Price transmission and market power analysis in the Spanish seafood market chain

[cat] Espanya és un dels principals mercats de productes pesquers d’Europa i del món. El consum de productes pesquers ha estat tradicionalment molt important a Espanya, el 2005 es varen consumir 36,7 kg per persona (MAPA, diversos anys). Malgrat això, el mercat i cóm interactuen els diversos nivells de la cadena de comercialització han gaudit de poca atenció. En aquest estudi, utilitzant dades setmanals, s’analitza per als dotze principals productes pesquers, l’elasticitat en la transmissió de preus al llarg de la cadena de comercialització a Espanya (llotja, mercat central i detallista). Finalment s’investiga la presència d’assimetria en la transmissió de preus entre aquests nivells de mercat. Els resultats obtinguts tenen importants implicacions a l’hora d’analitzar la demanda, poder de mercat i marges al llarg del mercat per als productes pesquers.

Why Italy and not Spain?: comparing two industrialization processes from a dissagregate time-series perspective

This study presents new evidence concerning the uneven processes of industrialization innineteenth century Spain and Italy based on a disaggregate analysis of the productivesectors from which the behaviour of the aggregate indices is comprised. The use of multivariate time-series analysis techniques can aid our understanding and characterization of these two processes of industrialization. The identification of those sectors with key rolesin leading industrial growth provides new evidence concerning the factors that governed thebehaviour of the aggregates in the two economies. In addition, the analysis of the existenceof interindustry linkages reveals the scale of the industrialization process, and wheresignificant differences exist, accounts for many of the divergences recorded in the historiography for the period 1850-1913.

Specialisation in Europe and asymmetric shocks: potential risks of EMU

Most optimistic views, based on Optimum Currency Areas (OCA) literature, have concluded that the probability of asymmetric shocks to occur at anational level will tend to diminish in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)as a result of the intensification of the integration process during the most recent years. Therefore, since Economic Geography Theories predict a higherspecialisation of regions, it is expected that asymmetric shocks will increase.Previous studies have examined to what extent asymmetric shocks have been relevant in the past using, mainly, static measures of asymmetries such as the correlation coefficients between series of shocks previously calculated from astructural VAR model (Bayoumi and Eichengreen, 1992).In this paper, we study the evolution of manufacturing specific asymmetries in Europe from a dynamic point of view (applying the modelproposed by Haldane and Hall, 1991) in order to obtain new evidence about potential risks of EMU.

Are commuting and residential mobility decisions simultaneous? : the case of Catalonia (Spain)

In this paper we study the commuting and moving decisions of workers in Catalonia (Spain) and its evolution in the 1986-1996 period. Using a microdata sample from the 1991 Spanish Population Census, we estimate a simultaneous, discrete choice model of commuting and moves, thus indirectly addressing the home and job location decisions. The econometrical framework is a simultaneous, binary probit model with a commute equation and a move equation

Industrial agglomerations and wage gradients: the Spanish economy in the interwar period

This paper gives new evidence on the relationship between integration and industrial agglomeration in the presence of scale economies, by testing directly one of the predictions that can be derived from Krugman (1991), that is, the existence of regional nominal wage gradients and its transformation following changes in trade regimes. Our case study analyzes the effects of the substitution of an open economy by a closed economy regime, exactly the opposite process studied by Hanson (1996, 1997). In Spain, during the interwar period, protectionist policies would have favored the loss of centrality of the coastal location (Barcelona) and the relative rise of central locations (such as Madrid). Our results indicate the existence of a wage gradient centered in Barcelona during the interwar period (1914-1930) and its weakening after 1925.

Regional economic dynamics and convergence in the european union

Deepening in the European Union (EU) integration process has enhanced the question of economic disparities at a regional level. Theconvergence process observed until the late seventies was exhausted onwards incoincidence with important changes in the economic activity. The paper showshow these factors would have provoked a regional differenciated response that,despite being important, would have not strengthened the decrease in regionalinequalities. We use an alternative and (in our opinion) richer approach to thetraditional convergence analysis, where the evolution of the whole regionaldistribution is what matters and not that of a representative economy. Moreover,when analysing inequalities among regional economies, the geographical spaceacquire an outstanding role. Hence, we apply spatial association tests and relatethem to the convergence analysis

