Learning from accidents: Updates of the European regulation on the investigation and prevention of accidents and incidents in civil aviation

Civil aviation has a longstanding tradition of investigating accidents and reporting incidents, which contributes to making aviation one of the safest forms of transport.To make flying safer, independent investigation into accidents is essential as it the surest way of identifying the causes of an accident and answering the fundamental questions “What really happened?” and “What can be done to prevent similar incidents in the future?”.The obligation to investigate accidents is enshrined in the Chicago Convention of 1944. Recognizing the importance of accident investigation, the European Union adopted Council Directive 94/56/EC establishing the fundamental principles governing the investigation of civil aviation accidents and incidents and later on Directive 2003/42/EC on occurrence reporting. They both significantly contributed to harmonization of accident prevention.But with air traffic steadily increasing, accidents do happen despite the best efforts of regulators and industry. The organization of the air transport sector is much more complex now than it was a decade ago. Today there is significant divergence in the investigating capacity of the EU Member States compared to 1994. Furthermore nowadays investigating air accidents take new kinds of expertise and more resources than a decade ago. At the same time there is a new legal and institutional environment in Europe derived from the adoption of European aviation safety rules. Also the organizational set-up has changed substantially with the establishment of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which is now responsible for certifying aircraft in the EU. The EU rules on investigating air accidents need to be updated to reflect the current realities of Europe's aviation market and the complexity of the global aviation industry.Accordingly, over the last few years the European Commission has been working on a Regulation on the investigation and prevention of accidents and incidents in civil aviation, with the intention of updating and replacing the existing Directive. With this new regulation the Commission aims to promote more efficient and independent inquiries into the causes of air accidents and also expects to strengthen the rights of the victims of air accidents.Today the end is in sight, once that the Commission and European Parliament have reached an agreement about the content and text of this new regulation. Reasons behind this new regulation are presented in this paper together with a detailed explanation of its main contents, an assessment of their impact and their expected benefits.     

Price elasticity of demand for broadband: Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean

In this study the authors analyze fixed broadband retail prices in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and provide estimates about the effect of price changes on broadband adoption. The analysis is based on a survey of plans and tariffs conducted by the authors during Q2 2010. Their results suggest that fixed broadband services in LAC are generally expensive and of poor quality when benchmarked against Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, although there is significant variance between markets in the region. In order to isolate the effect of prices on broadband adoption they use an instrumental-variable approach. Their findings show that broadband demand is relatively elastic to price in LAC but not in the OECD. They estimate that an average price reduction of 10% would result in an increase of almost 22% in the penetration rate in LAC, equivalent to almost 8.5 million additional broadband connections. Several policy implications result from these findings. First, national broadband policies in LAC should pay a closer attention to a deficit of competition in fixed broadband services, as households and firms face high prices for poor quality services, thus deterring adoption. Second, while their findings generally suggest that price reductions could significantly increase penetration, they elasticity estimates reveal that price effects might not be sufficient to achieve the penetration goals set in national broadband plans. This validates the need for complementary policy strategies that affect other determinants of broadband demand. The example of Brazil is used to illustrate this finding.     

Gender Pay and Occupational-Attainment Gaps in Costa Rica and El Salvador: A Relative Comparison of the Late 1980s

This study investigates gender occupational attainment and earnings differentials in El Salvador and Costa Rica at the end of the 1980s. During this decade, El Salvador experienced a civil war and an economic depression. Costa Rica was also mired in a recession in the early 1980s, but programs adopted in the mid-1980s led to rapid economic recovery. It is found that the gender pay gap in El Salvador is 30.4% and 23.6% in Costa Rica. The intercountry difference in the gap disappears after accounting for high gender differences in occupational attainment and hours worked in El Salvador.     

Anomalías en la autocorrelación de rendimientos y la importancia de los periodos de no transacción en mercados latinoamericanos

This paper aims to determine the evidence of returns autocorrelation for the main Latin American stock markets, and the influence of the day of the week effect on this phenomenon. Also, we analyze the importance of non-trading periods and their incidence on stock markets returns. We determine a high autocorrelation in most of the stock markets analyzed, both in local and global currency and the day-of-the-week effect on only some of the stock markets. Evidence of correlation between trading periods returns and those of non-trading periods is also found.     

