Policies to increase business tourism income: A dynamic panel data model

This article aims to identify the determinants that influence business tourism income and that may be controlled by economic agents and policy makers of destination countries. For the development of the empirical study, a dynamic panel model by the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) was estimated using the Gretl 2016a software, and a sample of 122 countries for the period 2002–2013 (12 years) was used. The study reveals that, for the development of policies to stimulate the growth in the short and long-term of business tourism income, countries should develop measures that encourage capital investment in tourism and foreign direct investment.     

Counterfactual analysis of bank mergers

We introduce a counterfactual analysis of banks mergers, combining the pre-merger equilibrium setting with post-merger environmental characteristics, while accounting for endogenously propagated changes in market structure. Using this procedure we are able to estimate the effects on loan flows and interest rates that would have been observed if the pre-merger equilibrium was not altered. Results are obtained for firms, households, and banks inside and outside the merging circles separately. We find that mergers increased firms’ access to credit, but had an opposite effect on households and led to a widespread decrease in interest rates.     

Stylised facts and other empirical evidence on firm dynamics,business cycle and growth

In this paper, we bring together, in a systematised fashion, the scattered empirical evidence relating firm dynamics with both short-run and long-run macroeconomic dynamics. There are numerous studies that focus on firm-level data while controlling for macroeconomic conditions. From these studies a fairly robust set of empirical regularities pertaining to entry, exit, growth and the size distribution of firms has emerged. However, the literature that focuses explicitly on the interplay between firm dynamics and the business cycle is roughly confined to the US experience and to the cyclical properties of firm entry and exit, while the studies about the relationship between firm dynamics and economic growth are limited and unsystematic. We also give a brief account of the most recent theoretical literature on firm dynamics and macroeconomic dynamics, and try to relate it to the empirical findings.     

Corporate governance in the 2007–2008 financial crisis: Evidence from financial institutions worldwide

This paper investigates the influence of corporate governance on financial firms' performance during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Using a unique dataset of 296 financial firms from 30 countries that were at the center of the crisis, we find that firms with more independent boards and higher institutional ownership experienced worse stock returns during the crisis period. Further exploration suggests that this is because (1) firms with higher institutional ownership took more risk prior to the crisis, which resulted in larger shareholder losses during the crisis period, and (2) firms with more independent boards raised more equity capital during the crisis, which led to a wealth transfer from existing shareholders to debtholders. Overall, our findings add to the literature by examining the corporate governance determinants of financial firms' performance during the 2007–2008 crisis.     

Fiscal transfers for biodiversity conservation: The Portuguese Local Finances Law

Biodiversity loss is a serious and ongoing global environmental problem. Economic instruments in biodiversity policies can contribute towards reconciling the conservation costs encountered at local level with the benefits of biodiversity conservation at higher levels of governance, from regional and national levels up to the global level. This paper outlines the theoretical foundations of fiscal transfers in conservation policies and also offers a concise account of existing international experience and future prospects. The recently amended Portuguese Local Finances Law (LFL) of 2007, with its groundbreaking new article on the promotion of local sustainability, is analysed in terms of the significance of fiscal transfers for municipal budgets. It is compared with its predecessor law, highlighting changes in fiscal revenues for selected municipalities in the country in relation to their designated conservation areas. The analysis shows that these ecological fiscal transfers can be significant for those municipalities with a large proportion of land under protected status. However, because it also introduces a considerable number of changes to the Portuguese fiscal transfer scheme, the ecological impact of the new LFL is difficult to grasp due to the presence of several crossover effects. The results obtained offer significant insights both for improving the Portuguese LFL and for designing new ecological fiscal transfer schemes.     

Beta-convergence and sigma-convergence in corporate governance in Europe

This paper tests for beta-convergence and sigma-convergence in the corporate governance models, using a sample of corporate governance ratings for 198 European corporations listed on the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index. A piecewise linear regression is deployed to select a model and the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator is also applied to estimate an exponential model. It concludes that there is statistical evidence of beta- and sigma-convergence within countries and the results suggest that institutional differences between countries are statistically relevant.     

The European Union: Economic prospects,structural reforms and enlargement

On the eve of enlargement of the European Union from fifteen to twenty-five Member States, this article focuses on economic developments in 2003 and prospects for 2004 and 2005 in the European Union, especially in the euro area, the state of play on structural reform, before concluding with some reflections on enlargement.