Frank Barry


 I was appointed to the Chair of International Business and Economic Development at Trinity College Dublin in 2007, having formerly been Associate Professor of Economics at University College Dublin.   My professional interests are in
International Trade, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Economic Development and the Irish Economy.

My current research spans four areas: (i) Irish Economic Policy, (ii) Ireland of the 1950s, (iii)  Foreign Direct Investment and Industry Analyses, and (iv) Development Economics.  The following provides some details of my recent work in each of these areas:

Irish Economic Policy

Recently I have been working on political economy issues, including the political economy of the current crisis. A paper on "Politics and Economic Policymaking in Ireland" is available here.   "Institutional Capacity and Economic Development", which dates from 2006 and includes a discussion of the Celtic Tiger era while it still raged, is referenced under Development Economics below, .

          There is much more to be written on "Public Sector Reform and the Marketplace for Ideas".  A synopsis of ideas              presented to a 2009 conference on Transforming Public Services is here.

"Social Partnership, Competitiveness and Exit from Fiscal Crisis", is an academic paper published in Spring 2009,  available here.

Ireland of the 1950s

The severe economic crisis of 1950s Ireland spawned some major policy innovations such as the introduction of Export Profits Tax Relief in 1956, which was the forerunner of Ireland's continuing low corporation-tax stategy.  The decade also witnessed the demise of protectionism.  (An ongoing research project studies "Foreign Ownership of Irish Business under Protectionism").  Recent research papers of mine on the period include:

"Foreign Investment and the Politics of Export Profits Tax Relief 1956", available here.

"Politics and Fiscal Policy under Lemass: A Theoretical Appraisal", May 2009, available here.

"Agricultural Interests and Irish Trade Policy over the Last Half-Century:  a Tale Told Without Recourse to Heroes", presented to a conference in honour of Tom Garvin in March 2009, is here.

"Theoretical and Pragmatic Elements in the Civil Service Debates on Trade Liberalisation", presented to a conference in honour of T.K.Whitaker in September 2008, is here.

Ireland of the 1930s is discussed in my paper with Mary E. Daly entitled "Irish Perceptions of the Great Depression", which is here.

Foreign Direct Investment and Industry Analyses

"Ireland's Inward FDI over the Recession and Beyond", joint with Adele Bergin of the ESRI, is being regularly updated.  The March 2010 working paper version is available here.

"FDI Implications of some recent European Court of Justice Decisions on Corporation Tax Matters" (with Rosemary Healy-Rae), published in European Business Organisation Law Review in 2010 is here.

"The Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base  Debate", October 2008, draft available here.

"The Irish Pharmaceutical Industry over the Boom Period and Beyond" (with Chris Van Egeraat), September 2008, draft available here.

"Foreign Direct Investment, Industrial Policy and the Emergence of an Irish Indigenous Software Cluster".

"The Decline of the Computer Hardware Sector: How Ireland Adjusted" (with Chris Van Egeraat), ESRI Quarterly Economic Commentary, Spring 2008, paper available here.

Some broader historical papers on inward FDI include:
“Foreign Direct Investment and Institutional Co-Evolution in Ireland”, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 55, 3, 262-288, 2007, paper available here.

“Export Platform FDI: the Irish Experience”, European Investment Bank Papers, 2004, paper available here.

Development Economics
Besides acting as a resource person for the African Economic Research Consortium, I am lead researcher on a component of a larger research project ("Turning Globalisation to National Advantage: Economic Policy Lessons from Ireland's Experience", joint with researchers from the TCD Department of Economics and the Economic and Social Research Institute) that looks at the question of transferability: how might the lessons of the Irish experience be transferred to developing countries with very different institutional structures?

This was the topic of my inaugural lecture Realising the Future: What Lessons for Africa from Irish development?
presented at Trinity College in April 2008.  This was partly based on "Institutional Capacity and Economic Development", which looked at Ireland's Celtic Tiger era through the lens of development economics (available here).

A recent paper comparing the post-colonial experiences of Ireland and Zimbabwe, joint with Patrick Honohan and Tara McIndoe, is available as an Institute for International Integration Studies working paper.

"Policy Coherence for Development: Five Challenges", joint with Alan Matthews and Michael King, was published in Irish Studies in International Affairs, and is available here.


This web site also contains the following pages. To read them, click on the link.
                                                                                                            most recent update: July  2011
To send an email, click here: Frank.Barry@tcd.ie