When giving some away makes sense to jump-start the diffusion process

This paper uses an analytical model to examine when it makes sense to provide incentives to innovators to adopt a new product. The model allows for separate segments of innovators and imitators, each of which follows a Bass-type diffusion process. Interestingly “seeding” the market is optimal for a limited range of situations and these do not appear to include those where there is a downturn in sales (chasm) as sales move from the first to the second segment.     

Factor Endowments and Production in European Regions

This paper analyses patterns of production across 14 industries in 45 regions from 7 European countries since 1975. We estimate an equation from neoclassical trade theory that relates an industry’s share of a region’s GDP to factor endowments, relative prices and technology. The strict version of the Heckscher–Ohlin model that assumes identical relative prices and technology is rejected against more general alternatives. However, factor endowments play a statistically significant and quantitatively important role in explaining production patterns. Factor endowments are more successful at explaining patterns of production in aggregate industries (Agriculture, Manufacturing and Services) than in disaggregated industries within manufacturing. JEL no. F11, F14, R13     

Innovation in the functional foods industry in a peripheral region of the European Union: Andalusia (Spain)

This paper presents the results of an analysis of the relationship between public sector research and industrial development in the functional foods sector in a peripheral region of the European Union: Andalusia (Spain). Results show that the innovation system and its component parts have made a qualitative and quantitative leap forward in the last decade, which means that the gap is diminishing compared to similar regions in the European Union, mainly due to a relatively intense effort from the public research sector. In order to take advantage of the potential of the Andalusian region, the public authorities will have to focus their efforts and funds on fostering relations between regional social players that lead to the creation of durable links; increasing the entrepreneurial spirit of university students/researchers; promoting and improving the quantity and quality of international excellence research groups; and stimulating the creation of scientific and technological parks where spin-off companies can contribute to increasing wealth and employment in the region.     

Graded eco-labels: A demand-oriented approach to reduce pollution

Supplied oriented environmental policies are generally used in order to limit production related pollution. This fact is based on the hypothesis that consumers are not willing to sacrifice personal utility for a wider social gain. We suggest that widespread environmental concerns of consumers can be exploited to push producers along cleaner technological patterns. Our core assumption is that consumers would be ready to purchase cleaner products if the products' characteristics are not ‘too dissimilar’ to those of more polluting alternatives. However, due to a lack of information about non-observable product characteristics, this assumption on its own is not sufficient for ‘environmental friendly’ producers to become competitive. We show - by means of a simulation model - that only if consumers are provided with appropriate information on the greenness of products through adequate eco-labels (graded eco-labels), then producers will be pressed to implement innovations aimed at reducing the environmental impact of their products. Under two test settings - one without any certification and another with binary eco-labels - the model shows markets characterised by highly polluting technological patterns. Only in the presence of graded eco-labels, competition drives the market toward cleaner technological patterns.     

Students’ perception of CSR and its influence on business performance. A multiple mediation analysis

Firm managers play an important role in the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. Education is emerging as the key factor in developing a sense of moral responsibility amongst the business students who will eventually become company managers and decision makers. The aim of this research is, thus, twofold. First, to analyze the existence of a direct positive correlation between university students’ perception of CSR and its impact on business performance; and second, to examine the extent to which two factors (advantages brought by CSR and responsibilities toward stakeholders) act as mediation variables in the aforementioned correlation. The analysis was performed with a sample of 390 business‐related university students. Amongst the potential contributions made by this study we can highlight the possibility of knowing future managers’ way of thinking and of knowing the aspects where educational centers might improve their CSR teaching.     

Verifying a demand system by simulation

An intriguingly small value of the asymptotic standard error of the estimate of the income flexibility inspired us to simulate the demand system. The procedure used should have more general applicability.     

Cross-country income mobility comparisons under panel attrition: the relevance of weighting schemes

This article aims to present an assessment of the effects of panel attrition on income mobility comparisons for some EU countries by using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). There are different possibilities of correcting the attrition problem by means of alternative longitudinal weighting schemes. The sensitivity of mobility estimates to these attrition correction procedures is tested in this article. Our results show that ECHP attrition is characterized by a certain degree of selectivity but only affecting some variables and countries. Different probability models corroborate the existence of a certain nonrandom attrition. The model chosen to construct the longitudinal weights to correct attrition offers up rather different results than those obtained when Eurostat's longitudinal weights are used. Although attrition does not seem to have a great effect on aggregated mobility indicators, it does have a decisive effect on decomposition exercises. Our tests reveal certain sensitivity of income mobility measures to the weighting system used.     

Pension Fund Herding and the Influence of Management Style

In this article, we study the herding phenomenon in Spanish equity pension funds with European investment locations from 2002 to 2012, considering whether the development of different investment strategies by the managers results in herding. In addition, we analyze the performance-herding relationship, observing whether pension fund performance decreases or increases when pension funds herd. Using the herding measure of Lakonishok et al. [1992], we do not find strong imitation behavior, although herding in the market and book-to-market styles are higher. Those pension funds that do not herd or that follow distinctive strategies do not present significant differences in performance with respect to herding funds.     

Training and business performance: the Spanish case

This paper examines the relationship between training policies and business performance. Our research seeks to enlarge the empirical bibliography about the impact training has on firms and tries to challenge the criticism previous works with similar characteristics received. With this purpose in mind, we have used a theoretical model based on the hypothesis of a ‘cascade-type relationship’ between four types of organizational performance. The results obtained from a sample of Spanish firms show that training policy (based on the human capital theory and the resource-based theory) has a significant impact on firm performance.     

Evaluation and comparison of European countries: public opinion on services

We propose the setting-up of an indicator for classifying European countries with relation to consumers’ satisfaction for services of general interest. Services considered are fixed telephone service, electricity supply, railways and postal service. The reference data set is the 2002 Standard Eurobarometer database (EB58) and it refers to EU members before 2004 enlargement. The proposed indicator is based on nonlinear principal component analysis and supplies a measure for the citizen’s satisfaction. Its robustness is verified by a Monte Carlo approach to examine the stability of nonlinear PCA results and to compute Bootstrap C.I.s of average country scores. The level of satisfaction is eventually used for country comparison and for detecting possible hotspots, which might be useful when addressing decision making policies.