DOES POPULATION AGEING PROMOTE FASTER ECONOMIC GROWTH?

Can divergent demographic trends account for differences in per capita output across countries? We address this question by offering evidence that the process of population ageing is positively and significantly related to cross‐country economic performance. We define and estimate the effect of demographic change in two ways. First, a growing cohort of working age persons (15–64) as a share of the total population is found to have a large positive effect on GDP per capita. Second, an increase in the number of prime age persons (35–54) relative to the younger working age population (15–34) is found to have a positive but curvilinear effect with respect to per capita GDP. We find that changes in per capita GDP peak when the ratio of the prime‐to‐younger age population reaches an optimum of prime age workers for every younger aged worker. Beyond or below this optimal ratio, per capita output is lowered.     

Technical change: It should be positive and make sense!

We present the results of eight models that differ with respect to the time behavior of technical inefficiency and the presence of country heterogeneity. When taken into account, heterogeneity raises average technical change estimates, however technical progress rankings become counter-intuitive.     

Term structure and the estimated monetary policy rule in the Eurozone

In this paper we estimate a standard version of the New Keynesian Monetary (NKM) model augmented with term structure in order to analyze two issues. First, we analyze the effect of introducing an explicit term structure channel in the NKM model on the estimated parameter values of the model, with special emphasis on the interest rate smoothing parameter using data for the Eurozone. Second, we study the ability of the model to reproduce some stylized facts such as highly persistent dynamics, the weak comovement between economic activity and inflation, and the positive, strong comovement between interest rates observed in actual Eurozone data. The Sect. 3 implemented is a classical structural method based on the indirect inference principle. We are grateful to Eduardo Ley, two anonymous referees and seminar participants at the XXXI Simposio de Análisis Económico (Oviedo, Spain) and Bank of Spain for their useful comments. Financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and Universidad del País Vasco (Spain) and Fundación Séneca through projects SEJ2004-04811/ECON, 9/UPV00035.321-13511/2001 and I02937/PHCS/05, respectively, is gratefully acknowledged. The first author also thanks Fundación Ramón Areces for financial support.     

Mergers in asymmetric Stackelberg markets

It is well known that the profitability of horizontal mergers with quantity competition is scarce. However, in an asymmetric Stackelberg market we obtain that some mergers are profitable. Our main result is that mergers among followers become profitable when the followers are inefficient enough. In this case, leaders reduce their output when followers merge and this reduction renders the merger profitable. This merger increases price and welfare is reduced.      

Stylised features of consumer price setting behaviour in Portugal: 1992–2001

This paper identifies the empirical stylized features of consumer price setting behavior in Portugal using two micro-datasets underlying the consumer price index. The main conclusions are: one in every four prices change each month; there is a considerable degree of heterogeneity in price setting practices; prices of goods change more often than prices of services; price reductions are common, as they account to around 40% of total price changes; price changes are, in general, sizeable; finally, the price setting patterns seem to depend on the level of inflation as well as on the type of outlet.

Agglomeration and labour productivity in Spain over the long term

This paper analyses the relationship between spatial density of economic activity and interregional differences in the productivity of industrial labour in Spain during the period 1860–1999. In the spirit of Ciccone and Hall (Am Econ Rev 86:54–70, 1996) and Ciccone (Eur Econ Rev 46:213–227, 2002), we analyse the evolution of this relationship over the long term in Spain. Using data on the period 1860–1999 we show the existence of an agglomeration effect linking the density of economic activity with labour productivity in the industry. This effect was present since the beginning of the industrialisation process in the middle of the nineteenth century but has been decreasing over time. Our results show that doubling employment density raises average labour productivity in the industrial sector by between 3 and 5% in all periods analysed, with the exception of the last segment from the twentieth century. Hence, we find significant evidence of agglomeration effects. However, these effects seem to have been falling sharply from the mid-nineteenth century until late in the twentieth century, and there appears to be no positive evidence of agglomeration effects in industry in the period 1985–1999. This result could be explained by an important increase in the congestion effects in large industrial metropolitan areas that would have compensated the centripetal or agglomeration forces at work. Furthermore, this result is also consistent with the evidence of a dispersion of industrial activity in Spain during the last decades.

---

Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Influence of institutional environment on entrepreneurial intention: a comparative study of two countries university students

Institutional environment influences the perceptions of desirability and feasibility, society’s social and cultural environment, such as beliefs, values and attitudes, conditions behaviour and decisions made by individuals. This research evaluates the influence of institutional environment on entrepreneurial intention using a comparative analysis of different attitudes among university students in two countries: Portugal and Spain. In particular, this study aims to examine the perceptions of desirability, feasibility and intention toward the creation of one’s own business and how that variables influence the entrepreneurial intention as compared these two different institutional contexts. Results revealed difference among attitudes toward entrepreneurship in both countries. With respect to the perception of feasibility, the majority of students in Extremadura (Spain) consider that it is easier to create a business in nowadays than it was several decades ago. However, from the students of Beira Interior (Portugal) consider that it is more difficult. Furthermore, in Extremadura, the entrepreneurial intention is higher than in Beira Interior.     

Board Determinants in Banking Industry. An International Perspective

This paper explores the factors influencing the board composition of an international sample of commercial banks over the period 1996–2006. After considering the dual role of the board as monitor and advisor, our analysis shows that no one board composition is optimal for the banking industry and that any such recommendation could harm bank governance. Our results suggest that more complex banks that have a low ownership concentration and are headquartered in a civil law country should have larger and more independent boards. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Product return and logistics knowledge: Influence on performance of the firm

Survey data on reverse logistics processes from 284 Spanish firms are used to test a structural model that analyzes the importance of returned materials and the creation of logistics knowledge within processes of reverse logistics and their effects on organizational performance. The results show that the cost of reverse logistics and the value of returns were found to be positively related to reverse logistics activities. Further, their proper management and the creation of logistics knowledge that improves organizational performance.     

Job Satisfaction and Contingent Employment

This paper analyses job satisfaction as an aggregate of satisfaction with several job aspects, with special focus on the influence of contingent-employment contracts. Fixed-effect analysis is applied on a longitudinal sample of Dutch employees in four work arrangements: regular, fixed-term, on-call and temporary agency work. Our results indicate that temporary agency work is the only contingent employment relation that is on average associated with lower job satisfaction compared to regular workers. Decomposition of this gap indicates that the major part is due to the low satisfaction experienced by agency workers regarding the content of their jobs. A lack of job security is also responsible for part of the gap. For fixed-term and on-call workers the negative satisfaction effect originating from the lack of job security and lower wages is compensated by other job aspects and a variant relationship between total job satisfaction and its components. However, male and high educated on-call workers do experience lower job satisfaction.