Evaluates the level and focus of public investment at both the macroeconomic level and through detailed microeconomic analysis.

This book traces the evolution of the Irish economy since independence looking at how the state sought to shape, regulate and deregulate economic activity to deal with the challenges posed by the wider international environment.

Rural areas are often viewed as isolated and stagnating areas and urban areas as their opposites. Against such a backdrop, this book seeks to unveil a set of dynamics that view rural areas as ‘translocal’ in the sense that they are ‘changing’ and ‘interconnected’. Social transformations take place in rural areas as the result of intense exchanges between different people, settings and geographies. Accordingly, rural-urban but also rural-rural interrelations on international and national scales are strongly contributing to rural change. Translocal ruralism is exemplified through the analysis of local and global migratory flows, the activities of rural firms in national and global arenas, the spread of different forms of transportation and dislocation, and the growing information society, which enables rural spaces to be connected to the world and improves new ways of interconnection and sociability practices. The book is structured into two parts, which intertwine the dynamics of rural spaces. The first part, ‘Linking nodes: people and networks connecting places’, is concerned with mobilities such as migration and commuting, and the establishment of national and global networks. The second part, ‘International mobilities: a tension between scales’, analyses the dynamics of international migration and mobilities in rural areas.

We're in the midst of a global economic crisis and a domestic economic disaster. But enough of the hand-wringing. Where did this all come from, where are we now and, most importantly, what's going to happen next? In a compelling and jargon-free argument, economist Marc Coleman makes sense of this mess we're in with clear, accessible analysis of Ireland's economic situation and where it might be heading. Addressing first the global dimension - how early warnings were ignored, why American monetary policy failed the world and why an unfinished revolution in globalisation left us defenceless - Coleman makes a case for a new kind of capitalism. The unravelling threads that created the Irish financial crisis are also untangled. The death of competitiveness, the mismanagement of tax revenues, issues of demographics, bad urban planning, stupid banks and an unsuccessful regulator are all examined and, combined with dysfunctional politics, are shown to be the root causes of the predicament we now find ourselves in. But all is not lost. With a positive, can-do approach to the economic crisis, Coleman creates a fix-it manual for the future, explaining how Ireland can prosper again by adopting a smart economy, reforming social partnership and curing a warped fiscal cycle with budgetary and electoral reform. Ireland's economic nightmare will end. It is a dream not destroyed, merely delayed.