Rethinking Regional Policy in Ireland

Professor Michael Best and Dr John Bradley analyse the current state and economic future of the cross-border region in Ireland.

The report is in four parts. Part I (The Past) examines and reflects on the past history of the island economies. Part II (The Present) moves to the post-Belfast Agreement period and deals with the economic issues and challenges that confront policy makers on the island today. Part III (Inside the Border Economy) examines three specific border issues in detail: cross-border shopping, production capabilities in the border economy, and cross-border tourism. Part IV (The Future) explores possible consequences of policy choices that are currently being made, or which ought to be made, and the likely implications of developments in the world economy over the next decade for the economies of North and South.

Dr John Bradley was formerly a Research Professor at the Dublin-based Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and is an international research consultant in the areas of economic development strategies, with an emphasis on EU cohesion policy in all the member states. He was responsible for the design and implementation of the HERMIN system of models used by DG-REGIO to evaluate the impact of Structural Funds in the member states. He is a specialist on development barriers facing the post-Communist economies of Central and Eastern Europe, and regularly acts as a consultant to the European Commission and to government ministries in the EU and elsewhere.

Professor Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a Fellow of the Centre for International Business and Management, Judge Business School, Cambridge University. He specialises on industrial development strategies, business organisation, technological change, cluster evolution and regional innovation systems. His ‘capability and innovation’ perspective on industrial growth and change is developed and illustrated with enterprise, regional and national case studies in two books: The New Competitive Advantage: The Renewal of American Industry (Oxford, 2001) and The New Competition: Institutions of Industrial Restructuring (Harvard, 1990). Professor Best recently completed a study of the rise and rapid growth of the medical devices industry in Massachusetts that deploys an historical dataset of high tech companies to characterise the forces that drive industrial transitions and the emergence of new clusters.

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