Do institutional changes affect business cycles? Evidence from Europe

We study the effects that the Maastricht treaty, the creation of the ECB, andthe Euro changeover had on the dynamics of European business cycles using a panelVAR and data from ten European countries - seven from the Euro area and threeoutside of it. There are changes in the features of European business cycles and in thetransmission of shocks. They precede the three events of interest and are more linkedto a general process of European convergence and synchronization.

How "Doing Business" jeopardizes institutional reform

Simplifying business formalization and eliminating outdated formalities is often a good way of improving the institutional environment for firms. Unfortunately, the World Bank s "Doing Business" project is harming such policies by promoting a reform agenda that gives them priority even in countries lacking functional business registers, so that the reformed registers keep producing valueless information, but faster. Its methodology also promotes biased measurements that impede proper consideration of the essential tradeoffs in the design of formalization institutions. If "Doing Business" is to stop jeopardizing its true objectives and contribute positively to scientific progress, institutional reform and economic development, then its aims, governance and methodology need to change.

Human nature and institutional analysis

This essay reviews some findings in cognition sciences and examines their consequences for the analysis of institutions. It starts by exploring how humans specialization in producing knowledge ensures our success in dominating the environment but also changes fast our environment. So fast that it did not give time to natural selection to adapt our biology, causing it to be potentially maladapted in important dimensions. A main function of institutions is therefore to fill the gap between the demands of our relatively new environment and our biology, still adapted to our ancestral environment as hunter-gatherers. Moreover, institutions are built with the available elements, which include our instincts. A deeper understanding of both aspects, their adaptive function and this recruitment of ancestral instincts, will add greatly to our ability to manage institutions.

The situation of open access institutional repositories in Spain: 2009 report

Introduction. The DRIVER I project drew up a detailed report of European repositories based on data gathered in a survey in which Spain's participation was very low. This created a highly distorted image of the implementation of repositories in Spain. This study aims to analyse the current state of Spanish open-access institutional repositories and to describe their characteristics. Method. The data were gathered through a Web survey. The questionnaire was based on that used by DRIVER I: coverage; technical infrastructure and technical issues; institutional policies; services created; and stimulators and inhibitors for establishing, filling and maintaining their digital institutional repositories. Analysis. Data were tabulated and analysed systematically according responses obtained from the questionnaire and grouped by coverage. Results. Responses were obtained from 38 of the 104 institutions contacted, which had 29 institutional repositories. This represents 78.3% of the Spanish repositories according to the BuscaRepositorios directory. Spanish repositories contained mainly full-text materials (journal articles and doctoral theses) together with metadata. The software most used was DSpace, followed by EPrints. The metadata standard most used was Dublin Core. Spanish repositories offered more usage statistics and fewer author-oriented services than the European average. The priorities for the future development of the repositories are the need for clear policies on access to scientific production based on public funding and the need for quality control indicators. Conclusions.This is the first detailed study of Spanish institutional repositories. The key stimulants for establishing, filling and maintaining were, in order of importance, the increase of visibility and citation, the interest of decision-makers, simplicity of use and search services. On the other hand the main inhibitors identified were the absence of policies, the lack of integration with other national and international systems and the lack of awareness efforts among academia.

Collections in Institutional Herbaria listed as Rhizopogon, but not belonging to this genus

Fifty-five collections misidentified and stored in various institutional herbaria, under severa1 Rhizopogon species narnes, are revised. Among these, twelve belong to Ascomycotina and 9 were identified to species level; the other collections, immature fruitbodies wcre impossible to identify with the data available. Forty-two collections are Basidiomycotina and only an immature Scleroderma remain without identification to the species level.

The Conservativeness of the Central Bank when Institutional Quality is Poor

We propose an extension of Alesina and Tabellini 's model (1987) to include corruption, which is understood as the presence of weak institutions collecting revenue through formal tax channels. This paper analyses how conservative should an independent central bank be when the institutional quality is poor. When there are no political distortions, we show that the central bank has to be more conservative than the government, except with complete corruption. In this particular case, the central bank should be as conservative as the government. Further, we obtain that the relationship between the optimal relative degree of conservativeness of the central bank and the degree of corruption is affected by supply shocks. Concretely, when these shocks are not important, the central bank should be less conservative if the degree of corruption increases. However, this result may not hold when the shocks are relevant. JEL classi fication: D6, D73, E52, E58, E62, E63. Keywords: Central Bank Conservativeness; Corruption; Fiscal Policy; Monetary Policy; Seigniorage.

