Do neighboring municipalities matter in industrial location decisions? Empirical evidence from Spain

This paper focuses on industrial location, assuming that entrepreneurs not only consider the advantages associated with a certain municipality, but also those coming from nearby areas. Exploratory analysis reflects the existence of spatial patterns in the creation of manufacturing establishments and sheds light on the geographical scope on which agglomeration economies operate in industrial location. Spatial Probit models and standard Probit models with spatially lagged explanatory variables are estimated to test whether neighboring municipalities’ location decisions and characteristics, including agglomeration economies, matter in industrial location choices. Results show that neighboring municipalities location decisions and characteristics help to explain location decisions of new establishments for 11 manufacturing industries in Spanish municipalities (NUTS V) over the period 1991–1995.     

Populism and the return of the “Paranoid Style”: Some evidence and a simple model of demand for incompetence as insurance against elite betrayal

We present a simple model of populism as the rejection of “disloyal” leaders. We show that adding the assumption that people are worse off when they experience low income as a result of leader betrayal (than when it is the result of bad luck) to a simple voter choice model yields a preference for incompetent leaders even if all leaders have the same underlying probability of betrayal. These deliver worse material outcomes in general, but they reduce the feelings of betrayal during bad times. Some evidence consistent with our model is gathered from the Trump–Clinton 2016 election: on average, subjects primed with the importance of competence in policymaking decrease their support for Trump, the candidate who scores lower on competence in our survey (even amongst Trump supporters). But two groups respond to the treatment with a large (approximately 5 percentage points) increase in their support for Donald Trump: those living in rural areas and those that are low educated, white and living in urban and suburban areas.     

Functional dependence and productive dependence of SMEs

This article analyzes the quality of business structure from a macroeconomic perspective in the regional context. In addition to “traditional” variables such as innovation, internationalization, or entrepreneurial collaboration, new variables have been introduced: functional dependence and productive dependence. Two different economic territories have been chosen within the Spanish economy: the province of Barcelona (high relative income per capita) and the province of Seville (low relative income per capita). We find it is possible to distinguish two types of firms: a) “product-maker” firms (mainly located in advanced areas) and b) “market-maker” firms (mainly located in less developed areas).      

Export Growth and Economic Development in Colonial British America

This paper analyzes the dynamic relationship between tobacco and the rest of the economy in the colonial Chesapeake to test the staple theory version of the export-led growth hypothesis. The paper adopts a multivariate time-series approach which accommodates the presence of cointegration and contemporaneous correlations among innovations. The empirical evidence strongly supports the staple theory. British demand for tobacco is statistically exogenous and found to induce cyclical fluctuations in the colonial price of tobacco as well as temporary over- or underproduction, as measured by a long-term cointegration relationship between the British demand for tobacco and the colonial price of land.     

The Border Effect in Spain

This paper analyses the border effect in Spain using a unique dataset on intranational trade flows over the period 1995–98. The results indicate that, after controlling for market size and distance, Spanish regions trade around 22 times more with the rest of Spain than they do with OECD countries. Moreover, the size of the Spanish bias is lower in the case of the Spanish regions’ exports than in the case of imports, although the difference is not statistically significant in most cases. Finally, the border effect is not uniform across Spanish regions.     

Parental education,gender preferences and child nutritional status in Peru

This paper examines whether the distribution of bargaining power between parents affects nutritional indicators in the early stages of a child’s life, giving evidence that the allocation of household resources varies by the gender of the child and the parents. After accounting for the potential endogeneity of the indicator of power distribution within the household, related to assortative mating in the marriage market, this paper shows that maternal power is more positively associated with girls’ nutrition than boys’. Among households located in rural areas, resource allocation between girls and boys seems to differ. Similarly, some evidence of competition for household resources affecting girls’ nutrition is found.     

Automated Certification for Compliant Cloud-based Business Processes

A key problem in the deployment of large-scale, reliable cloud computing concerns the difficulty to certify the compliance of business processes operating in the cloud. Standard audit procedures such as SAS-70 and SAS-117 are hard to conduct for cloud-based processes. The paper proposes a novel approach to certify the compliance of business processes with regulatory requirements. The approach translates process models into their corresponding Petri net representations and checks them against requirements also expressed in this formalism. Being based on Petri nets, the approach provides well-founded evidence on adherence and, in case of noncompliance, indicates the possible vulnerabilities.     

The Abatement Market A Proposal for Environmental Cooperation among Asymmetric Countries

We present a model of interaction among technologically asymmetriccountries whose use of an open-access environmental resource generatesmutual externalities. We show that countries can improve bothenvironmental quality and their individual welfare levels by buying/sellingpollution abatement. This market mechanism, which reduces incentive forfree-riding, is more effective the larger the technological gap betweencountries.     

Effects of dissatisfaction in tourist services: The role of anger and regret

Dissatisfied customers due to a service failure probably will switch the provider, will complain and/or will spread negative word-of-mouth. However, to what extent some specific emotions triggered by dissatisfaction can mediate between the latter and the previous mentioned behaviours? A sample of 359 users of restaurants and 308 users of hotel services has shown that, whereas anger has a significant influence on the three behaviours under study, regret only affects switching and negative word-of-mouth. Furthermore, slight differences between hotels and restaurants have been found because, in the case of restaurants, anger is not an antecedent of switching whereas regret has an inverse effect on complaining.     

Economic capital for nonperforming loans

A portfolio of nonperforming loans requires economic capital. We present two models for forecasting the portfolio loss and its probability distribution. In the first model, the loss for each nonperforming loan entails a change in provision over the risk horizon. The risk determinants are the single-name concentration, measured by the Herfindahl–Hirschmann index, as well as a systematic factor and the idiosyncratic risk. Our second model allows for interportfolio diversification with a portfolio of performing loans because banks typically own both performing and nonperforming loans. In this model, the nonperforming loan is identified with its systematic risk. Both models allow for closed-form expressions of economic capital and for the capital charge of the single loan. We calibrate the macroeconomic model parameters statistically with a loss panel; the microeconomic parameters depend on the portfolio. The portfolio risk for nonperforming loans mainly depends on the volatility of the systematic economic factor. The dependence becomes more pronounced when interportfolio diversification is taken into account. The magnitude of interportfolio diversification is also marked. Finally, we calculate regulatory capital charges according to Basel II for past-due loans. The regulatory charges are on average smaller than our economic charges and, additionally, take the volatility of economic activity into account only implicitly.