Origins and efficiency of the electric industry regulation in Spain, 1910-1936

The aim of this paper is to discover the origins of utility regulation in Spain, and to analyse, from a microeconomic perspective, its characteristics and the impact of regulation on consumers and utilities. Madrid and the Madrilenian utilities are taken as a case study. The electric industry in the period studied was a natural monopoly2. Each of the three phases of production, generation, transmission and distribution, had natural monopoly characteristics. Therefore, the most efficient form to generate, transmit and distribute electricity was the monopoly because one firm can produce a quantity at a lower cost than the sum of costs incurred by two or more firms. A problem arises because when a firm is the single provider it can charge prices above the marginal cost, at monopoly prices. When a monopolist reduces the quantity produced, price increases, causing the consumer to demand less than the economic efficiency level, incurring a loss of consumer surplus. The loss of the consumer surplus is not completely gained by the monopolist, causing a loss of social surplus, a deadweight loss. The main objective of regulation is going to be to reduce to a minimum the deadweight loss. Regulation is also needed because when the monopolist fixes prices at marginal cost equal marginal revenue there would be an incentive for firms to enter the market creating inefficiency. The Madrilenian industry has been chosen because of the availability of statistical information on costs and production. The complex industry structure and the atomised demand add interest to the analysis. This study will also provide some light on the tariff regulation of the period which has been poorly studied and will complement the literature on the US electric utilities regulation where a different type of regulation was implemented.

Technology, business models and network structure in the airline industry

Network airlines have been increasingly focusing their operations on hub airports through the exploitation of connecting traffic, allowing them to take advantage of economies of traffic density, which are unequivocal in the airline industry. Less attention has been devoted to airlines' decisions on point-to-point thin routes, which could be served using different aircraft technologies and different business models. This paper examines, both theoretically and empirically, the impact on airlines' networks of the two major innovations in the airline industry in the last two decades: the regional jet technology and the low-cost business model. We show that, under certain circumstances, direct services on point-to-point thin routes can be viable and thus airlines may be interested in deviating passengers out of the hub. Keywords: regional jet technology; low-cost business model; point-to-point network; hub-and-spoke network JEL Classi…fication Numbers: L13; L2; L93

Price policies and Price dispersion in the private healthcare insurance industry: The Catalan case

We present an overlapping generations model that explains price dispersion among Catalonian healthcare insurance firms. The model shows that firms with different premium policies can coexist. Furthermore, if interest rates are low, firms that apply equal premium to all insureds can charge higher average prices than insurers that set premiums according to the risk of insured. Economic theory, health insurance, health economics.

Profitability, uncertainty and multi-product firm product proliferation: The Spanish car industry

This article studies how product introduction decisions relate to profitability and uncertainty in the context of multi-product firms and product differentiation. These two features, common to many modern industries, have not received much attention in the literature as compared to the classical problem of firm entry, even if the determinants of firm and product entry are quite different. The theoretical predictions about the sign of the impact of uncertainty on product entry are not conclusive. Therefore, an econometric model relating firms’ product introduction decisions with profitability and profit uncertainty is proposed. Firm’s estimated profits are obtained from a structural model of product demand and supply, and uncertainty is proxied by profits’ variance. The empirical analysis is carried out using data on the Spanish car industry for the period 1990-2000. The results show a positive relationship between product introduction and profitability, and a negative one with respect to profit variability. Interestingly, the degree of uncertainty appears to be a driving force of entry stronger than profitability, suggesting that the product proliferation process in the Spanish car market may have been mainly a consequence of lower uncertainty rather than the result of having a more profitable market. Keywords: Product introduction, entry, uncertainty, multiproduct firms, automobile JEL codes: L11, L13

Testing Delivery Systems in Transnational virtual learning: the vocational management training for the european tourism industry (VocMat) case study

This article discusses the lessons learned from developing and delivering the Vocational Management Training for the European Tourism Industry (VocMat) online training programme, which was aimed at providing flexible, online distance learning for the European tourism industry. The programme was designed to address managers ‘need for flexible, senior management level training which they could access at a time and place which fitted in with their working and non-work commitments. The authors present two main approaches to using the Virtual Learning Environment, the feedback from the participants, and the implications of online Technology in extending tourism training opportunities

Profitability, uncertainty and multi-product firm product proliferation: The Spanish car industry

This article studies how product introduction decisions relate to profitability and uncertainty in the context of multi-product firms and product differentiation. These two features, common to many modern industries, have not received much attention in the literature as compared to the classical problem of firm entry, even if the determinants of firm and product entry are quite different. The theoretical predictions about the sign of the impact of uncertainty on product entry are not conclusive. Therefore, an econometric model relating firms’ product introduction decisions with profitability and profit uncertainty is proposed. Firm’s estimated profits are obtained from a structural model of product demand and supply, and uncertainty is proxied by profits’ variance. The empirical analysis is carried out using data on the Spanish car industry for the period 1990-2000. The results show a positive relationship between product introduction and profitability, and a negative one with respect to profit variability. Interestingly, the degree of uncertainty appears to be a driving force of entry stronger than profitability, suggesting that the product proliferation process in the Spanish car market may have been mainly a consequence of lower uncertainty rather than the result of having a more profitable market

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.