UCD Researchers: Professor Peter Neary, Dr Frank Barry, Dr Dermot Leahy, Dr Kevin Denny, Dr Colm Harmon.
The research priorities for this programme are:
Trade and the New Economic Geography
The increased international mobility of firms, driven by developments in technology, improved communications and computerised manufacturing and encouraged by a shift towards greater trade liberalisation, deregulation, and market integration, has led to the emergence of the field of ‘new economic geography’. The research team is investigating a number of interlinked issues in this area including:
-Magnitude and pattern of foreign direct investment into the EU;
-Implications of competition between national governments to encourage ‘national champions’;
- Potential gains from international co-ordination of industrial policies;
- Implications for location patterns of firms.
This programme will participate in a major international project to review, synthesise and extend the empirical work on determinants and consequences of foreign direct investment.
International Trade and Labour Markets
Research in this area pursues two complementary paths:
-At the theoretical level, attempts are made to show how small changes in trade volumes can have large effects on relative wages as domestic firms respond to potential as well as actual competition and an improvement in a foreign firm’s competitive position may prompt defensive reactions by domestic firms;
-At the empirical level, recent work in ISSC has shown how international differences in the returns to schooling are affected by structural characteristics of national economies. This work will be extended to examine the mechanisms through which foreign competition serves to impart competitive pressures on domestic firms.
Professor Peter Neary is a Research Associate of the Globalisation Programme at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at LSE and also has links with the Centre for the Economics of Globalisation at the University of Nottingham. Some of the work described will be carried out jointly with CEP Deputy Director Professor Tony Venables.