A resource-based view of human resource management and organizational capabilities development

The aim of this research work was to analyse the role of human resource management in the development of organizational capabilities and its influence on the firm's performance from a resource-based view. Our results, from empirical research on a nation-wide sample of Spanish savings banks, suggest that human resource decisions, integrated in a human resource system, have an important influence on the development of organizational capabilities and on the firm's performance.     

Declining sectors and strategies within the area of human resources: a case study from Spain

Based upon the existing theoretical framework, empirical research on successful generic strategies has resulted in various recommendations for strategic management in declining sectors. However, these studies do not consider (aspects of) strategy implementation, and thus ignore the importance of aspects of the implementation for the ultimate success of the proposed strategy. Consequently, it is difficult to uncover some important factors that contribute to the success or failure of the proposed strategies. One such factor is the congruence between the generic 'decline strategy' and its concurrent social strategy. Although some theoretical proposals on this congruency exist, empirical studies on this topic are lacking.

Given the exploratory, 'real-life' and process nature of the study, the case-study method is used. This allows us to establish a dialectic relationship between the theoretical proposals available and the empirical observations. The company that is studied is a Spanish state-owned shipyard. Following a brief analysis of the sector and its specific characteristics of decline, the evolving congruence between the generic and social strategies within the company is analysed. Basically, the study focuses on the process of continuously adjusting and balancing the two types of strategies. Also, the resulting implementation issues and difficulties are assessed. Conclusions are based on the permanent comparison and confrontation of field data and theoretical insights.     

Influence of parties’ behavioural features on motor compensation disputes in insurance markets

Disputes between parties involved in motor insurance claims compensations are analysed. The decision to resolve the disagreement by either negotiation or trial may depend on how risk and confrontation adverse or pessimistic the claimant is. The extent to which these behavioural features of the claimant might influence the final compensation amount is examined. An empirical analysis, fitting a switching regression model to a Spanish database, is conducted in order to analyse whether the choice of the conflict resolution procedure is endogenous to the compensation outcomes. The results show that compensations awarded by courts are always higher, although 95% of cases are settled by negotiation. We show that this is because claimants are adverse to risk and confrontation, and are pessimistic about their chances at trial. By contrast, insurers are risk/confrontation neutral and more objective in relation to the expected trial compensation. During the negotiation insurers accept to pay the subjective compensation values of claimants, since these values are lower than their estimates of compensations at trial.     

Some considerations about “Forecasting aggregates and disaggregates with common features”

Espasa and Mayo provide consistent forecasts for an aggregate economic indicator and its basic components as well as for useful sub-aggregates. To do so, they develop a procedure based on single-equation models that includes the restrictions arisen from the fact that some components share common features. The classification by common features provides a disaggregation map useful in several applications. We discuss their classification procedure and suggest some issues that should be taken into account when designing an algorithm to identify subsets of series that share one common trend.     

Forecasting aggregates and disaggregates with common features

This paper focuses on the provision of consistent forecasts for an aggregate economic indicator, such as a consumer price index and its components. The procedure developed is a disaggregated approach based on single-equation models for the components, which take into account the stable features that some components share, such as a common trend and common serial correlation. Our procedure starts by classifying a large number of components based on restrictions from common features. The result of this classification is a disaggregation map, which may also be useful in applying dynamic factors, defining intermediate aggregates or formulating models with unobserved components. We use the procedure to forecast inflation in the Euro area, the UK and the US. Our forecasts are significantly more accurate than either a direct forecast of the aggregate or various other indirect forecasts.     

How do European firms adjust their labour costs when nominal wages are rigid?

Although workers' nominal wages are seldom cut, firms have multiple options available if they require adjustments in their wage bills. We broaden the analysis of relative (in)flexibility in labour costs by investigating the use of other margins of labour cost adjustment at the firm level beyond base wages. Using data from a unique survey, we find that European firms make extensive use of other components of compensation to adjust the cost of labour. Interestingly, firms facing base wage rigidity are more likely to use alternative margins of labour cost adjustment; therefore there appears to be some degree of substitutability between wage flexibility and the flexibility of other cost components. Changes in bonuses and non-pay benefits are some of the potential margins firms use to reduce costs. We also show how the margins of adjustment chosen are affected by unionisation and firm and worker characteristics.