To examine the drivers of small-and medium-sized enterprise (SME) growth, we adopt a holistic multivariate modelling approach, integrating macroeconomic determinants with the internal (firm characteristics and firm strategy) drivers more commonly investigated in firm growth studies. Utilising such an extended set of variables addresses a gap in the extant firm growth literature in relation to external growth factors, offering novel insights on the seeming randomness of firm growth. Our system generalised method of moments estimation results indicate that the macroeconomic environment influences firm growth both directly and indirectly. Based on the study of manufacturing SME growth in Ireland, our findings provide evidence on the integrated effects of macroeconomic conditions, firm characteristics and firm strategy for SME growth. They also highlight, from a theoretical perspective, the need to acknowledge the multidimensional nature of SME growth.

This article provides methodological and empirical insights into the estimation of technical efficiency in the nursing home sector. Focusing on long-stay care and using primary data, we examine technical and scale efficiency in 39 public and 73 private Irish nursing homes by applying an input-oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA). We employ robust bootstrap methods to validate our nonparametric DEA scores and to integrate the effects of potential determinants in estimating the efficiencies. Both the homogenous and two-stage double bootstrap procedures are used to obtain confidence intervals for the bias-corrected DEA scores. Importantly, the application of the double bootstrap approach affords true DEA technical efficiency scores after adjusting for the effects of ownership, size, case-mix, and other determinants such as location, and quality. Based on our DEA results for variable returns to scale technology, the average technical efficiency score is 62%, and the mean scale efficiency is 88%, with nearly all units operating on the increasing returns to scale part of the production frontier. Moreover, based on the double bootstrap results, Irish nursing homes are less technically efficient, and more scale efficient than the conventional DEA estimates suggest. Regarding the efficiency determinants, in terms of ownership, we find that private facilities are less efficient than the public units. Furthermore, the size of the nursing home has a positive effect, and this reinforces our finding that Irish homes produce at increasing returns to scale. Also, notably, we find that a tendency towards quality improvements can lead to poorer technical efficiency performance.

The performance of the Irish economy has received considerable international commentary in recent years. The focus of this attention has generally been on how an economy with severe fiscal imbalances and endemic unemployment in the 1980s was transformed in the 1990s so that it exhibited phenomenal economic growth and employment gains. This paper argues that the turnaround in the fortunes of the Irish economy was due to the confluence of a number of endogenous and exogenous factors and explains that tourism, often overlooked by commentators, played an important role in the transformation. The paper focuses on the performance of tourism since the mid-1980s, outlines the sector's contribution in the macroeconomy and details some emerging concerns that must be addressed if the tourism industry is to continue to play an important role in the economy of Ireland.

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