Factors Related to the Academic Performance of Students in the Statistics Course in Psychology

Many studies have examined the factors that influence academic performance in primary and secondary education as well as at university, with the purpose of enhancing learning at these stages and reducing drop-out rates. It is within this research framework that we want to emphasise the deficient performance of students enrolled on the statistics course in the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Barcelona. Consequently, this paper attempts to determine the factors that affect student performance in this subject by undertaking an analysis of a structural equation model and determining its stability over time. In order to accomplish our objective, we worked with two samples of students enrolled statistics classes. The first group comprised 211 students enrolled in the academic year 2000–2001, while the second comprised 287 students enrolled in the academic year 2001–2002. By administering a questionnaire, we obtained information concerning such variables as demographic data, previous academic record, information related to the subject and the degree of satisfaction with it, and the final mark obtained by the students in the subject. The parameters for each group of students were estimated separately and the goodness of fit of the proposed structural model was assessed. The data analysis showed a good fit with both data bases, but the set of estimated parameters differed in the two academic years under consideration.     

Inequality and mobility

Acknowledging that wage inequality and intergenerational mobility are strongly interrelated, this paper presents a model in which both are jointly determined. The model enables us to study how inequality and mobility are affected by exogenous changes and what determines their correlation. A main implication of the model is that differences in the amount of public subsidies to education and educational quality produce cross-country patterns with a negative correlation between inequality and mobility. Differences in the labor market, like differences in skill-biased technology or wage compression instead produce a positive correlation. The predictions of the model are found to be consistent with various empirical observations on mobility and inequality.     

Do channels of financial integration matter for FDI’s impact on growth? Empirical evidence using a panel

This paper adds to the debate on the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth which suggest that the link between FDI and economic growth is rather the consequence of both FDI and growth responding endogenously to economic integration. We investigate if the impact of FDI on growth is dependent on the channel of integration used to attract FDI. We use four different indexes of economic integration including Trade Openness, Chinn-Ito, and KOF and our newly constructed index of financial integration. We employ these four indexes to investigate the role played by economic integration in linking FDI and growth. We use a panel consisting of 134 developing countries and data spanning the period 1989-2017 estimated using the generalized method of moments (GMM) technique. The results show that FDI is an important determinant of growth. The results also suggest that at least some of the integration variables do matter and work as channels to attract FDI leading to growth. However, after stratifying countries by income level, we also find that integration matters mainly for high income countries. Integration variables for other income groups do not show much significance. These are interesting results and may have important policy implications.     

Mismatches in the Spanish Labor Market: Education vs. Competence Match

The accuracy of the match between a workers talents, skills, and capabilities and those required by his or her job has seldom been addressed in the empirical literature. However, a number of analyses on the match between workers education levels and those required by jobs have been published over the last 10 years. Obviously, the level of formal education completed by workers is more easily observed than their levels of human capital competences. Indeed, the latter would be rather difficult to observe. Nonetheless, this approximation is not straightforward, since formal education is only a mean for the acquisition of some human capital competences. We cross-examine the education match and the competence match between the supply and the demand of labor in Spain with data from 1998. Our results suggest that both types of matches do differ in their incidence, determinants, and wage consequences.     

The structure and infrastructure of Mexico's science and technology

The structure and infrastructure of the Mexican technical literature was determined. A representative database of technical articles was extracted from the Science Citation Index for the year 2002, with each article containing at least one author with a Mexican address. Many different manual and statistical clustering methods were used to identify the structure of the technical literature (especially the science and technology core competencies). One of the pervasive technical topics identified from the clustering, thin films research, was analyzed further using bibliometrics, in order to identify the infrastructure of this technology.     

The Manufacturing Wage Inequality in Latin America and East Asia: Openness, Technology Transfer, and Labor Supply

This paper examines wage inequality in the manufacturing sector for a panel of Latin American and East Asian economies during the last three decades. A labor supply and demand model is presented where three main determinants of wage inequality are investigated: trade openness, technology transfer, and labor supply. Findings indicate that wage inequality in the two regions has responded differently to the various determinants enumerated above. Some lessons from the comparative experience of the two regions are drawn.     

Does seasonality change over the business cycle? An investigation using monthly industrial production series

This paper examines the proposition that the business cycle affects seasonality in industrial production, with output being switched to the traditionally low production summer months when recent (annual) growth has been strong. This is investigated through the use of a restricted threshold autoregressive model for the monthly growth rate in a total of 74 industries in 16 OECD countries. Approximately one-third of the series exhibit significant nonlinearity, with this nonlinearity predominantly associated with changes in the seasonal pattern. Estimates show that the summer slowdown in many European countries is substantially reduced in the regime of higher recent growth.     

The functioning of co-opetition in the health-care sector: An explorative analysis

The doctrine on the management of the health-care sector has mainly considered cooperation and competition to be opposite models. However, several recent studies of the private sector have stressed the positive effects of balancing competitive and cooperative stimuli in inter-firm relationships. Since many public health-care sectors are often characterized by the presence of both cooperative and competitive forces, this explorative analysis is aimed at identifying the possible determinants of these stimuli and analyzing the likely results of the interaction between these forces within a network of health-care trusts. A better understanding of how simultaneous cooperation and competition impact one another could help regulatory bodies to avoid implementing policies that could produce inconsistent results.     

The effect of university and regional knowledge spillovers on firms’ performance: an analysis of the Spanish USOs

Previous empirical studies of university spin-off (USO) growth have applied a firm-based approach without modelling how contextual factors may influence firm growth. By adopting an ‘interactionist approach’, this paper tests the hypothesis that the regional and university contexts may partly determine USO growth, together with firms’ internal resources. Using a sample of 531 Spanish USOs located in 16 Spanish regions and launched by 51 universities over the 2001–2013 and applying multilevel modelling with macro- and micro-data, the findings confirmed that regional context, together with firm-specific characteristics, are important for explaining USO growth. More specifically, the presence of venture capitalists, the capacity to generate internal funds, and operating in high-tech industries have a positive effect on USO growth. On the basis of the results, we propose some policies for fostering USO growth.     

Characteristics of high-growth entrepreneurs in Latin America

Scholars and governments presumed that growing the rate of entrepreneurs would naturally result in economic and job growth, and entrepreneurship has widely been viewed as an important tool for developing economies. Yet recently scholars have questioned the empirical evidence regarding the actual contribution of entrepreneurship to economic development. Recent contributions to the field suggest that not all entrepreneurial activity has a positive effect on economic growth in developing regions. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) provides a unique lense in assisting the predictive capability of entrepreneurial motivation. In this research, we focus on what factors influence the motivation of some entrepreneurs to seek a high-growth model as these growth oriented entrepreneurs, usually associated with opportunity-motivated firm founding, are the most likely to actually create jobs in developing countries. We utilize motivation for founding, five entrepreneurial competencies and three firm characteristics to predict growth expectations of entrepreneurial growth expectations. Leveraging responses to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey from more than 100,000 entrepreneurs in 19 Latin American countries, we discovered the existence of a triple interaction effect amongst opportunity-based entrepreneurs with higher levels of education and an export orientation and their growth expectations. In discussing the results, we reflect on the public policy implications for promoting the desired types of entrepreneurship in developing regions.