Signalling and Productivity Effects of Overeducation: Is It Really a Waste of Resources?

Overeducation raises concerns that governments may be overinvesting in education. To inform the debate, this paper studies the impact of overeducation on productivity. We advance the literature by considering that returns to overeducation may be due both to productivity and signalling effects. To disentangle both effects, we apply Wolpin’s (1977) methodology and compare the rates of return of screened (employed) and unscreened (selfemployed) workers. To overcome well-known endogeneity problems due to unobserved heterogeneity, we estimate a panel with individual and employment-status fixed effects. Our results show that signalling effects are relevant and that overeducation does not carry a productivity penalty. Keywords: Overeducation, signalling model, human capital model, unobserved heterogeneity. JEL classification: I20, J24, J31.

A Tool for optimum design of Waste Water Treatment Plants under uncertainty

L’objectiu principal és presentar un nou prototipus d’eina per al disseny de les plantes de tractament d’aigües residuals utilitzant models mecànics dinàmics quantificant la incertesa

Management of corn stalk waste as reinforcement for polypropylene injection moulded composites

The main objective of this study was the management of corn stalk waste as reinforcement for polypropylene (PP) injection moulded composites as an alternative to wood flour and fibers. In the first step, corn stalk waste was subjected to various treatments, and four different corn stalk derivatives (flour and fibers) able to be used as reinforcement of composite materials were prepared and characterized. These derivatives are corn stalk flour, thermo-mechanical, semi-chemical, and chemical fibers. They were characterized in terms of their yield, lignin content, Kappa number, fiber length/diameter ratio, fines, coarseness, viscosity, and the length at the break of a standard sheet of paper. Results showed that the corn stalk derivatives have different physico-chemical properties. In the second step, the prepared flour and fibers were explored as a reinforcing element for PP composites. Coupled and non-coupled PP composites were prepared and tested for tensile properties. For overall trend, with the addition of a coupling agent, tensile properties of composites significantly improved, as compared with non-coupled samples. In addition, a morphological study revealed the positive effect of the coupling agent on the interfacial bonding. The composites prepared with semichemical fiber gave better results in comparison with the rest of the corn stalk derivatives due to its chemical characteristics

"The Waste Land", desde los espacios retóricos de inventio, dispositio y elocutio.

Con este poema publicado en 1922 la poesía contemporánea europea descubrirá nuevas vías de creación: desde la introducción de los espacios de la vida urbana hasta el rechazo del sentimentalismo idealista, sin olvidar la búsqueda de las intricadas concepciones de la mente.

The Impact of Industry Collaboration on Academic Research Output: A Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of university knowledge and technology transfer activities on academic research output. Specifically, we study whether researchers with collaborative links with the private sector publish less than their peers without such links, once controlling for other sources of heterogeneity. We report findings from a longitudinal dataset on researchers from two engineering departments in the UK between 1985 until 2006. Our results indicate that researchers with industrial links publish significantly more than their peers. Academic productivity, though, is higher for low levels of industry involvement as compared to high levels.

Entrepreneurship, organization and economic performance among Spanish firms, 1930-1975. The case of the motor industry

Before the Civil War (1936-1939), Spain had seen the emergence offirms of complex organizational forms. However, the conflict andthe postwar years changed this pattern. The argument put forwardin this paper is based on historical experience, the efforts willbe addressed to explain the development of Spanish entrepreneurshipduring the second half of the twentieth century. To illustrate thechange in entrepreneurship and organizational patterns among theSpanish firms during the Francoist regime we will turn to the caseof the motor vehicle industry.

Determinants of organizational form: Transaction costs and institutions in the European trucking industry

We explain why European trucking carriers are much smaller and rely more heavily on owner-operators(as opposed to employee drivers) than their US counterparts. Our analysis begins by ruling outdifferences in technology as the source of those disparities and confirms that standard hypothesesin organizational economics, which have been shown to explain the choice of organizational form inUS industry, also apply in Europe. We then argue that the preference for subcontracting oververtical integration in Europe is the result of European institutions particularly, labor regulationand tax laws that increase the costs of vertical integration.