O2, the Oberta in Open Access : institutional repository

Tríptic informatiu sobre la publicació de documents amb accés obert en el repositori institucional de la UOC, O2 (La Oberta en obert). Aquest informa sobre quins documents hi poden publicar els membres de la comunitat UOC, com fer-ho i els serveis de valor afegit per a tots els usuaris (web 2.0, subscripció per RSS o correu electrònic, exportació al gestor bibliogràfic Refworks, etc.) i per a la recerca (lligam amb l'aplicació d'avaluació de la recerca GIR i informació del factor d'impacte de la revista a SCOPUS, IN-RECS/IN-RECJ i MIAR).

From institutional repositories to personal collections of learning resources

Institutional digital repositories are a basic piece to provide preservation and reutilization of learning resources. However, their creation and maintenance is usually performed following a top-down approach, causing limitations in the search and reutilization of learning resources. In order to avoid this problem we propose to use web 2.0 functionalities. In this paper we present how tagging can be used to enhance the search and reusability functionalities of institutional learning repositories as well as promoting their usage. The paper also describes the evaluation process that was performed in a pilot experience involving open educational resources.

Binary proposal for assessing quality of Open Access Institutional Repositories : the case of Spanish repositories

The reason for this study is to propose a new quantitative approach on how to assess the quality of Open Access University Institutional Repositories. The results of this new approach are tested in the Spanish University Repositories. The assessment method is based in a binary codification of a proposal of features that objectively describes the repositories. The purposes of this method are assessing the quality and an almost automatically system for updating the data of the characteristics. First of all a database was created with the 38 Spanish institutional repositories. The variables of analysis are presented and explained either if they are coming from bibliography or are a set of new variables. Among the characteristics analyzed are the features of the software, the services of the repository, the features of the information system, the Internet visibility and the licenses of use. Results from Spanish universities ARE provided as a practical example of the assessment and for having a picture of the state of the development of the open access movement in Spain.

A survey on automatic recommenders in the context of institutional repositories

Peer-reviewed

When supply travels far beyond demand: Institutional and regulatory causes of oversupply in Spain’s transport infrastructure

Spain’s transport infrastructure policy has become a paradigmatic case of oversupply and of mismatch with demand. The massive expansion of the country’s transport infrastructure over the last decade has not been a response to demand bottlenecks or previously identified needs. For this reason, the intensity of use today on all interurban modes of transport in Spain falls well below that of other EU countries. This paper analyzes the institutional and regulatory factors that have permitted this policy, allowing us to draw lessons from the Spanish case that should help other countries avoid the pitfalls and shortcomings of Spanish policy. Based on our analysis, we also discuss policy remedies and suggest reforms in different regulatory areas, which could help improve the performance of Spain’s infrastructure policy.

The Institutional, Economic and Social Determinants of Local Government Transparency

Interest in public accountability and government transparency is increasing worldwide. The literature on the determinants of transparency is evolving but is still in its early stages. So far, it has typically focused on national or regional governments while neglecting the local government level. This paper builds on the scarce knowledge available in order to examine the economic, social, and institutional determinants of local government transparency in Spain. We draw on a 2010 survey and the transparency indexes constructed by the NGO Transparency International (Spain) in order to move beyond the fiscal transparency addressed in previous work. In so doing, we broaden the analysis of transparency to the corporate, social, fiscal, contracting, and planning activities of governments. Our results on overall transparency indicate that large municipalities and left-wing local government leaders are associated with better transparency indexes; while the worst results are presented by provincial capitals, cities where tourist activity is particularly important and local governments that enjoy an absolute majority. The analysis of other transparency categories generally shows the consistent impact of these determinants and the need to consider a wider set of variables to capture their effect.

A missing spatial link in institutional quality

History tells that institutions evolve gradually over time, pushing new ideas across borders and cultures. Globalisation is argued to accelerate this process. We examine the spatial links of different political institutions across borders. Applying various tests for spatial proximity, we do not find evidence of contemporaneous spatial links. This result is robust to various measures of distance and of cultural proximity across countries. Instead, when we analyse long run dynamics diffusion of institutions seems to occur only gradually.

Institutional Determinants of Military Spending

Drawing on a database for 1988-2006 containing information on 157 countries, we investigate the effects on military spending of government form, electoral rules, concentration of parliamentary parties, and ideology. From an OLS regression on pooled data, our results show that presidential democracies spend more than parliamentary systems on defense, whereas the presence of a plurality voting system will reduce the defense burden. Our findings suggest that, in contrast to theoretical predictions in the literature, institutions do not have the same impact on the provision of all public goods. We present as well evidence regarding the effect of ideology on defense spending.