Assessing ethical behaviours in the Spanish banking and insurance industries: evidence and challenges

This study aims to improve understanding of the ethical nature of the relations in two labour-intensive industries to facilitate the creation of an ethical culture. For this purpose, the authors first review literature related to the main influences on ethical behaviour, then perform an empirical analysis of those factors using a hierarchical stepwise regression of a database of 525 banking and insurance employees. Contrary to expectations, leadership has a less important effect on ethical behaviour than other organizational factors. The results reveal several implications for improving the management of ethical behaviour in these industries.     

Recursive utility with unbounded aggregators

A new framework is presented for the study of the existence and uniqueness of solutions to the Koopmans’ equation in the unbounded case, that is based on the contraction mapping approach. In the bounded below case with bounded consumption streams, uniqueness of the solution in the whole class of weak-star continuous utility functions is obtained. When the aggregator is unbounded below and/or consumption streams are unbounded, existence of a weak-star continuous solution is shown, and a simple criterium to check the sufficient conditions for existence is provided. Juan Pablo Rincón-Zapatero and Carlos Rodríguez-Palmero gratefully acknowledge financial support by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and FEDER funds under Research Projects MTM2005-06534 and SEJ2005-08709/ECON, respectively, and by Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León under Research Projects VA99/04 and VA017B05, respectively. This paper has substantially benefited from the comments of an anonymous referee. Particular and special thanks are due to Robert Becker for his very helpful comments and valuable suggestions.     

The Institutional Foundations of Public Policy: A Transactions Approach with Application to Argentina

Public policies are the outcomes of complex intertemporal exchangesamong politicians. The political institutions of a country constitutethe framework within which these transactions are accomplished.We develop a transactions theory to understand the ways in whichpolitical institutions affect the transactions that politicalactors are able to undertake, and hence the quality of the policiesthat emerge. We argue that Argentina is a case in which thefunctioning of political institutions has inhibited the capacityto undertake efficient intertemporal political exchanges. Weuse positive political theory and transaction cost economicsto explain the workings of Argentine political institutionsand to show how their operation gives rise to low-quality policies.     

Researching with whom? Stability and manipulation

This paper explores the existence of stable research teams, when the preferences of each agent depend on the set of researchers who are collaborating. We introduce a property over researchers’ preferences, called top responsiveness, guaranteeing the existence of stable research teams configurations. We also provide a stable mechanism, induced by the so-called top covering algorithm, which is strategy-proof when researchers preferences satisfy top responsiveness. Furthermore, we find that, in this framework, the top covering mechanism is the only strategy-proof mechanism that always selects stable allocations.     

Modelling Electricity Prices: International Evidence*

This article analyses the evolution of electricity prices in deregulated markets. We present a general class of models that simultaneously takes into account several factors: seasonality, mean reversion, GARCH behaviour and time‐dependent jumps. The models are applied to daily equilibrium spot prices of eight electricity markets. Eight different nested models were estimated to compare the relative importance of each factor in each of the eight markets. We find strong evidence that electricity equilibrium prices are mean‐reverting, with volatility clustering (GARCH) and with jumps of time‐dependent intensity, even after adjusting for seasonality.     

The influence of the regional context on firms’ innovation patterns: evidence from Ecuador*

ABSTRACT

Using data from the Ecuadorean Innovation Survey of 2015, this paper identifies the innovation patterns that can be found in Ecuador. In addition, we analyse the influence of the regional innovation systems in determining these patterns. The results show that there are six differentiated patterns of innovation, although they all are related to the adoption and imitation of technologies. Finally, we observe that different regional characteristics condition the way in which firms organise innovation.     

Correlates of Narrow Bracketing

Behavior often deviates from standard predictions because individuals evaluate the consequences of choices separately (i.e., narrow bracketing) rather than jointly. The main existing theories classify different narrow bracketing phenomena as either (i) choice errors caused by cognitive limitations, or (ii) strategies to achieve self‐control. Using an online experiment, we find consistent evidence for theory (ii): mental budgets and narrow goals are related to each other and to measures of self‐control, but are distinct from other forms of narrow bracketing. Evidence for the complementary theory (i) is less consistent: few choice bracketing phenomena are related to each other and to cognitive skills.     

Essential equilibria of large generalized games

We characterize the essential stability of games with a continuum of players, where strategy profiles may affect objective functions and admissible strategies. Taking into account the perturbations defined by a continuous mapping from a complete metric space of parameters to the space of continuous games, we prove that essential stability is a generic property and every game has a stable subset of equilibria. These results are extended to discontinuous large generalized games assuming that only payoff functions are subject to perturbations. We apply our results in an electoral game with a continuum of Cournot-Nash equilibria, where the unique essential equilibrium is that only politically engaged players participate in the electoral process. In addition, employing our results for discontinuous games, we determine the stability properties of competitive prices in large economies.     

A century of economic growth in Latin America

This paper makes a contribution to the study of economic growth in developing countries by analyzing the six largest Latin American economies over 105 years within a two-equation framework. Confirming previous findings, physical and human capital prove to be key determinants of GDP per head growth. However, a more controversial result is an overall negative conditional correlation between trade openness and GDP per head growth — though openness has a positive link via investment. The evidence also shows that macroeconomic instability has been a drag on long-term growth in the region.