Organizational antecedents and competitive consequences of environmental proactivity in the hotel industry

This research simultaneously examines the influence of organizational design variables (specialization, decentralization, formalization, link mechanisms, and informal social relations) on environmental proactivity, and the impact of this environmental proactivity on the competitiveness of hotels. The joint analysis of causes and consequences of environmental proactivity, and the relationship between organizational design and environmental management are topics that have rarely been explored in the literature. Using structural equation modeling methodology, a model is empirically tested using a survey instrument that was distributed to hotels in Spain. The findings indicate that specialization, formalization, link mechanisms, and informal social relations are effective coordination mechanisms to foster environmental proactivity. Moreover, the most effective way of encouraging the implementation of environmental practices is formalization. The findings also show that environmental proactivity contributes to improving competitive advantage in terms of both cost and differentiation.     

Is emission intensity or output U‐shaped in the strictness of environmental policy?

We show that, in a range of market conditions, an ever stricter environmental policy does not always lead to ever cleaner production methods and ever lower production of polluting goods. We consider an integrated technology, where firms can reduce their emission intensities in a continuous fashion. Analogous to the previous literature we find that firms' emission intensities can be U‐shaped in the strictness of policy, but we show that this applies only under low profitability conditions. Under high profitability conditions, output levels are U‐shaped in the strictness of the policy. The latter result is new in the literature. In the case where the U‐shape arises in emission intensities, the minimum is reached where the marginal abatement cost curves intersect.     

Does backward participation in global value chains affect countries’ current account position?

Review of World Economics - This paper addresses the impact of countries’ backward participation in global value chains (GVCs) on their current account balances. Our results, based on a large...     

Is a cluster a necessary condition for success? The case of Benidorm

This paper analyses the application of the cluster concept to tourist destinations using Benidorm as a case study. A questionnaire was administered to tourism firms based in Benidorm in order to determine whether this destination currently constitutes a tourism cluster or whether it possesses the ideal characteristics to become a cluster with the private agents' collaboration, that is, whether it is a potential cluster. The results obtained from this research indicate that Benidorm's success is not derived from the presence of a cluster due to a series of elements that prevent its existence. In this destination there is a need to strengthen cooperation between public and private agents (especially in those areas that determine the competitive advantage of the destination) and to design a strategy based on shared goals. Both of these elements are fundamental for the characterisation of a cluster.     

PRICING AND SEMIMARTINGALE REPRESENTATIONS OF VULNERABLE CONTINGENT CLAIMS IN REGIME‐SWITCHING MARKETS

Using a suitable change of probability measure, we obtain a Poisson series representation for the arbitrage‐free price process of vulnerable contingent claims in a regime‐switching market driven by an underlying continuous‐time Markov process. As a result of this representation, along with a short‐time asymptotic expansion of the claim's price process, we develop an efficient novel method for pricing claims whose payoffs may depend on the full path of the underlying Markov chain. The proposed approach is applied to price not only simple European claims such as defaultable bonds, but also a new type of path‐dependent claims that we term self‐decomposable, as well as the important class of vulnerable call and put options on a stock. We provide a detailed error analysis and illustrate the accuracy and computational complexity of our method on several market traded instruments, such as defaultable bond prices, barrier options, and vulnerable call options. Using again our Poisson series representation, we show differentiability in time of the predefault price function of European vulnerable claims, which enables us to rigorously deduce Feynman‐Ka? representations for the predefault pricing function and new semimartingale representations for the price process of the vulnerable claim under both risk‐neutral and objective probability measures.     

Intraregional Spillovers in South America: Is Brazil Systemic After All?

The high business cycle correlation between Brazil (the large neighbour in South America) and other countries in the region has been a frequent source of concern for policymakers, as it has been viewed as evidence of the large influence of the former country on its neighbours. This paper studies the importance of such influence, documenting trade linkages over the last two decades and quantifying spillover effects in a vector autoregression setting. We find that, after controlling for common external factors, spillovers from Brazil are only relevant for Southern Cone economies (especially Mercosur's members) and Peru, but not for the rest of South America, and these findings are consistent with the extent of trade linkages between these countries. We find also that spillovers can take two different forms: the transmission of Brazil‐specific shocks and the amplification of global shocks – through their impact on Brazil's output. Finally, we also find suggestive evidence that depreciations of Brazil's currency may not have significant impact on output of its key trading partners.     

Propuesta de un índice para evaluar la gestión del control interno

Derived from its humanitarian mission, to pay quality health care to the population, in hospitals and health facilities is needed reduce the occurrence of events that may threaten the physical and psychological integrity of the patients they serve. One of the strategies to consider to overcome this challenge is the proper implementation of the internal control system, to ensure the sustainability of insurers, by increasing efficiency in the care of people, feasible only within a care model that quantifies and management on population identified and addressed. The objective of this paper was to propose a coefficient to evaluate the internal control management for a hospital entity. This was conceived under the guidelines of the multi-criteria modeling in conjunction with the detection of critical points through Petri nets. For this, the order of importance and fulfillment of the components of Internal Control and in unison the unreliability of critical processes in the entity being identified practical application was determined.