Researcher from Trinity College Dublin has received a European Research Council Grant

A €1.4 million grant has been awarded to Professor Kevin O’Rourke of the Economics department at Trinity College Dublin. This grant will enable him to research the inter-relationships between trade, trade policy and the Great Depression. Professor O’Rourke is the first Irish-based researcher to receive a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator Grant.

Commenting on his research project, Professor O’Rourke said, ‘The economic literature on the Great Depression has focussed on the macroeconomic policies which led to it, with trade being relegated to a minor role in most previous studies. We therefore know remarkably little about the extent to which international commodity markets disintegrated during the period. Furthermore, very little is known about the causes of the slump in trade, and the role of protectionism, and about the consequences of interwar protection for employment and growth in the short and long run.’

Professor O’Rourke’s five year research project will explore the short run inter-relationships between output and employment, trade, and trade policy during the Great Depression. It will also place the event in the longer run context of the gradual spread of industry from the European and North American core to the European periphery and the rest of the world.

ERC Advanced Investigator Grants allow exceptional established research leaders in any field of science, engineering and scholarship to pursue frontier research of their choice. They aim to encourage risk-taking and support pioneering research projects.

Find out more about Trinity College Dublin.

Content added on 3rd February 2010.

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