The drive for quality - the impact on accounting in the wine industry

There is a substancial literature on the accounting procedures needed to trackdown the costs of quality control and quality failure. In a drive for improved quality the changes in the process of production or service delivery will also give rise to new accounting needs. In this article we take one example of an industry, wine production, where in most countries there has been a movement towards expanding higher quality production. We report on interviews with wine producers in the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Spain, and identify avariety of ways in which a more sophisticated approach to accounting has become necessary as a result of the drive for quality.

Wage determination in the Spanish industry

In this paper we estimate wage equations for the Spanish industryusing time series data on 85 industrial sectors, which allows us todistinguish between aggregate and sector specific effects in wagedetermination. Industry wages respond mainly to economy wide labourmarket conditions and to a much lesser extent to sector specificproductivity gains. The size of the insider effect has not remainedstable through the sample period. The estimated equations show a strongtransitory effect of unemployment on wages, which is in accordancewith the non--stationarity of the Spanish unemployment rate. Thishysteresis effect seems well accounted for by the sharp rise in theproportion of long term unemployment.

The persistence of abnormal returns at industry and firm levels

The present paper proposes a model for the persistence of abnormal returnsboth at firm and industry levels, when longitudinal data for the profitsof firms classiffied as industries are available. The model produces a two-way variance decomposition of abnormal returns: (a) at firm versus industrylevels, and (b) for permanent versus transitory components. This variancedecomposition supplies information on the relative importance of thefundamental components of abnormal returns that have been discussed in theliterature. The model is applied to a Spanish sample of firms, obtainingresults such as: (a) there are significant and permanent differences betweenprofit rates both at industry and firm levels; (b) variation of abnormal returnsat firm level is greater than at industry level; and (c) firm and industry levelsdo not differ significantly regarding rates of convergence of abnormal returns.

Subcontracting and vertical integration in the Spanish cotton industry

This paper examines changes in the organization of the Spanish cotton industry from 1720 to 1860 in its core region of Catalonia. As the Spanish cotton industry adopted the most modern technology and experienced the transition to the factory system, cotton spinning and weaving mills became increasingly vertically integrated. Asset specificity more than other factors explained this tendency towards vertical integration. The probability for a firm of being vertically integrated was higher among firms located in districts with high concentration ratios and rose with size and the use of modern machinery. Simultaneously, subcontracting predominated in other phases of production and distribution where transaction costs appears to be less important.

Wage structures and family economies in the Catalan textile industry in an age of nascent capitalism

This paper deals with changes in managerial practices in Catalonia in anage of nascent capitalism (1830-1925) and adaptive family strategies inorder to face the absence of state welfare. During the 19 t h Century andin the absence of recorded labor contracts, human resources of the firmwere organized by means of implicit contracts and informal labor markets.With the advent of scientific organization of labor, wage per hour workedbegan to be recorded. This is why in the 1920s the perfect competitionmodel applies to our case. On the other hand, in the same period, and inthe absence of state welfare, ideas stemming from cooperative game theoryapply to the pattern of household income formation. Kin related networkswere used to improve the living standards of the household. In thisparticular direction we also show that there was a demonstration effectby means of which migrant s living standards were higher than those ofnatives.

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.

The use of derivatives in the Spanish mutual fund industry

We study the use of derivatives in the Spanish mutual fund industry. The picture that emerges from our analysis is rather negative. In general, the use of derivatives does not improve the performance of the funds. In only one out of eight categories we find some (very weak and not robust) evidence of superior performance. In most of the cases users significantly underperform non users. Furthermore, users do not seem to exhibit superior timing or selectivity skills either, but rather the contrary. This bad performance is only partially explained by the larger fees funds using derivatives charge. Moreover,we do not find evidence of derivatives being used for hedging purposes. We do find evidence of derivatives being used for speculation. But users in only one category exhibit skills as speculators. Finally, we find evidence of derivatives being used to manage the funds cash inflows and outflows more efficiently.