Comments on “An analysis of the international tourism demand in Spain” by P. González and P. Moral

Although the state-space, unobserved component approach to forecasting has many advantages, it must be applied carefully in practice and should not be used in an uncritical, ‘black box’ fashion. In particular, such an approach to the modelling and forecasting of Spanish tourism data is inappropriate and leads to misleading conclusions, particularly in relation to the uncritical selection and use of explanatory regression variables.     

The Attractiveness of Wellness Destinations: An Importance–Performance–Satisfaction Approach

The attractiveness of tourism destinations is a topic of great interest to researchers and professionals wishing to understand the ability of destinations to attract and satisfy tourists. However, there is a lack of consensus on the attributes that could explain the attractiveness of destinations, attributes that can also vary according to the tourist product under analysis. An importance–performance–satisfaction approach is adopted, to identify the attributes that are important for tourists travelling to enjoy wellness vacations, assess the performance of Gran Canaria in those attributes and analyze the possible association between the performance of Gran Canaria and tourist satisfaction. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time spent on erythropoietin stimulating agents administration in hemodialysis centers in Panama: a time and motion study

Objectives: There is a lack of data in Panama on the potential differences in total healthcare professional (HCP) time between routine administrations of short-acting erythropoietin simulating agents (ESAs) (i.e. epoetin alfa) and continuous erythropoietin receptor activator (CERA) (i.e. methoxy polyethylene glycol–epoetin beta). This study aimed to quantify the HCP time associated with a single administration of epoetin alfa and CERA for the treatment of anemic patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) on hemodialysis.

Methods: This was a multi-center, cross-sectional study, using a time-and-motion methodology. Costs related to HCP time and consumables usage associated with administration of epoetin alfa and CERA were estimated.

Results: Based on 60 administrations of either CERA or epoetin alfa, the estimated savings in mean total active HCP time were 2.34 (95% confidence interval?=?1.87–2.81) min (–30%) per administration. When extrapolating to a full year’s treatment with intravenous ESA, it would require a total of 20.3 (95% CI?=?19.90–20.71) h of HCP time for epoetin alfa vs 1.1 (95% CI?=?1.01–1.19) h for CERA per patient per year. Estimated savings in active HCP time per patient per year were 19.20 (95% CI?=?19.20–19.21) h (–95%). This, in turn, translates into staff cost efficiency that favors Mircera with an estimated annual saving of $78.24 (95% CI?=?78.24–78.28) (–95%) per patient.

Conclusions: Data from a real-world setting showed that the adoption of CERA could potentially lead to a reduction in active HCP time.

• Highlights

• Few comparative data have explored the costs and potential savings of using long-acting erythropoietin–stimulating agents (ESA) instead of short-acting ESAs to treat anemia in CKD patients on hemodialysis.

• This time-and-motion study shows that use of CERA reduces total healthcare professional time and could represent a save for an institution in a real-world setting in Panama.

     

Micro‐impacts of the Brazilian Regional Development Funds: Does lending size matter?

This paper evaluates the micro‐impacts of regional development funds in Brazil—the Constitutional Financing Funds (CFF)—using fixed effects panel data models and generalized propensity score between 2000 and 2012. Assessing the industrial and commerce/services sectors using fixed effects models, the results provide weak evidence of a positive and statistically significant impact of the CFF on job creation and no statistically significant impact on labor productivity growth at the firm level. Regarding dose‐response estimates, the results present evidence of nonlinear effects after three years of financing, suggesting that the amount of subsidized credit plays an important role in creating jobs and improving firm productivity.     

A general equilibrium analysis of parental leave policies

Despite mandatory parental leave policies being a prevalent feature of labor markets in developed countries, their aggregate effects in the economy are not well understood. To assess their quantitative impact, we develop a general equilibrium model of fertility and labor market decisions that builds on the labor matching framework of Mortensen and Pissarides (1994). We find that females gain substantially with generous policies but this benefit occurs at the expense of a reduction in the welfare of males. Leave policies have important effects on fertility, leave taking decisions, and employment. These effects are mainly driven by how the policy affects bargaining – young females anticipate future states with higher threat points induced by the policy. Because the realization of these states depends on the decisions of females to give birth and take a leave, leave policies effectively subsidize fertility and leave taking. We also find that generous paid parental leaves can be an effective tool to encourage mothers to spend time with their children after giving birth.     

