The Spanish motor industry in the first third of the 20th Century: A lost opportunity

The Spanish automobile industry had a late start. Although the country proved capable of short production runs of high-quality vehicles during the first third of the century it never managed to build up its own industry, unlike Great Britain, France, or Italy. What then, were the critical shortcomings that prevented the establishment of large Spanish motor manufacturers? Put another way, why did all of the companies set up during the first half-century fail to survive? This paper attempts to shed some light on these questions, employing a wide-ranging analysis of both internal and external factors affecting the industry. A feeble internal market, lack of resources and production factors are usually adduced as reasons, as are Spain's general economic backwardness and the role played by the public authorities. However, this paper mainly focuses on the internal factors concerning company strategy and organisation. A comparison with the Italian case helps put the traditional arguments in proper perspective and highlights those covering business strategies. Finally, we argue that a broad range of factors needs to be analysed to fully understand why Spain failed to establish a motor industry.

How binding are legal limits? Transitions from temporary to permanent work in Spain

This paper studies the duration pattern of xed-term contracts and the determinantsof their conversion into permanent ones in Spain, where the share of xed-termemployment is the highest in Europe. We estimate a duration model for temporaryemployment, with competing risks of terminating into permanent employment versusalternative states, and exible duration dependence. We nd that conversion rates aregenerally below 10%. Our estimated conversion rates roughly increase with tenure,with a pronounced spike at the legal limit, when there is no legal way to retain theworker on a temporary contract. We argue that estimated di¤erences in conversionrates across categories of workers can stem from di¤erences in worker outside optionsand thus the power to credibly threat to quit temporary jobs.

Measuring intangibles' productivity. Empirical evidence from Spanish firms

As companies and shareholders begin to note the potential repercussions of intangible assets uponbusiness results, the inability of the traditional financial statement model to reflect these new waysof creating business value has become evident. Companies have widely adopted newmanagement tools, covering in this way the inability of the traditional financial statement model toreflect these new ways of creating business value.However, there are few prior studies measuring on a quantifiable manner the level of productivityunexplained in the financial statements. In this study, we measure the effect of intangible assets onproductivity using data from Spanish firms selected randomly by size and sector over a ten-yearperiod, from 1995 to 2004. Through a sample of more than 10,000 Spanish firms we analyse towhat extent labour productivity can be explained by physical capital deepening, by quantifiedintangible capital deepening and by firm s economic efficiency (or total factor productivity PTF).Our results confirm the hypothesis that PTF weigh has increased during the period studied,especially on those firms that have experienced a significant raise in quantified intangible capital,evidencing that there are some important complementary effects between capital investment andintangible resources in the explanation of productivity growth. These results have significantdifferences considering economic sector and firm s dimension.

Population based resource allocation: The use of hybrid risk adjustment

The emphasis on integrated care implies new incentives that promote coordinationbetween levels of care. Considering a population as a whole, the resource allocation systemhas to adapt to this environment. This research is aimed to design a model that allows formorbidity related prospective and concurrent capitation payment. The model can be applied inpublicly funded health systems and managed competition settings.Methods: We analyze the application of hybrid risk adjustment versus either prospective orconcurrent risk adjustment formulae in the context of funding total health expenditures for thepopulation of an integrated healthcare delivery organization in Catalonia during years 2004 and2005.Results: The hybrid model reimburses integrated care organizations avoiding excessive risktransfer and maximizing incentives for efficiency in the provision. At the same time, it eliminatesincentives for risk selection for a specific set of high risk individuals through the use ofconcurrent reimbursement in order to assure a proper classification of patients.Conclusion: Prospective Risk Adjustment is used to transfer the financial risk to the healthprovider and therefore provide incentives for efficiency. Within the context of a National HealthSystem, such transfer of financial risk is illusory, and the government has to cover the deficits.Hybrid risk adjustment is useful to provide the right combination of incentive for efficiency andappropriate level of risk transfer for integrated care organizations.

The determinants of pricing in pharmaceuticals: Are U.S. prices really higher than those of Canada?

This paper studies price determination in pharmaceutical markets using data for 25 countries, six years and a comprehensive list of products from the MIDAS IMS database. We show that market power and the quality of the product has a significantly positive impact of prices. The nationality of the producer appears to have a small and often insignificant impact on prices, which suggests that countries which regulates prices have relatively little power to do it in a way that advances narrow national interest. We produce a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon based on the fact that low negotiated prices in a country would have a knock-on effect in other markets, and is thus strongly resisted by producers.Another key finding is that the U.S. has prices that are not significantly higher than those of countries with similar income levels. This, together with the former observation on the effect of the nationality of producers casts doubt on the ability of countries to pursue "free-riding" regulation.

