Evaluation of the convergence between “self-reporters” and “proxies” in a disability questionnaire by means of behaviour coding method

Household surveys often require including proxy reporters to obtain information about other household members who cannot be interviewed. The participation of proxies can undermine survey data quality due to the fact that proxies must respond to questions thinking about other people. The objectives of the present study were to analyze the behaviour of proxy reporters and evaluate the convergence between the answers given by proxies and self-reporters by means of behaviour coding. This improves the evaluation of convergence, since only adequate (i.e., interpretable) answers given by both types of informant are taken into account. Responses to a disability questionnaire employed by an official statistical institute were analyzed. The questionnaire includes 11 questions about different limitations related to everyday activities. 16 self-reporter and 16 proxies formed 16 couples whose members lived together and supported a direct family relation. The results show a high percentage (52%) of convergence between both types of informant, although fluctuating across the questions and the couples. Proxies showed relatively more adequate behaviour during the interaction than self-reporters. From this we conclude that proxies can be considered at least as good informants as self-reporters from an interviewer-respondent interaction perspective. Future research should address the impact of proxy responses on survey validity.     

Mergers and acquisitions in the european union frame

In the first step, the research analyzes the different European waves of mergers and acquisitions and the restructuring market characteristics. It is followed by a study of such corporate restructuring methods as divestitures, spin-offs, split-ups, split-offs, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), and equity carveouts, paying special attention to corporate mergers and acquisitions, the different types and their diversity of targets. The European situation regarding mergers and acquisitions, their different characteristics, and the way to do them are studied in the tables.     

Wood and industrialization: Evidence and hypotheses from the case of Spain, 1860-1935

The aim of this paper is to study wood consumption during the industrial expansion which took place in the western world in the second half of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century, through the analysis of the case of Spain. For this purpose, we present the series of Spanish wood consumption both as a raw material (WRM) and as firewood (FW) between 1860 and 1935 and we carry out two exercises with these series. The first calculates the intensity of use (IOU), which relates wood consumption in physical terms with the evolution of the GDP. The second, more complex, exercise estimates a standard consumption function that allows us to know the elasticity of WRM with respect to the GDP, the Spanish price of wood and the Spanish price of a substitute material like iron. Based on our results, we discuss the lower dependence of the Spanish industrial economy on wood, the “liberation” of forest areas that may have occurred in Spain as a result of industrialization, and to what extent the trends observed for the Spanish case can be extrapolated internationally. The main conclusion is that industrialization transformed the uses of wood and, though the importance of this resource per unit of GDP decreased, its overall consumption increased, generating greater pressure on forests at an international level.     

LIFETIME AND VERTICAL INTERTEMPORAL INEQUALITY, INCOME SMOOTHING, AND REDISTRIBUTION: A SOCIAL WELFARE APPROACH

Between and within-households intertemporal inequality indices are proposed to highlight the vertical and lifetime (i.e. cyclical) components of overall intertemporal inequality. Comparison with the classical static inequality indices is made. Income redistribution and smoothing (i.e. stabilization) are conveniently defined as the public policy impact on welfare, by means of the relative increase in intertemporal vertical and cyclical equity, respectively. The issue is important as many public policies are aimed at both (vertical and cyclical equity) objectives. Our approach provides a more appropriate evaluation of the desirability of public reforms aimed at achieving a greater vertical and cyclical equity, within a social welfare framework.     

Social dumping and relocation: is there a case for imposing a social clause?

Public opinion in Europe seems worried about the relocation of production plants toward low wage countries often accused of practicing ‘social dumping’. To reduce the incentives for relocation trade unions proposed the adoption of ‘social clauses’ protecting domestic markets from commodities produced in countries where minimal labor condition are not met. We analyze the effects of the adoption of a social clause in a vertically differentiated Bertrand duopoly. We assess how such a policy affects firms’ relocation decisions in order to be able to assess its welfare implications. We also characterize the optimal social clause policy, both under domestic welfare maximization, and from an efficiency point of view. While we show that a social clause policy cannot be dismissed on domestic (or world) welfare grounds, its case is weaker the higher is the domestic wage and the lower is the foreign wage.     

An index of political support for decentralization: the Spanish case

This paper presents a method to make measurable what was not: the discourses of politicians regarding decentralization. For this purpose, we develop a “matrix of arguments” and a set of indexes, and apply them to provide a snapshot of the politicians’ views on the “General Law of Budgetary Stability”, a landmark for the process of decentralization in Spain.     

Manufacturing Skill‐biased Wage Inequality,Natural Resources and Institutions

We use an extensive dataset on occupational wages to measure the manufacturing skill premium and assess, for the first time, the influence of natural resources and institutional quality—in addition to traditional drivers—for advanced and less‐advanced countries and the full sample. The new findings, regarding 21 countries between 1988 and 2008 in the main panel estimations, suggest the premium of advanced countries rises with tertiary enrollment, net foreign direct investment (FDI) and institutional quality, and falls with centralized wage negotiations and geographically diffuse natural resource activities, mainly re‐exportation related. In less‐advanced countries, the premium rises with net FDI, scale effects, centralized wage negotiations and geographically concentrated natural resource activities (absorbing scarce skilled workers), and falls with trade, diffuse natural resource exploration (using mainly unskilled workers) and high‐technology exports, as emerging national low‐end technology industrial exporters may lower skill pay compared with foreign industrial exporters. In the full sample, the premium rises with scale effects, trade, institutional quality and concentrated natural resources, and falls with the relative skilled‐labor supply, centralized wage negotiations and diffuse natural resources. The results account for a wider diversity of situations compared with the previous studies.     

Technology Newness and Impact of Go/No-Go Criteria on New Product Success

This study shows that the relative effect of five dimensions of go/no-go criteria on new product success is contingent on the stage of the development process and newness of the technology. Specifically, strategic fit criteria are critical to new product success at the initial screening. Technical criteria are significantly correlated with product success only at the go-to-development decision gate. Market opportunity criteria relate positively with project success at the initial screening, the market launch gate and the post-launch review. Financial criteria correlate positively with success from the go-to-development decision to the first post-launch review. Customer-acceptance criteria stand out as equally important to success throughout the entire development process. In relation to the moderating effect of technology newness, it was found that customer acceptance and market opportunity criteria at the initial screening are more important for the success of low technologically innovative projects than for the success of high technologically innovative projects. At the initial screening, financial criteria exert a negative effect on the success of projects incorporating highly innovative technologies.