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The Knowledge Economy, Economic Transformations and ICT: Regional Dynamics in the Deployment Phase. Case study: Southern and Eastern Ireland

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  • Franck Barry

    (Trinity College Dublin)

Abstract

Ireland has been one of the global economic success stories of the last 20 years. National income rose from less than 65% of the EU15 average in the mid 1980s to well above parity today. Ireland is also the most FDI-intensive economy in Europe. Section A of the present report provides an analysis of the rapid economic development of the Celtic Tiger era and how Irelands status as a successful export platform for foreign Multinational Corporations was achieved. Though the production structure of the economy is heavily weighted towards (largely foreign-owned) high-technology and ICT-using industries, the country lags behind in terms of personal ICT use. The remainder of Section A presents regional and national data on ICT production and diffusion across the economy. The main focus of the report in on the more advanced Southern and Eastern region of the two NUTS II regions into which the country is divided. The indigenous software sector, the emergence and growth of which is the subject of Section B, is very heavily clustered in this region. Section B charts the role played by the foreign-owned high-tech ICT-using sectors in seeding this ICT-producing cluster and provides details of the types of state interventions that emerged through a process of trial and error to support the cluster. The conclusions presented in Section C reflect on the implications of the case study for the roles that FDI and different types of knowledge spillovers can play in the emergence of a knowledge-intensive cluster and on the types of policies that can play a role in assisting its evolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Franck Barry, 2013. "The Knowledge Economy, Economic Transformations and ICT: Regional Dynamics in the Deployment Phase. Case study: Southern and Eastern Ireland," JRC Research Reports JRC83549, Joint Research Centre.
    • Handle: RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc83549
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    ICT; Information and Communication Technologies; software; Ireland; Dublin;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • L52 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Industrial Policy; Sectoral Planning Methods
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

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