Employee-owned firms: a labour model with potential?

In Spain, the companies that are mainly owned by the employees form a part of the Social Economy and offer an alternative business model, which is found in a conventional capitalist economy. The objective of this study is to establish whether there are significant differences in the performance of Employee Owned Firms (EOFs) and more conventionally structured businesses, non-Employee Owned Firms (non-EOFs), due to the inherent differences in the capital-ownership structure. The aim is to establish whether or not a corporate governance structure characterised by the employee participation for both the financial and the informational decision-making aspects can be advocated. The results show differences in favour of the conventional non-EOFs for various indicators measuring economic performance and confirm the different objectives of each business type; however, they provide evidence of significant differences in favour of the EOFs in terms of the efficient use of the capital and labour factors of production, according to the theoretical literature.

Measuring the economic impact of Research Joint Ventures supported by the EU Framework Programme

The objective of this paper is to analyse the effects of international R&D cooperation on firms’ economic performance. Our approach, based on a complete data set with information about Spanish participants in research joint ventures supported by the EU Framework Programme during the period 1995-2005, establishes a recursive model structure to capture the relationship between R&D cooperation, knowledge generation and economic results, which are measured by labour productivity. In the analysis we take into account that the participation in this specific type of cooperative projects implies a selection process that includes both the self-selection by participants to join the consortia and the selection of projects by the European Commission to award the public aid. Empirical analysis has confirmed that: (1) R&D co-operation has a positive impact on the technological capacity of firms, captured through intan-gible fixed assets and (2) the technological capacity of firms is positively related to their productivity.

Using a CGE Model to Identify the Policy Trade-Off between Unemployment and Inflation: The Efficient Phillips Curve

This paper provides a new reading of a classical economic relation: the short-run Phillips curve. Our point is that, when dealing with inflation and unemployment, policy-making can be understood as a multicriteria decisionmaking problem. Hence, we use so-called multiobjective programming in connection with a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to determine the combinations of policy instruments that provide efficient combinations of inflation and unemployment. This approach results in an alternative version of the Phillips curve labelled as efficient Phillips curve. Our aim is to present an application of CGE models to a new area of research that can be especially useful when addressing policy exercises with real data. We apply our methodological proposal within a particular regional economy, Andalusia, in the south of Spain. This tool can give some keys for policy advice and policy implementation in the fight against unemployment and inflation.

Defining efficient policies in a general equilibrium model: a multi-objective approach

Macroeconomic policy makers are typically concerned with several indicators of economic performance. We thus propose to tackle the design of macroeconomic policy using Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques. More specifically, we employ Multiobjective Programming (MP) to seek so-called efficient policies. The MP approach is combined with a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. We chose use of a CGE model since they have the dual advantage of being consistent with standard economic theory while allowing one to measure the effect(s) of a specific policy with real data. Applying the proposed methodology to Spain (via the 1995 Social Accounting Matrix) we first quantified the trade-offs between two specific policy objectives: growth and inflation, when designing fiscal policy. We then constructed a frontier of efficient policies involving real growth and inflation. In doing so, we found that policy in 1995 Spain displayed some degree of inefficiency with respect to these two policy objectives. We then offer two sets of policy recommendations that, ostensibly, could have helped Spain at the time. The first deals with efficiency independent of the importance given to both growth and inflation by policy makers (we label this set: general policy recommendations). A second set depends on which policy objective is seen as more important by policy makers: increasing growth or controlling inflation (we label this one: objective-specific recommendations).

South European welfare regime model and the turkish case

The rise of neoliberalism and the experience of several economic crises throughout 1960’s and 70’s have opened the way to question the ability of welfare state to satisfy the basic needs of the societies. Therefore the term “welfare state” left its place to “welfare regime” in which the responsibilities for the well being of the societies are distributed among state, market and families. Following the introduction of this new term, several typologies of welfare regimes are started to be discussed. Esping-Andersen’s (1990) regime typology is considered to be one of the most significant one which covers most of the European countries. On the other hand, it has also led to criticisms for being lack of several aspects. One of them was done by Ferrera (1996), Moreno (2001), Boboli (1997) and Liebfreid (1992), which discusses that the grouping of Mediterranean countries of Europe -Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal- within the conservative regime type. Those authors affirm that Southern European countries have their peculiar features in terms of structure of welfare provision and they form a fourth type which may be called "Mediterranean/ Southern European Regime". At this point, this doctoral thesis carries the discussion one step further and covers a profound research to answer some fundamental questions. Chiefly, clarifying whether it is possible to talk about a coherent grouping between the Mediterranean countries of Southern Europe in terms of their welfare regimes is our first objective. Then by assuming that it has an affirmative response, it is aimed to reflect the characteristics of this grouping. On the other hand, those group features are not static in time and they are sensible to various economic changes...