Foreign direct investment and productivity spillovers: Evidence from the Spanish experience

Foreign Direct Investment and Productivity Spillovers: Evidence from the Spanish Experience. — The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on firms’ productivity using a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1990–1998. Firstly, we show that for countries, like Spain, that are undergoing significant structural changes over the period in question it is important to control for both time-invariant as well as time-variant sectoral characteristics. Secondly, we confirm previous findings that one needs to take into account the “absorptive capacity” of firms when considering whether they are able to avail of externalities associated with FDI presence. For the Spanish case we find that only firms with sufficient levels of such capacity experience positive spillovers.     

Economic Integration and Regional Business Cycles: Evidence from the Iberian Regions*

This paper provides evidence of the positive impact of economic integration on EU regions’ business cycles convergence by focusing on two neighbouring countries: Spain and Portugal. We show that while a rise in cross‐country business cycle correlation has also been experienced by other European countries, it has been relatively more pronounced for Iberian regions. Econometric evidence suggests that the existence of an administrative border, the economic size of regions and their industrial structures can explain a substantial proportion of regional cycles.     

Spillovers through backward linkages from multinationals: Measurement matters!

We argue that the measures of backward linkages used in recent papers on spillovers from multinational companies are potentially problematic, as they depend on a number of restrictive assumptions, namely that (i) multinationals use domestically produced inputs in the same proportion as imported inputs, (ii) multinationals have the same input sourcing behaviour as domestic firms, irrespective of their country of origin, and (iii) the demand for locally produced inputs by multinationals is proportional to their share of locally produced output. We discuss why these assumptions are likely to be violated in practice, and provide alternative measures that overcome these drawbacks. Our results, using plant level data for Ireland, clearly show that the choice of backward linkage measure and thus, the assumptions behind it, matters greatly in order to draw possible conclusions regarding the existence of foreign direct investment (FDI)-related spillovers. Using the standard measure employed in the literature we fail to find robust evidence for spillovers through backward linkages. However, when we use alternative measures of backward linkages that relax assumptions (i)–(iii), we find robust evidence for positive FDI backward spillover effects.     

Low socioeconomic class and consumer complexity expectations for new product technology

This research improves the field's understanding of subsistence consumers by investigating how low socioeconomic class relates to expectations of complexity from new products. The study tests a model of the relationship between consumer socioeconomic class, self-esteem, self-assessed capabilities, and knowledge about product domains, and the influence of self-esteem, self-assessed capabilities, and product domain knowledge on consumer expectations of complexity when facing a new product technology. A sample of 266 Colombian consumers representing different socio-economic classes is used to test the model using structural equation modeling. The results show that self-esteem, self-assessed capabilities, and product domain knowledge are predictive of expectations of complexity, with low self-esteem, low capabilities, and low product knowledge leading to higher complexity expectations. Socioeconomic status relates closely to self-esteem, self-assessed capabilities, and product domain knowledge and can be used as a surrogate for the individual-level constructs.     

Efficiency spillovers from foreign direct investment in the EU periphery: A comparative study of Greece,Ireland, and Spain

Despite a growing number of empirical studies on efficiency spillovers arising from the presence of multinational firms for a number of countries, general conclusions on this issue have been inhibited by differences in the data sets and estimation techniques used across studies. In this paper we conduct a comparative empirical study for Greece, Ireland and Spain by creating comparable data sets and estimating identical models. Our results show evidence of spillovers in Ireland and Spain only, although these positive spillovers seem to depend on whether firms have the absorptive capacity to capture technological spillovers and the criteria used to classify them as foreign affiliates. JEL no. F23, O30     

Life cycle and housing decisions: a comparison by age cohorts

The use of decomposition methodologies when the involved variable is continuous is not common in the literature. This article uses this methodology, together with other decomposition methodologies, to explain how age can influence on housing decisions. In particular, we use Spanish data to study whether the age of the householder plays a significant role in influencing household decisions with respect to housing tenure and demand. From the comparison of housing decisions between different groups of households classified by the age of the householders, we conclude that age plays the primary role in explaining the gap between households regarding tenure choice, while it shares its importance with other covariates of the model in the housing demand decision.     

Convergence clubs in Latin America

The aim of this work is to identify convergence clubs in 17 Latin American countries in terms of GDP per capita during the period 1990–2014. To do this, we apply the methodology developed by Phillips-Sul in order to identify the different convergence clubs on the path of growth in the Latin American economy over this period. The empirical results strongly support the existence of convergence clubs, indicating that the Latin American economy consists of four groups, each converging towards its own steady-state path, with two countries being divergent.     

Getting the sustainability message across: an endorsed Colombian environmental cinematographic strategy

ABSTRACT

Many ecosystems are facing environmental threats. Some of the main concerns are now focused in developing countries. Strong environmental messages by numerous stakeholders have led to varied responses on environmental issues. Companies, governmental agencies and NGOs are responding to such issues by developing campaigns to promote sustainable practices amongst key stakeholders. Green advertising is one important form of communications employed to elicit environmentally friendly attitudes and consequently promote behavioural change. This study analyses the effect of a sponsored cinematographic green advertising strategy by a NGO and a major supermarket chain in a Latin American country. Based on in-depth interviews with Colombian movie audiences, this investigation demonstrates how (1) a movie focused on nationalistic identification can effectively provoke positive attitude change toward environmental sustainable practices, (2) the movie's media format can heighten audience interest about adopting environmental sustainable practices and (3) these results benefit positively the two movie sponsors through association and affect transfer.