long-run ability of economies to produce and/or commercia...

Purpose – Penrose introduced the concept of “unused services” which she identified as the internal inducement to firm growth. The purpose of this paper is to explore “unused services”, insufficiently examined in the literature to date, by applying Eastern conceptual thinking to refine Penrose's arguments. Design/methodology/approach – The centrali...

Recognizing that gains historically attributed to trade capture instead the roles of institutions and geography, we estimate the relationship between labor productivity and trade for a panel of countries, 1980 to 2000. We use real and nominal openness as measures of trade. The endogeneity of trade and institutional quality is accounted for with ins...

Outsourcing has long been used, notably in IT where the investments required to run systems were large and expertise was in short supply. Throughout the 70s and 80s, many companies lacked the IT infrastructure to run their applications efficiently and relied on providers of IT services for payroll and accounting applications. Since then, outsourcin...

Outsourcing has long been used, notably in IT where the investments required to run systems were large and expertise was in short supply. Throughout the 70s and 80s, many companies lacked the IT infrastructure to run their applications efficiently and relied on providers of IT services for payroll and accounting applications. Since then, outsourcin...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explain the competitiveness obstacles that European businesses face, which, if not addressed, limit the potential of the EU economy, particularly in terms of the Lisbon goals. Adopting a broadly defined compliance‐centred approach, the paper seeks to identify how some significant competitiveness obstacles of...

We estimate the relationship between productivity and trade for a panel of countries over the period 1980 to 2000 using instrumental-variables estimation of a productivity equation. We note that some estimates of productivity gains attributed to trade capture instead the roles of institutions and geography. The endogeneity of trade and institutiona...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

Irish policymakers interest in the concept of industrial clusters dates back to the Culliton Report, which recommended the promotion of industrial clusters focused on niches of national competitive advantage. This view of agglomeration economies based on industrial clusters derives largely from the work of Michael Porter. Given the widespread use i...

Given the nature and range of investigations of the trade/productivity relationship, we now know that possible reverse causation must be a consideration in empirical research. Indeed, some research finds that estimates of productivity gains attributed to trade capture instead the roles of institutions and geography. Here we estimate the relationshi...

Human capital has long been regarded as one of the main drivers of growth and productivity in an economy. This chapter analyses and outlines the theoretical and empirical findings linking human capital to productivity growth at a macroeconomic level. There is compelling evidence in support of the view that increased human capital boosts growth, ind...

Bilateral import unit values are constructed to investigate the extent and speed of exchange rate and production cost pass-through into the unit values of Irish imports (total and sectoral) from the UK using Menon's (199639. Menon , J . 1996. The degree and determinants of exchange rate pass-through: market structure, non-tariff barriers and multi...

This case illustrates the importance of a reliable information systems infrastructure in supporting the operations and the development of modern businesses. A longitudinal analysis (1995-2001) of Topps Ireland Ltd. is presented. Topps attempted to acquire and implement a state-of-the-art Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in order to increas...

Sources of Irish growth are examined using a recently developed Granger causality procedure with particular focus on the role of Irish exports. As augmented production function is employed where the inclusion of variables in addition to exports ensures that different impacts on exports and output are controlled for and thus, a more accurate testing...

This study examines how exchange-rate volatility affected Ireland's exports to its most important trading partner, the United Kingdom, from 1979 to 1992. To ensure reliable inferences regarding income and price elasticities and the impact of exchange rate volatility on exports, the time series properties of the series used are investigated. The ana...

New evidence is presented on the degree of aggregate and sectoral labour productivity convergence among 11 EU countries between 1970 and 1990. As with studies for other groups of countries, it is found that there is a greater degree of aggregate than sectoral convergence. Aggregate productivity converged at 0.9 percent per annum, with agriculture a...

Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effect...

The secular transformation in Irish sectoral employment shares, which has been stimulated by the change in focus of both Irish industrial and trade policies, mirrors the significant changes that have occurred in international structures of production. Estimates the contribution of changes in Ireland’s sectoral employment structure to labour product...

Despite the theoretical relationships proposed regarding exports and output, recent empirical research has found no conclusive support for a causal relationship between exports and output. This paper examines the causal relationship between exports and output using Irish data.

New evidence is presented on the degree of aggregate and sectoral labour productivity convergence among eleven EU countries between 1970 and 1990.

We estimate the relationship between productivity and trade for a panel of countries over the period 1980 to 2000 using instrumental-variables estimation of a productivity equation. We note that some estimates of productivity gains attributed to trade capture instead the roles of institutions and geography. The endogeneity of trade and institutiona...