Static efficiency decompositions and capacity utilization: integrating economic and technical capacity notions

Starting from existing static decompositions of overall economic efficiency on nonparametric production and cost frontiers, this article proposes more comprehensive decompositions including several cost-based notions of capacity utilization. Furthermore, in case prices are lacking, we develop additional decompositions of overall technical efficiency integrating a technical concept of capacity utilization. These new efficiency decompositions provide a link between short and long run economic analysis and, in empirical work, avoid conflating inefficiency and differences in capacity utilization. An empirical analysis using a monthly panel of Chilean hydro-electric power plants illustrates the potential of these decomposition proposals.     

A PANIC analysis on regional and sectoral inflation: the Spanish case

This article studies the stochastic properties of several inflation rates for the Spanish economy using the consumer price index (CPI) for the 17 regions and 12 groups of goods and services, and the producer price index (PPI) for 26 industrial sectors. To this end, we employ the panel analysis of nonstationarity in idiosyncratic and common components (PANIC) approach proposed by Bai and Ng (2004, 2010). This methodology enables us to decompose the observed inflation rate series into a common and an idiosyncratic component, thus allowing us to identify the exact source of nonstationarity. Our analysis provides strong evidence of the presence of a common stochastic trend driving the observed series forming the panel of CPI-based inflation rates for the regions. This, coupled with the presence of a jointly stationary idiosyncratic component, implies the existence of pairwise cointegration across the regional CPI-based inflation rates, which show a clear pattern of convergence over time. This gives an indication of increased geographical homogeneity in consumption patterns. The evidence for the panels of CPI-based inflation of groups of goods and services and PPI-based inflation of industrial sectors indicates the existence of four independent common stochastic trends. This, combined with jointly stationary idiosyncratic series, provides much weaker evidence of cross-cointegration for these two panels.     

Export activity,persistence and mark-ups

This article addresses the differences in margins across exporting and nonexporting firms. We jointly estimate a translog cost function, a variable factor share equation and price-cost margin equations to analyse the effect of persistence in export activity on margins. Results indicate that nonexporters have smaller margins than persistent exporters and firms that entered foreign markets during the nineties. However, larger export ratio is negatively associated with margins for persistent exporters. It suggests that efficiency advantages for exporters are partially compensated by higher competitive pressure in international markets. These results are in accordance with the predictions of Melitz and Ottaviano (2005 Melitz, MJ and Ottaviano, GIP. 2005. Market size trade, and productivity, NBER Working Paper Series No. 11393 (forthcoming in The Review of Economic Studies) [Google Scholar]).     

Valuing nature: From environmental impacts to natural capital

Economic valuation of natural and environmental assets is now a well established practice. Economic analysis provides several methods for discovering the impact on social welfare associated with changes in the ability of these assets to provide different goods and services. In general terms, these valuation exercises have been performed in the framework of Environmental Impact Assessment or, more generally, Cost Benefit Analysis. There is, however, an increasing demand nowadays to go beyond this framework and to value natural capital (natural resource stocks, land and ecosystems) as such. There are two main reasons for this new demand. On the one hand, sustainability requires that proper account should be taken of capital depreciation and, therefore, there is a need to value natural capital changes. This valuation process, nevertheless, only makes sense when some kind of substitution between natural and other forms of capital is allowed. On the other hand, there is also an increasing tendency to demand that the stock of natural capital present in a given territory be valued, either to discover one of the main components of social wealth or to help adequately plan changes in land use. Yet, whereas conventional valuation methods are probably adequate to fulfill the first task, this is less true in the case of the second, while even more difficulties arise in connection with the third one. Even if at first sight the process appears conceptually identical, these tasks are of a different order of magnitude, as the experience of both the World Bank and the Statistics Division of the United Nations in this respect clearly shows.