Cities under stress

This paper studies the effect of terrorist attacks on the internal structure of cities. We develop an urban framework with capital structures suitable for the study of this question and analyze the long and short term implications of this type of events. In the long run, the analysis shows that a terrorist attack will affect urban structure only modestly, relative to the potentially large decrease in the level of economic activity in the city. Land rents will not decline at all locations. In the short run, agglomeration forces will amplify the effect of the original destruction and will reduce urban economic activity temporarily.     

Inter-enterprise arrears in economies in transition

In the context of economies in transition, the paper argues that an excessive liquidity squeeze could throw the economy into a persistent state of low economic activity. In such bad equilibrium, enterprise transactions become largely demonetized, with a chain of arrears, a form of involuntary credit, spreading over the entire system. The empirical analysis of the Romanian experience seems to support the view advanced in the paper.     

Un indicador de baja calidad del empleo aplicado al Brasil, 2002–2011

En países con mayores niveles de informalidad y precariedad laboral es cuestionable la precisión con la que las tasas de desempleo y participación laboral y los salarios reflejan las condiciones del mercado de trabajo. En esta investigación utilizamos un indicador multidimensional de baja calidad del empleo que considera ingresos, existencia de contrato, contribución a la seguridad social y duración del empleo para analizar el mercado de trabajo brasileño entre 2002 y 2011. Los resultados muestran un aumento significativo de la calidad del empleo, especialmente en el periodo 2009–2011, y diferencias importantes entre trabajadores asalariados e independientes y por sector productivo.     

Financial crises and liquidity shocks a bank-run perspective

In contrast with the financial multiplier literature, this note explores a case in which the shock triggering a financial crisis stems from the financial sector itself; it is not a shock stemming from the real sector which gets amplified by, say, agency problems. The basic intuition is provided by the bank-run literature of the Diamond and Dybvig (1983) variety. Financial development is modeled as a mechanism that endows real assets (e.g., land and capital) with liquidity. However, liquidity can be impaired by shocks that are equivalent to a bank run. Liquidity creation enhances real asset prices, while a liquidity crunch generates asset price collapse. This bubble-looking episode is not driven by standard fundamentals, although it is fully in line with rationality. In this context, devoid of other frictions like price stickiness, the note examines the effect of monetary policy in the absence of nominal rigidities. It shows that preventing price deflation is not enough to offset relative (to output) asset price meltdown, but lower policy interest rates increase relative asset prices and steady-state output. Moreover, in the neighborhood of a first-best capital allocation, an increase in the liquidity of capital may lower the welfare of the representative individual, even if the higher liquidity of capital is sustainable and, hence, not destroyed by future crash – illustrating the possibility of “excessive” financial innovation. An extension of the basic model supports the conjecture that low policy interest rates may have given further incentives to the development of “shadow banking.”     

THE BIAS OF THE MULTIPLIER MATRIX WHEN SUPPLY AND USE TABLES ARE STOCHASTIC

The literature on stochastic input–output (I–O) analysis has paid considerable attention to the bias in the Leontief inverse. This paper extends previous studies by assuming supply and use tables (SUTs rather than I–O tables or input coefficients matrices) to be stochastic. This is a natural starting point because SUTs have become the basic data sources for I–O applications. In a Monte Carlo simulation experiment, a given SUT is randomized in two different ways and the effects are determined for eight different multiplier matrices. The analysis is carried out for Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Finland, using their SUTs for 2006. The findings indicate that, in general, biases are statistically significant but negligibly small. This corroborates earlier findings obtained for stochastic I–O tables.     

Influence of the sector and the environment on human resource practices' effectiveness

The aim of this work is to examine the effect that human resource practice has on performance. From a database made up of 250 companies in Spain and by means of a regression analysis, we test empirically whether human resource practices generate positive results under any circumstance or if their effectiveness depends on certain contexts. In this respect, focusing the study on the activity sector and the environment, we analyse whether high levels of competition in the environment and service companies constitute more attractive contexts for the adoption of high involvement practices.     

CSR Policies: Effects on Labour Productivity in Spanish Micro and Small Manufacturing Companies

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper analyses empirical evidence of efforts to enable Spanish micro and small manufacturing companies to boost their labour productivity rates through the...     

The Effect of the Organizational Context on SME's Entrepreneurship: Some Spanish Evidence

The research reported in this article examines the influence of the organizational context of firm on their entrepreneurship. Specifically, this study examines how the organizational context variables of age, size, resources and competitive strategy affect entrepreneurship and in particular, innovation, proactiveness and risk-taking. Results from a sample of 233 firms showed, as hypothesized, the significant influence of resources and competitive strategy on entrepreneurship. However, size and age were not significant.