Government financial statistics and accounting in Europe: is ESA 2010 improving convergence?

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the impact of ESA 2010 on EU member states, looking at countries both individually and as a whole and analysing the global impact of the adjustments and the partial impacts of each category. Changing the system of national accounts has introduced conceptual and methodological changes, but there has not been any significant variation in the convergence/divergence between government financial statistics and budgetary accounting in reporting deficits. The effect on the deficits reported by individual member states was quite marked however.     

Consolidation in banking and the lending channel of monetary transmission: Evidence from Asia and Latin America

This paper examines the relationship between increased consolidation in banking and monetary policy transmission in eighteen Asian and Latin American economies, using bank-level data from 1996 to 2006. Our results provide consistent evidence that as concentration in banking increases, the bank lending channel is weakened, leading the monetary policy transmission mechanism to be less effective. We also investigate how this relationship between concentration and the strength of the lending channel depends on bank-specific characteristics. Using bank-level balance sheet and income statement data allows us, first, to better identify the effects of banking consolidation on the supply-side bank lending channel from those of the demand-side interest rate channel, and second, to test for any systematic differences in the impact of consolidation on monetary policy transmission across banks of different size and financial strength. We also discuss potential explanations for and policy implications of the main findings of this paper.     

Profitability in Banks Affiliated to a Business Group: Evidence from Mexico

In certain institutional contexts, where there are business groups, banks affiliated to these business networks are faced by incentives that might condition their profitability. The objective of this article is to test whether there is a difference between the performance of affiliated banks and that of banks not affiliated to groups, in the context of an emerging market. In particular, a study is made of the case of Mexico in the period 2007–11. Findings suggest that banks affiliated to business groups show less profitability than non-affiliated banks, which may be a consequence of the provision of loans in an internal capital market.     

Further empirical evidence on block transactions below the MBR: the Spanish market

There is a relatively unknown market for partial control or corporate influence in Spanish listed firms, where the control transaction size is below the legal threshold that triggers a mandatory tender offer, as this kind of deal looks for exercising some degree of control, but not a full control. The goal of this paper is to go further in its empirical analysis by exploring its distinguishing features, using as the criterion to define its transactions obtaining a seat in the board of directors. We find that these deals are mainly located in the segment of the market of large trades where the rules for private negotiations are easier to implement; the size of the block is relatively large and it is negotiated as a whole block. Besides, the most common buyer has no previous stake in the firm. We find no evidence that the buyers pay, in median, for a seat on the board of directors, but the variability of the premiums for those blocks is higher and shows that buyers that had no control position in the target firm pay more for being among largest shareholders (partial control) and less for not being among them (influence).     

Trust and community building in the Doñana (Spain) toxic spill disaster

Appeals to public participation and, more generally, to a wider involvement of civic networks in the management of environmental conflicts are becoming more common after the difficulties that both the Market and the State appear to have in regulating these conflicts. The concern of this paper is with how central elements in civic society, such as interpersonal trust and community-building mechanisms, are influenced by environmental catastrophes. The case of the toxic spill disaster in Doñana, Spain, is presented in order to examine whether this accident had any effect on interpersonal trust and the mobilization of civic networks in the area. From the analysis, it can be concluded that involvement of civic networks in the management of these situations depends on the magnitude (real or perceived) of the disaster but also on the performance of public institutions regarding the event.     

Solving the Winner Determination Problem in a Divisible-Object Auction

In an auction of a divisible object, bidders' demand functions are often assumed to be nonincreasing, meaning that bidders are willing to pay less or the same price for every additional unit. Under this assumption, the optimal allocation that maximizes the auctioneer's revenue can be found using a greedy-based procedure. This article argues that situations may arise where a bidder may need to express her preferences through a nondecreasing demand function; when such a bidder is present in the auction, the greedy-based procedure does not guarantee the optimal allocation. Thus, this article proposes a mixed integer program that finds the optimal allocation in a divisible-object auction at which bidders submit their bids as arbitrary stepwise demand functions. The practical aspect of the mathematical program is presented by means of a simple yet illustrative example in a treasury bond auction setting. The results of the auctioneer's revenue are reported as a function of the number of bidders with nonincreasing and nondecreasing demand functions.     

The competitive implications of the deployment of unique resources

The ‘resource‐based’ view focuses on unique resources as the fundamental sources of competitive advantage and superior profits. We use a game‐theoretic model to analyze the impact of the deployment of unique resources on product market competition, and the impact of unique resources and sustainable competitive advantages on profits when the competitive implications of resource deployment are taken into account. We find that some of the core propositions of the resource‐based view do not necessarily hold when the impact of resource deployment on product market competition is explicitly considered. Specifically, the accumulation and deployment of unique resources does not necessarily increase the firm's profit and the difference between its profit and competitors' profits. Furthermore, achieving a sustainable competitive advantage does not necessarily lead to higher profits. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A posteriori ratemaking using bivariate Poisson models

Recently, different bivariate Poisson regression models have been used in the actuarial literature to make an a priori ratemaking taking into account the dependence between two types of claims. A natural extension for these models is to consider a posteriori ratemaking (i.e. experience rating models) that also relaxes the independence assumption. We introduce here two bivariate experience rating models that integrate the a priori ratemaking based on the bivariate Poisson regression models, extending the existing literature for the univariate case to the bivariate case. These bivariate experience rating models are applied to an automobile insurance claims data-set to analyse the consequences for posterior premiums when the independence assumption is relaxed. The main finding is that the a posteriori risk factors obtained with the bivariate experience rating models are significantly lower than those factors derived under the independence assumption.     

Viability of competencies,skills and knowledge acquired by industrial design students

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Many Industrial Design professionals in Spain have difficulties when it comes to getting a job related to their field. They also have...     

Supplier Financing and Earnings Quality

In this paper we investigate the effect of earnings quality on supplier credit in a sample of small and medium‐sized firms. After controlling for other determinants of trade credit, we show that firms whose earnings present lower variability, higher smoothing and predictability, and higher accruals quality have access to more trade credit from suppliers. This association suggests that earnings attributes associated to lower volatility and higher precision with respect to cash flows facilitate access to trade credit.