Authors', Institutions' and Countries' rankings in regional and urban science : an analysis for nine top international journals from 1991 to 2000

This paper examines the most productive authors, institutions and countries in regional and urban science from 1991 to 2000 using information on published articles (and pages) from a sample of widely recognized journals in this field: ARS, JUE, JRS, IJURR, IRSR, PRS, RSUE, RS and US. We also consider the relation between the country of the institution named in articles and the country in which the journal is published, in order to know if there are a home publication bias in regional and urban science. Analysis was made for the whole decade and by subperiods, this allowed us to make a more dynamic interpretation of the results

Topics, techniques and applications in urban and regional science in the nineties: a bibliometric analysis

The current state of regional and urban science has been much discussed and a number of studies have speculated on possible future trends in the development of the discipline. However, there has been little empirical analysis of current publication patterns in regional and urban journals. This paper studies the kinds of topics, techniques and data used in articles published in nine top international journals during the 1990s with the aim of identifying current trends in this research field

Public health expenditure and spatial interactions in a decentralized national health system

One of the limitations of cross-country health expenditure analysis refers to the fact that the financing, the internal organization and political restraints of health care decision-making are country-specific and heterogeneous. Yet, a potential solution is to examine the influence of such effects in those countries that have undertaken decentralization processes. In such a setting, it is possible to examine potential expenditure spillovers across the geography of a country as well as the influence of the political ideology of regional incumbents on public health expenditure. This paper examines the determinants of public health expenditure within Spanish region-states (Autonomous Communities, ACs), most of them subject to similar financing structures although exhibiting significant heterogeneity as a result of the increasing decentralization, region-specific political factors along with different use of health care inputs, economic dimension and spatial interactions

Ownership structure and innovation: Is there a real link?

This work focuses on the study of the relationship between ownership and control structure of the company and its innovative activity. Its aim consists of analysing the role that may be played by determinants within the company related to ownership structure when the decision to incur research and development activities is taken as well as on the output of this innovate process. Among these determinants we may think of issues such as who owns the firm and how the control of decision-making is distributed, the nature of this control and the level of concentration of ownership, among others. The study is carried out for the year 2001 using a representative sample of Spanish manufacturing industries.

On the consequences of misspecifing assumptions concerning residuals distribution in a repeated measures and nonlinear mixed modelling context

In this paper we describe the results of a simulation study performed to elucidate the robustness of the Lindstrom and Bates (1990) approximation method under non-normality of the residuals, under different situations. Concerning the fixed effects, the observed coverage probabilities and the true bias and mean square error values, show that some aspects of this inferential approach are not completely reliable. When the true distribution of the residuals is asymmetrical, the true coverage is markedly lower than the nominal one. The best results are obtained for the skew normal distribution, and not for the normal distribution. On the other hand, the results are partially reversed concerning the random effects. Soybean genotypes data are used to illustrate the methods and to motivate the simulation scenarios

Impact of incorrect assumptions on the covariance structure of random effects and/or residuals in nonlinear mixed models for repeated measures data

In this paper we analyse, using Monte Carlo simulation, the possible consequences of incorrect assumptions on the true structure of the random effects covariance matrix and the true correlation pattern of residuals, over the performance of an estimation method for nonlinear mixed models. The procedure under study is the well known linearization method due to Lindstrom and Bates (1990), implemented in the nlme library of S-Plus and R. Its performance is studied in terms of bias, mean square error (MSE), and true coverage of the associated asymptotic confidence intervals. Ignoring other criteria like the convenience of avoiding over parameterised models, it seems worst to erroneously assume some structure than do not assume any structure when this would be adequate.

An inventory of the marine and transitional Middle/Upper Eocene deposits of the Southeastern Pyrenean Foreland Basin (NE Spain)

In the southeastern Ebro Foreland Basin, the marine deposits of Lutetian and Bartonian age show excellent outcrop conditions, with a great lateral and horizontal continuity of lithostratigraphic units. In addition, the rich fossil record -mainly larger foraminifers-, provides biostratigraphic data of regional relevance for the whole Paleogene Pyrenean Basin, that can be used for the Middle Eocene biocorrelation of the western Tethys. This contribution is a sedimentary and biostratigraphic synthesis of the basic outcrops and sections of the Lutetian andBartonian marine and transitional deposits in the southeastern sector of the Ebro Foreland Basin.