The Spanish telecommunications sector in search of its future

The internationalization of telecommunications services and products, together with Spain's entry into the European Economic Community, have created increased interest in the Spanish national telecommunications system. In this article are described the current situation for Spanish telecommunications, and the initial actions being taken to adapt its structure and legal framework to the new environment. Attempts are being made to provide it with enough flexibility to evolve in the most suitable direction for the country to participate in the movements happening on the world market.     

Uncertain prospects for ISDN : A Spanish view

Operators of telecommunications networks, network systems manufacturers and policy markers have placed their hopes on ISDN for a stable and brilliant telecommunications future. However, non-voice service providers, customer premises equipment manufacturers and large users fear that the envisaged network approach will not serve their future requirements. Telecommunications networks will have a strategic importance in national economic development. It is important not to constrain that development by tying them to an inappropriate and inflexible network structure. In this article the uncertainties of the ISDN network are reviewed, questions are raised and the evolution of the network is examined, from the perspective of the actors involved in the sector: large users, equipment manufacturers, policy makers and service providers.     

Buy Local! Familiarity and Preferences for Extra Virgin Olive Oil of Italian Consumers

Over the last few years, the origin of the local product has played a central role in consumer choices. This study explores what Italian consumers want and look for when purchasing olive oil by combining a web-based survey and a perceived analysis technique. In particular, preferences for different olive oil attributes as well as the psychographic traits of respondents were revealed through a web-based questionnaire administered to Italian consumers (N = 179). From this questionnaire, respondents who indicated their availability to participate further underwent a preference test under blind conditions (N = 99). Respondents also did an expectation test based on the visual observation of the labels. Results showed that the majority of consumers considered local production, PDO and region as factors of highest importance in determining olive oil quality.     

Balanced portfolio via signed graphs and spectral clustering in the Brazilian stock market

Quality & Quantity - A portfolio associated with a balanced signed graph that contains both positive and negative edges is more predictable and risk-averse, and is therefore likely to require...     

Measuring the Impact of Longevity Risk on Pension Systems: The Case of Italy

This article estimates the impact of longevity risk on pension systems by combining the prediction based on a Lee-Carter mortality model with the projected pension payments for different cohorts of retirees. We measure longevity risk by the difference between the upper bound of the total old-age pension expense and its mean estimate. This difference is as high as 4% of annual GDP over the period 2040–2050. The impact of longevity risk is sizeably reduced, but not fully eliminated, by the introduction of indexation of retirement age to expected life at retirement. Our evidence speaks in favor of a market for longevity risk and calls for a closer scrutiny of the potential redistributive effects of longevity risk.     

Incidence,effects, dynamics and routes out of overqualification in Europe: a comprehensive analysis distinguishing by employment status

This study aims to improve our understanding of overqualification by incorporating distinctions in employment status (i.e. self-employed workers, private employees and public employees) in the analysis of the incidence, effects, dynamics and routes out of overqualification. To this end, we apply discrete choice – ordered and nonordered – and count models to the data obtained from the European Community Household Panel for the EU-15. Our results indicate that the incidence of overqualification varies by employment status, where self-employed workers report the lowest occurrence. Furthermore, this analysis suggests that overqualification is a permanent phenomenon and demonstrates that successful pathways out of overqualification differ by employment status. The implications of these results for education and labour market policies are also discussed.     

Dynamic capital structure and the contingent capital option

The financial crisis has emphasized the difficulties for financial companies to raise funds through conventional liabilities. In this environment, hybrid securities are becoming popular. In this paper we study the optimal capital structure of a company issuing a particular type of hybrid security: perpetual contingent capital, i.e., debt that converts into equity under some conditions. A two-period model with endogenous bankruptcy for a company with equity, straight debt and contingent capital is analyzed. We investigate the instrument under different conversion rules: automatic or optimally chosen by equity holders. We show that contingent capital reduces the coupon of straight debt and expected bankruptcy costs but can require a high spread. A trigger imposed by the regulatory authority in terms of par value of debt may induce a little use of contingent capital with an increase of bankruptcy costs.     

Productivity effects of environmental performance: evidence from TFP analysis on marketing cooperatives

The object of the present article is to offer a decomposition of productivity indices incorporating environmental changes. The model followed is an input oriented approach related to undesirable output (environmental performance attribute) in horticultural marketing cooperatives. This study is motivated by both the lack of analysis of environmental performance's effects on agribusiness productivity and the relevance of cooperative firms in the European agricultural model for attaining sustainability. For this purpose, bootstrapped envelopment analysis is applied and the best practice frontier obtained corresponds to decision making units showing the best environmental behaviour. The Malmquist total factor productivity (TFP) is decomposed into technological change, efficiency and environmental change. In the second stage, the correlations of these changes with other management variables of cooperatives are analysed. The indicators obtained, on one hand, advice about the nonseparable distance function estimations when the environmental factor is introduced. On the other hand, the results display a relevant increase in efficiency and environmental components for the period under study showing a high influence from labour qualification, environmental effort and spillover effect in the sector.     

Cross-Country Polarisation in CO2 Emissions Per Capita in the European Union: Changes and Explanatory Factors

We analyse the degree of polarisation in the international distribution of CO₂ emissions per capita in the European Union. It is analytically relevant to examine the degree of instability inherent to a distribution and, in the analysed case, the likelihood that the distribution and its evolution will increase or decrease the chances of reaching an agreement on climate policy. Two approaches were used to measure polarisation: the endogenous approach, in which countries are grouped according to their similarity in terms of emissions, and the exogenous approach, in which countries are grouped geographically. Our findings indicate a clear decrease in polarisation since the mid-1990s, which can essentially be explained by the fact that the different groups have converged (i.e. antagonism among the CO₂ emitters has decreased) as the contribution of energy intensity to between-group differences has decreased. This lower degree of polarisation in CO₂ distribution suggests a situation more conducive to the possibility of reaching EU-wide agreements on the mitigation of CO₂ emissions.     

Does an Endogenous Relationship Exist between Environmental and Economic Performance? A Resource-Based View on the Horticultural Sector

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between environmental and economic performance from the resource-based theory within firms of the fresh fruit and vegetables sector. This study considers that the adoption of environment-friendly practices has a greater influence on firms’ opportunities and abilities in the agricultural sector than in manufacturing sectors and leads to closer links between performance variables. The reference for this empirical analysis is a panel data of horticultural farming-marketing firms in Spain. The voluntary environmental programmes and the heterogeneity of their application lead us to regard acquiring a competitive advantage as a relevant driver to improve environmental performance in this sector. A simultaneous equations model is suggested reflecting the differential environmental effect and the assumption of endogeneity among variables. The results show a positive impact of environmental differentiation on profitability and market share, also suggesting that the perception of this positive experience implies greater environmental performance.