How SME Uniqueness Affects Capital Structure: Evidence From A 1994–1998 Spanish Data Panel

The principal aim of this paper is to test how firm characteristics affect Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) capital structure. We carry out an empirical analysis of panel data of 6482 non-financial Spanish SMEs during the five years period 1994–1998, modelling the leverage ratio as a function of firm specific attributes hypothesized by capital structure theory. Our results suggest that non-debt tax shields and profitability are both negatively related to SME leverage, while size, growth options and asset structure influence positively SME capital structure; they also confirm a maturity matching behaviour in this firm group.     

Is the Border Effect an Artefact of Geographical Aggregation?

The existence of a large border effect is considered as one of the main puzzles of international macroeconomics. We show that the border effect is, to a large extent, an artefact of geographical concentration. To do so, we combine international flows with intra‐national flows data characterised by a high geographical grid. At this fine grid, intra‐national flows are highly localised and dropping sharply with distance. The use of a small geographical unit of reference to measure intra‐national bilateral trade flows allows to estimating correctly the negative impact of distance on shipments. When we use sector disaggregated export flows of 50 Spanish provinces in years 2000 and 2005 split into inter‐provincial and inter‐national flows, we find that the border effect is reduced substantially and even becomes statistically not different from zero in some estimations.     

Does a Common Currency Promote Countries’ Growth via Trade and Tourism?

The main aim of this study is to contribute to the debate on the effects of a common currency. In particular, the impact of a common currency on growth via trade and tourism is explored for a panel dataset which includes 179 countries as destination and 30 OECD countries as origin over the period 1995–2006. This research contributes to previous work in three ways: (i) tourism is included as an additional channel for a common currency to promote growth; (ii) the heterogeneity of countries is addressed by dividing the sample into three groups of countries by income; and (iii) up‐to‐date data including the case of the euro are considered. The results obtained suggest that a common currency strengthens economic growth by promoting not only international trade but also tourism.     

The competitiveness of the Portuguese wine sector

The world wine market is currently characterized by two principal wine suppliers: the European and the New World. Countries such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal have witnessed a tremendous growth in the New World wine-makers (Australia, Chile, South Africa, etc.). Portugal is one of the Old World countries that presents several natural and technical constraints, which might currently be resulting in modest performance in terms of its position in the global wine market, competitiveness and dynamics required to overcome difficulties. The main objective of this study is to analyse the Portuguese performance for competing in external markets and its evolution from 1996 to 2003. This study is based on indices such as the trade intensity index, revealed comparative advantage, auto-sufficiency and market share relation ratios.     

Multi‐objective crop planning using pareto‐based evolutionary algorithms

The scarcity of water is a growing problem worldwide. The increasing use of water in industrial, urban, and agricultural applications together with the continuous increase in population require the proposal of efficient solutions. In the case of agricultural use, it is necessary to not only maximize the economic benefits, but also to establish optimal water‐saving crop planning, especially for water‐deficient regions. Due to the multi‐objective nature of these problems, the decision‐making process is complex. Fortunately, the increase in computational resources available in recent years has allowed researchers to develop efficient computational algorithms to deal with real and complex optimization problems, including agricultural ones. In particular, multi‐objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) are known for their ability to optimize several objective functions simultaneously to provide a representative set of the Pareto front, which is a set of problem solutions representing a trade‐off between the best values of each of the objectives. This article proposes solving a multi‐objective crop planning problem using two Pareto‐based MOEAs. Results obtained when solving this problem using real data collected from a large number of greenhouses in Spain to show the advantages of using these multi‐objective approaches.