Wednesday, July 12, 2017
WMB - Hugh Fraser Seminar Room 2 (University of Glasgow)
In this paper we argue that Ireland’s post-crisis economic recovery in Europe was driven by foreign direct investment (FDI) from Silicon Valley, and whilst this was made possible by Ireland’s low corporate tax rates, it was also a result of these firms using Ireland to access the European labor market. We evidence this contention via sectoral and geographic analyses while simultaneously showing that Irish fiscal policies have not redistributed gains from the recovery to the broader population. As a result, the recovery has been most actively felt by those in the FDI sectors, including foreign-national workers from the EU and beyond. We conclude by suggesting that this experience indicates that Ireland’s FDI-led model of capitalist development has been made possible by European integration, but given the unequal distribution of the economic benefits, it is unlikely to be politically sustainable.