Review of the literature on reference pricing

This paper reviews the literature on reference pricing (RP) in pharmaceutical markets. The RP strategy for cost containment of expenditure on drugs is analyzed as part of the procurement mechanism. We review the existing literature and the state-of-the-art regarding RP by focusing on its economic effects. In particular, we consider: (1) the institutional context and problem-related factors which appear to underline the need to implement an RP strategy; i.e., its nature, characteristics and the sort of health care problems commonly addressed; (2) how RP operates in practice; that is, how third party-payers (the insurers/buyers) have established the RP systems existing on the international scene (i.e., information methods, monitoring procedures and legislative provisions); (3)the range of effects resulting from particular RP strategies (including effects on choice of appropriate pharmaceuticals, insurer savings, total drug expenditures, prices of referenced and non-referenced products and dynamic efficiency; (4) the market failures which an RP policy is supposed to address and the main advantages and drawbacks which emerge from an analysis of its effects. Results suggest that RP systems achieve better their postulated goals (1) if cost inflation in pharmaceuticals is due to high prices rather than to the excess of prescription rates, (2) when the larger is the existing difference in prices among equivalent drugs, and (3) more important is the actual market for generics.

Nonparametric bounds on the returns to language skills

This paper applies the theoretical literature on nonparametric bounds ontreatment effects to the estimation of how limited English proficiency (LEP)affects wages and employment opportunities for Hispanic workers in theUnited States. I analyze the identifying power of several weak assumptionson treatment response and selection, and stress the interactions between LEPand education, occupation and immigration status. I show that thecombination of two weak but credible assumptions provides informative upperbounds on the returns to language skills for certain subgroups of thepopulation. Adding age at arrival as a monotone instrumental variable alsoprovides informative lower bounds.

Unobserved heterogeneity and censoring in the demand for health care

This paper analyses the demand for private health care by Spanishhouseholds using a micro budget survey. The methodology used takescare of the three part decision process involved in this type ofbehaviour, namely the decision to use private health care, howoften to do so and how much to spend each time and also the effectsof unobserved heterogeneity. Since the theoretical frameworkcorresponds to the Grossman model of health investment, the resultsalso provide a test of the theory when these issues are considered.Finally, the obtained evidence also suggest that the current systemof tax deductions for private health care expenditures is regressive.

Creative accounting: Some ethical issues of macro- and micro-manipulation

This paper examines two principal categories of manipulative behaviour. The term'macro-manipulation' is used to describe the lobbying of regulators to persuadethem to produce regulation that is more favourable to the interests of preparers.'Micro-manipulation' describes the management of accounting figures to produce abiased view at the entity level. Both categories of manipulation can be viewed asattempts at creativity by financial statement preparers. The paper analyses twocases of manipulation which are considered in an ethical context. The paperconcludes that the manipulations described in it can be regarded as morallyreprehensible. They are not fair to users, they involve an unjust exercise ofpower, and they tend to weaken the authority of accounting regulators.

Allowing for heterogeneity in the decomposition of measures of inequality in health

This paper shows how recently developed regression-based methods for the decomposition ofhealth inequality can be extended to incorporate heterogeneity in the responses of health to the explanatory variables. We illustrate our method with an application to the GHQ measure of psychological well-being taken from the British Household Panel Survey. The results suggest that there is an important degree of heterogeneity in the association of health to explanatory variables across birth cohorts and genders which, in turn, accounts for a substantial percentage of the inequality in observed health.

Strategic ambiguity in electoral competition

Many have observed that political candidates running for election areoften purposefully expressing themselves in vague and ambiguous terms. In thispaper we provide a simple formal model of this phenomenon. We model theelectoral competition between two candidates as a two--stage game. In thefirst stage of the game two candidates simultaneously choose their ideologies,and in the second stage they simultaneously choose their level of ambiguity.Our results show that ambiguity, although disliked by voters, may be sustainedin equilibrium. The introduction of ambiguity as a strategic choice variablefor the candidates can also serve to explain why candidates with the sameelectoral objectives end up ``separating'', that is, assuming different ideological positions.

