Liquidity Pools, Risk Sharing, and Financial Contagion

This paper reevaluates the Allen–Gale (2000) analysis of interbank deposits to explain financial contagion. This paper modifies the pecking order of asset liquidation developed in Allen–Gale, which is essential in fragility analysis. Furthermore, we also provide a claim structure called liquidity pool that can both achieve risk sharing and prevent financial contagion across regions when asymmetric information about bank assets is absent. This model can partly explain why bank panics reduced substantially after the founding of the Fed and the role of IMF in regional financial crises.     

Discounting long run average growth in stochastic dynamic programs

Summary. Finding solutions to the Bellman equation often relies on restrictive boundedness assumptions. In this paper we develop a method of proof that allows to dispense with the assumption that returns are bounded from above. In applications our assumptions only imply that long run average (expected) growth is sufficiently discounted, in sharp contrast with classical assumptions either absolutely bounding growth or bounding each period (instead of long run) maximum (instead of average) growth. We discuss our work in relation to the literature and provide several examples. Received: July 26, 2000; revised version: July 10, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" I am specially grateful to Cuong Le Van and to anonymous referee for detecting an error in a previous version of this paper and for suggestions that sensibly improved the paper. Comments and suggestions are also acknowledged to Michele Boldrin, Raouf Boucekkine, Fabrice Collard, Tim Kehoe, Omar Licandro, and Luis Puch. I am also indebted to participants to the III Summer School on Economic Theory held at the Universidade de Vigo, the Macroeconomics Workshop at the Universitat Autò}noma de Barcelona, and the Econometrics Seminar at Tilburg University. Financial support from the Belgian government, under project PAI P4/01, at the IRES-UCL, from a European Marie Curie fellowship, Grant HPMF-CT-1999-00410, at the CEPREMAP, and from IVIE and Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología and FEDER, under project BEC2001-0535, at the Universidad de Alicante, is gratefully acknowledged.     

A learning methodology using Matlab/Simulink for undergraduate electrical engineering courses attending to learner satisfaction outcomes

Learner-centred approaches follow the prevailing tendency in modern University reforms which are primarily concerned about “how people learn”. The methodologies can be learner-centred in the sense of placing the student as the main actor of the teaching–learning process by increasing his interactivity and participation, but also considering what is relevant for the student by measuring the learner satisfaction. In order to promote both aspects, this paper proposes a synchronous software-based active methodology that makes use of the simulations to show a virtual scenario to the students and challenge them to predict and discuss the evolution of the scenario. The proposed methodology improves the visual interface, promotes discussion both among students and with the teacher in a brainstorming stage and shows real-world examples. This software-based methodology has been implemented into an Electric Machinery course at the University of Seville (Spain), and the evaluation has been carried out considering both the affective and cognitive domains. Principal components analysis proves to be useful to highlight the dimensions with a higher influence on learner satisfaction and the affective and cognitive results confirm the successful implementation of the proposal.     

CSR Policies: Effects on Labour Productivity in Spanish Micro and Small Manufacturing Companies

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper analyses empirical evidence of efforts to enable Spanish micro and small manufacturing companies to boost their labour productivity rates through the...     

The Creation of Value Through Corporate Reputation

The relationship between social and financial performance (CSP – FP) has been a main objective in the literature on business management, as it would provide an economic justification for the social investment insofar as it contributes to the creation of value. This relationship has been empirically tested by several authors though without using a theoretical model that sustains this relationship. The aim of this article is to propose a theoretical model of the process of the creation of value from the reputation generated by companies, integrating the factors that have been shown to be more relevant in this process from previous research, in such a way that hypotheses are put forward regarding the existence of this relationship and the factors that determine it. Finally, an empirical test is performed using the 100 most prestigious companies operating in Spain during 2004.     

Capital Inflows to Hungary in 1995–96 and the Accompanying Policy Responses

In order to analyze the composition and effects of, and the policy responses to, capital inflows to Hungary during 1995–96, we present an analytical framework that emphasizes the distinction between net capital flows to the private and public sectors (the latter includes the government and the central bank). This distinction is essential in Hungary's case, because figures for overall net inflows conceal the fact that huge net capital inflows to the private sector were accompanied by large repayments of foreign public debt, covered by significant privatization revenues. We present indicators of the domestic monetary impact of net capital inflows in order to analyze the magnitude, costs, and effects of sterilization. We note that extensive sterilization and the use of privatization revenues for public debt repayment largely explain why capital inflows to Hungary did not have significant effects on the real economy or on domestic monetary aggregates in the period reviewed.     

Delaying retirement in Spain

We study the reform of the Spanish public pension system in a multiperiod, general equilibrium, overlapping generations model economy populated by heterogeneous households. Our households differ in their place of birth, in their age, in their education and, endogenously, in their employment status, in their wealth, and in their pension entitlements. They receive a stochastic endowment of efficiency labor units each period. And they face a disability risk and a survival risk. They understand the link between the payroll taxes that they pay and the public pensions that they receive. And they decide how much to consume and to work, and when to retire from the labor force. We calibrate this economy to Spanish data, and we use it to study the consequences of delaying three years the statutory retirement ages in 2010. We find this reform is sufficient to solve the sustainability problems that plague the current Spanish public pension system. Our model economy predicts that under the current rules, the pension system fund will run out in 2028 and in the reformed economy it will last until 2050. We also find that it is moderately expansionary, and that it improves social welfare from the year 2015 onwards. We conclude that policymakers should seriously consider delaying the statutory retirement ages in Spain sometime in the near future.