Is democracy compatible with global institutions?

The salience and relevance of the currently existing global institutions raise the question of their compatibility with some reasonable notion of democracy. I hold that democracy, as a form of government based on social consent, can be operationalized with different institutional formulas, mostly depending on the territorial scale and the degree of conflict of interests of the issues submitted to collective decision-making. Democratic institutional formulas include the people’s assembly in small cities, party elections of representatives in large states, and expert accountable rulers at the global level. Analogously to how democracy was scaled up from the city level to the state level in early modern times, it needs to be scaled up to the global level by the design and adoption of appropriate institutional formulas.     

Cost-effectiveness of glatiramer acetate and interferon beta-1a for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis,based on the CombiRx study

Background:

To assess the cost-effectiveness of the Disease Modifying Treatments (DMT), Glatiramer Acetate (GA) and Interferon beta-1a (IFN) in monotherapy alone and in combination for the prevention of relapses among Spanish patients aged between 18–60 years old with established Relapsing–Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS).

Methods:

A Markov model was developed to represent the transition of a cohort of patients over a 10 year period using the perspective of the Spanish National Health Service (NHS). The model considered five different health states with 1-year cycles including without relapse, patients with suspect, non-protocol defined and protocol defined exacerbations, as well as a category information lost. Efficacy data was obtained from the 3-year CombiRx Study. Costs were reported in 2013 Euros and a 3% discount rate was applied for health and benefits. Deterministic results were presented as the annual treatment cost for the number of relapses. A probabilistic sensitivity analysis was performed to test the robustness of the model.

Results:

Deterministic results showed that the expected annual cost per patient was lower when treated with GA (€13,843) compared with IFN (€15,589) and the combined treatment with IFN?+?GA (€21,539). The annual number of relapses were lower in the GA cohort with 3.81 vs 4.18 in the IFN cohort and 4.08 in the cohort treated with IFN?+?GA. Results from probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed that GA has a higher probability of being cost-effective than treatment with IFN or IFN?+?GA for threshold values from €28,000 onwards, independent of the maximum that the Spanish NHS is willing to pay for avoiding relapses.

Conclusion:

GA was shown to be a cost-effective treatment option for the prevention of relapses in Spanish patients diagnosed with RRMS. When GA in monotherapy is compared with INF in monotherapy and IFN?+?GA combined, it may be concluded that the first is the dominant strategy.     

Productivity,Infrastructure and Human Capital in the Spanish Regions

We revisit the cointegration relation among output, physical capital, human capital, public capital and labour for 17 Spanish regions observed over the period 1964–2011. Our approach is based on the estimation of a panel data model where cross-section dependence is allowed among the members of the panel. The paper emphasizes the idea that common factors capturing, for instance, total factor productivity, should be accounted for when estimating the parameters. We use several proposals to estimate the long-run relation among these variables, which render consistent and efficient estimates of the parameters.     

The financial contribution of customer-oriented marketing capability

This article assesses the financial contribution of marketing capability. In contrast with previous research, which conceptualizes marketing capability as the deployment of marketing resources to achieve sales, this study conceives marketing capability as the deployment of marketing resources to achieve the ultimate objectives of customer satisfaction and brand equity (i.e., customer-oriented marketing capability [COMC]). Thus, this research disentangles the dynamic relationships among marketing resources, sales, customer satisfaction, and brand equity through the use of network Data Envelopment Analysis to capture COMC. According to what the value relevance perspective proposes, COMC positively influences the growth of Tobin’s q and improves the growth of analysts’ recommendations. These findings remain robust and consistent with the use of additional measures and methods common to the marketing and financial literatures. Our study provides tools and a framework for analysis for managers to maximize their ability to use marketing strategy to drive performance.     

A directional test of exponentiality based on maximum correlations

In Fortiana and Grané (J Stat Plann Infer 108:85–97), we study a scale-free statistic, based on Hoeffding’s maximum correlation, for testing exponentiality. This statistic admits an expansion along a countable set of orthogonal axes, originating a sequence of statistics. Linear combinations of a given number p of terms in this sequence can be written as a quotient of L-statistics. In this paper, we propose a scale-free adaptive statistic for testing exponentiality with optimal power against a specific alternative and obtain its exact distribution. An empirical power study shows that the test based on this new statistic has the same level of performance than the best tests in the statistical literature.     

Measuring persistence of U.S. city prices: new evidence from robust tests

This article revisits the empirical analysis in Cecchetti et al. (Int Econ Rev 43:1081–1099, 2002) involving long-span U.S. city prices, who estimated the persistence of U.S. price differentials to be around 9 years. After controlling for the structural breaks in the data, we find that U.S. city price level differentials are I(0) stationary processes with the median half-life of convergence ranged between 1.5 and 2.6 years, estimates that are in accordance with what should be expected from a highly integrated economy as the United States. Our results are also robust to a pairwise test of price level convergence.     

The Ethics of Metrics: Overcoming the Dysfunctional Effects of Performance Measurements Through Justice

The last two decades have seen a great deal of scandals in the business world. Many of them have to do with accounting and management control, but in substantially different ways. This paper focuses on the dysfunctional effects of systems of measurement and incentives, and the possible ways to overcome those dysfunctional effects, achieving a stable state of goal congruence through the introduction of justice in the design and use of management control systems, by contributing to the ethical development within the organization. We first analyze how the discipline of control systems came into being, and show how, in the last decades, both in theory and practice, has gone in a direction of becoming more ‘automatic,’ and then, we provide some case studies of how they are at the origin of many of the scandals. Borrowing from Rosanas and Velilla (J Bus Eth 57:83–96, 2005) and from Cugueró-Escofet and Rosanas (Manag Account Res 24:23–40, 2013), we develop a model of control systems based on justice, where we make the distinction between formal and informal justice. We are then able to show how informal justice is the key element in the dynamics of a control system: to preserve formal justice, or to evolve toward formal justice. In any case, it is a necessary condition to reach a state of maximum goal congruence, stable through time, as a consequence of the ethical development that this type of systems are able to generate.     

Regional development policies: an assessment of their evolution and effects on the Spanish tourist model

This paper assesses the incidence of regional development policy on the evolution of the Spanish tourist model. Spain's tourist boom took place within the framework of an authoritarian, centralist regime in which no true regional policy existed. Macroeconomic interests prevailed and planning was relaxed in front of the limited economic resources available and the urgent need to earn foreign currency and give coastal areas economic dynamism, all within a favourable context of international demand growth. The country's democratisation process entailed a politico-administrative decentralisation that was more suitable for the development of an effective regional policy.Spain's entry into the European Community increased the economic resources available and largely improved regional policy principles and instruments. While the centralist policy is associated with the sun-and-beach tourist model concentrated on the coast, the new regional policy represents an essential, though sometimes unnoticed, element in the current process of diversification and spatial spread of the Spanish tourist supply.