Driver scheduling problem modelling

The Drivers Scheduling Problem (DSP) consists of selecting a set of duties for vehicle drivers, for example buses, trains, plane or boat drivers or pilots, for the transportation of passengers or goods. This is a complex problem because it involves several constraints related to labour and company rules and can also present different evaluation criteria and objectives. Being able to develop an adequate model for this problem that can represent the real problem as close as possible is an important research area.The main objective of this research work is to present new mathematical models to the DSP problem that represent all the complexity of the drivers scheduling problem, and also demonstrate that the solutions of these models can be easily implemented in real situations. This issue has been recognized by several authors and as important problem in Public Transportation. The most well-known and general formulation for the DSP is a Set Partition/Set Covering Model (SPP/SCP). However, to a large extend these models simplify some of the specific business aspects and issues of real problems. This makes it difficult to use these models as automatic planning systems because the schedules obtained must be modified manually to be implemented in real situations. Based on extensive passenger transportation experience in bus companies in Portugal, we propose new alternative models to formulate the DSP problem. These models are also based on Set Partitioning/Covering Models; however, they take into account the bus operator issues and the perspective opinions and environment of the user.We follow the steps of the Operations Research Methodology which consist of: Identify the Problem; Understand the System; Formulate a Mathematical Model; Verify the Model; Select the Best Alternative; Present the Results of theAnalysis and Implement and Evaluate. All the processes are done with close participation and involvement of the final users from different transportation companies. The planner s opinion and main criticisms are used to improve the proposed model in a continuous enrichment process. The final objective is to have a model that can be incorporated into an information system to be used as an automatic tool to produce driver schedules. Therefore, the criteria for evaluating the models is the capacity to generate real and useful schedules that can be implemented without many manual adjustments or modifications. We have considered the following as measures of the quality of the model: simplicity, solution quality and applicability. We tested the alternative models with a set of real data obtained from several different transportation companies and analyzed the optimal schedules obtained with respect to the applicability of the solution to the real situation. To do this, the schedules were analyzed by the planners to determine their quality and applicability. The main result of this work is the proposition of new mathematical models for the DSP that better represent the realities of the passenger transportation operators and lead to better schedules that can be implemented directly in real situations.

How wide is the gap? An investigation of gender wage differences using quantile regression

In this paper we examine the determinants of wages and decompose theobserved differences across genders into the "explained by differentcharacteristics" and "explained by different returns components"using a sample of Spanish workers. Apart from the conditionalexpectation of wages, we estimate the conditional quantile functionsfor men and women and find that both the absolute wage gap and thepart attributed to different returns at each of the quantiles, farfrom being well represented by their counterparts at the mean, aregreater as we move up in the wage range.

Medición de las preferencias de los consumidores sobre el comportamiento socialmente responsable de las empresas

La creciente globalización económica y la mayor transparencia informativa han favorecido la aparición de consumidores socialmente responsables y han marcado el pistoletazo de salida para las empresas en su carrera para posicionarse como agentes preocupados por el bienestar social. En este sentido, oferta y demanda se retroalimentan y, tanto las compañías como las administraciones públicas, están cada vez más interesadas en conocer hasta qué punto es estratégico invertir en actuaciones socialmente responsables. Aun siendo una cuestión de interés, todavía existe mucho desconocimiento acerca de cómo y cuánto valoran los consumidores las actuaciones socialmente responsables de las empresas y, por el momento, pocos estudios han intentado estimar la percepción y disponibilidad a pagar de los consumidores en relación con las actuaciones socialmente responsables de las empresas. Todo ello motiva el presente trabajo, orientado a medir empíricamente las preferencias de los consumidores españoles sobre el comportamiento socialmente responsable de las empresas.

On the origins of electoral systems and political parties. The role of elections in multi-member districts

The old, understudied electoral system composed of multi-member districts, open ballot and plurality rule is presented as the most remote scene of the origin of both political parties and new electoral systems. A survey of the uses of this set of electoral rules in different parts of the world during remote and recent periods shows its wide spread. A model of voting by this electoral system demonstrates that, while it can produce varied and pluralistic representation, it also provides incentives to form factional or partisan candidacies. Famous negative reactions to the emergence of factions and political parties during the 18th and 19th centuries are reinterpreted in this context. Many electoral rules and procedures invented since the second half of the 19th century, including the Australian ballot, single-member districts, limited and cumulative ballots, and proportional representation rules, derived from the search to reduce the effects of the originating multi-member district system in favor of a single party sweep. The general relations between political parties and electoral systems are restated to account for the foundational stage here discussed.