Performance pay and productivity of low- and high-ability workers

Existing literature has mainly focused on analyses of the overall effect of a change in the incentive scheme. Lazear (Lazear, E., 2000, “Performance pay and productivity”, American Economic Review, 90, 1346–1361.), for example, estimates the average increase in productivity after a firm switches from an hourly-wage scheme to a piece-rate plus basic-wage scheme. His paper does not, however, account for the fact that many workers remained within the basic-wage range after the change was made in the incentive scheme. In the present paper we explore how the incentive effect might have been different for those workers seeking the basic wage, and those workers seeking the piece-rate component of the wage. Interestingly, the change in productivity is approximately the same in percentage terms for both types of workers.     

The State in Court: the economic effects of fee-shifting rules in Spain when suing the government

Following the recent public debate concerning the situation of the Judicial system in Spain, the paper analyses the special position of the State in Court, essentially with reference to suits brought by individuals against the State before Spanish first instance Courts, although international Courts are touched as well. The analysis focuses on the incentives to litigate and to settle in a dispute with the State, focusing on the State’s special procedural rules and the fee-shifting rules applied in the Spanish Justice system. The asymmetries in favor of the State reduce the incentives to litigate against the State, but also reduce the settlement range in order to achieve out-of-Court settlements.     

EXPORT DIVERSIFICATION AND EXPORT PERFORMANCE BY DESTINATION COUNTRY

The main focus of this paper is the relationship between export diversification and export performance. The key difference with respect to the previous literature is that export diversification is measured and related to export volume by destination country. The approach is empirical and an aggregate export demand setting is adopted to test the significance and influence of export diversification, measured via the Herfindahl index, on export performance by destination country. The econometric estimation is performed using export data for Spain to its partner countries for the period 1999–2011. The main finding is the positive relationship between Spanish export concentration and export performance by destination market. This finding is shown to be robust to several econometric specifications.     

An exploration of the effects of past experience and tourist involvement on destination loyalty formation

Gaining the loyalty of visitors is one of the main challenges of destinations. Previous studies generally agree that satisfaction is the key driver of tourist loyalty. However, it is necessary to conduct a more thorough study of destination loyalty formation by exploring the role of other variables as direct antecedents of loyalty and as moderators of the satisfaction–loyalty relationship. With this in mind, this study examines the influences of two variables that are especially relevant in the study of consumer behaviour in tourism: past experience and involvement. The results obtained from a sample of 807 tourists visiting a destination in Spain suggest that (1) satisfaction and past experience have a significant influence on loyalty; (2) it is necessary to separately consider the two dimensions of loyalty (i.e. the intention to return to a destination and the intention to recommend it) to understand loyalty formation; and (3) past experience is a quasi-moderator variable as it directly influences tourist loyalty and moderates the satisfaction–loyalty relationship. The findings of this research may help managers make decisions about market segmentation and guide the marketing efforts to gain loyal tourists.     

Robust implementation under alternative information structures

In this paper we consider a model in which agents have complete information about their neighbors and, possibly, incomplete information about the rest of the environment. We consider two different informational frameworks. In the first, agents do not have priors about the relevant characteristics in the rest of the environment. In the second, agents are supposed to have priors about the unknown characteristics. We present a mechanism which implements any social choice correspondence satisfying monotonicity and no veto power in both informational settings for every possible prior thus requiring little knowledge from the point of view of the designer of the information possessed by agents about the environment. The authors wish to thank J. Canals, B. Chakravorty, P. Chander, C. Herrero, G. Orosel, D. Schmeidler, W. Thomson, W. Trockel, F. Vega, A. Villar, T. Yamato and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies. The first author acknowledges financial support from the Institució Valenciana d’Estudies i Investigació; L.V.I.E. and DGICYT under projects PB/88-0289 and PB/91-0756. The second author acknowledges financial support from DGICYT under project PB/90-0156. A previous version of the paper was written when authors visited (May 1991) the Institute of Mathematical Economics (Bielefeld) to which authors are grateful.     

Systemic risk measures: The simpler the better?

This paper estimates and compares two groups of high-frequency market-based systemic risk measures using European and US interbank rates, stock prices and credit derivatives data from 2004 to 2009. Measures belonging to the macro group gauge the overall tension in the financial sector and micro group measures rely on individual institution information to extract joint distress. We rank the measures using three criteria: (i) Granger causality tests, (ii) Gonzalo and Granger metric, and (iii) correlation with an index of systemic events and policy actions. We find that the best systemic measure in the macro group is the first principal component of a portfolio of Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads whereas the best measure in the micro group is the multivariate densities computed from CDS spreads. These results suggest that the measures based on CDSs outperform measures based on interbank rates or stock market prices.     

A heuristic method for parameter selection in LS-SVM: Application to time series prediction

Least Squares Support Vector Machines (LS-SVM) are the state of the art in kernel methods for regression. These models have been successfully applied for time series modelling and prediction. A critical issue for the performance of these models is the choice of the kernel parameters and the hyperparameters which define the function to be minimized. In this paper a heuristic method for setting both the σ parameter of the Gaussian kernel and the regularization hyperparameter based on information extracted from the time series to be modelled is presented and evaluated.     

International entrepreneurship in SMEs: a study of influencing factors in the textile industry

International entrepreneurship is an incipient research area with a rapidly increasing body of knowledge and contributions. An important part of this literature has focused on the analysis of the contributing factors to IE development. From these studies, this work attempts to analyse and validate through an integrative model the effect on this construct in SME of some of the main factors proposed by the literature such as Skills and Competences, Attitude and Proactiveness, Creativity and Innovation, Networking, Employees and Activity. To proceed with this aim, we conducted an empirical research focused on 174 textile SME in Spain. The results obtained confirm a positive relationship between the studied factors and the IE development. In consequence, this work agrees with previous literature that point out the need to use multi-theoretical perspectives, combining multiple factors.     

Social entrepreneurs: making sense of tensions through the application of alternative strategies of hybrid organizations

Through the use of qualitative analysis, this paper examines the diverse tensions that social entrepreneurs have to deal with in their daily business activity. By using paradox theory and the hybrid organization model as a framework for analysis, we have found three principle causes of tension among social entrepreneurs: social vs economic sustainability; work vs family life; and resistance to change vs innovation. The results show the way in which social entrepreneurs in hybrid organizations resolve these conflicting tensions, usually through a selective coupling strategy, which is eventually complemented with alternative approaches such as compromising or decoupling. Social entrepreneurs tend to focus on one aspect of the tension and deal with it individually, which makes it more manageable. Change and innovation are the triggers for using strategies other than selective coupling, such as compromising or decoupling. When the level of tension rises further, compromising is then used. Decoupling is the last option chosen by social entrepreneurs, and is used only in cases where resolution is not possible with the other two strategies mentioned.

     

Unemployment duration and workers' wage aspirations in Spain

This paper examines unemployed workers' declared willingness to work for wages lower than the one adequate for their qualification. We analyze which personal and economic characteristics determine this willingness and how it changes along the individuals' unemployment spells. The main results are: (i) Young workers, less educated and those living in regions or times of high unemployment are more willing to accept reduced wages while married women with a working husband are much less willing to do so; (ii) Once the individual fixed effect is controlled for, the willingness to work for reduced wages increases with the duration of unemployment; (iii) Not having access to unemployment benefits increases the probability that initially unwilling workers become willing to accept reduced wages.