ABSTRACT
The partition of Ireland in the early 1920s meant that the area comprising the six north-eastern counties, Northern Ireland, remained part of the United Kingdom. The status of Northern Ireland was, therefore, essentially that of a region of the United Kingdom. Even though it had a separate Parliament up to 1972, which had rather greater power to influence the economy of the area than local authorities in other regions of the UK, these powers were nevertheless subject to the dominant economic policy formulated by the Westminster Parliament. Thus, unlike the Republic, Northern Ireland was unable to impose tariffs or quotas, to conclude trade agreements with other countries, or to establish its own monetary and exchange rate policies. Even in fiscal policy, although Northern Ireland benefited from the net transfers that tend to favour poorer areas in developed countries, it was constrained by what the UK authorities were willing to finance. For all of these reasons, as well as the fact that there was relatively little economic interdependence between the two parts of Ireland, Northern Ireland's experience was far more influenced by what happened in Britain than by what happened in the Republic.
