The Network Company in Catalonia : ICT, Productivity, Competitiveness, Salaries and Performance in Catalonia's Companies. Research report (synthesis document)

Resum en anglès del projecte de recerca L'empresa xarxa a Catalunya. TIC, productivitat, competitivitat, salaris i beneficis a l'empresa catalana té com a objectiu principal constatar que la consolidació d'un nou model estratègic, organitzatiu i d'activitat empresarial, vinculat amb la inversió i l'ús de les TIC (o empresa xarxa), modifica substancialment els patrons de comportament dels resultats empresarials, en especial la productivitat, la competitivitat, les retribucions dels treballadors i el benefici. La contrastació empírica de les hipòtesis de treball l'hem feta per mitjà de les dades d'una enquesta a una mostra representativa de 2.038 empreses catalanes. Amb la perspectiva de l'impacte de la inversió i l'ús de les TIC no s'aprecia una relació directa entre els processos d'innovació digital i els resultats de l'activitat de l'empresa catalana. En aquest sentit, hem hagut de segmentar el teixit productiu català per a buscar les organitzacions en què el procés de coinnovació tecnològica digital i organitzativa és més present i en què la intensitat de l'ús del coneixement és un recurs molt freqüent per a poder copsar impactes rellevants en els principals resultats empresarials. Això és així perquè l'economia catalana, avui, presenta una estructura productiva dual.

Market Index Biases and Minimum Risk Indices

Markets, in the real world, are not efficient zero-sum games where hypotheses of the CAPM are fulfilled. Then, it is easy to conclude the market portfolio is not located on Markowitz"s efficient frontier, and passive investments (and indexing) are not optimal but biased. In this paper, we define and analyze biases suffered by passive investors: the sample, construction, efficiency and active biases and tracking error are presented. We propose Minimum Risk Indices (MRI) as an alternative to deal with to market index biases, and to provide investors with portfolios closer to the efficient frontier, that is, more optimal investment possibilities. MRI (using a Parametric Value-at-Risk Minimization approach) are calculated for three stock markets achieving interesting results. Our indices are less risky and more profitable than current Market Indices in the Argentinean and Spanish markets, facing that way the Efficient Market Hypothesis. Two innovations must be outlined: an error dimension has been included in the backtesting and the Sharpe"s Ratio has been used to select the"best" MRI

Impact of quality and environmental investment on business competitiveness and profitability: The case of travel agencies

Few studies have examined the combined effect of implementing quality and environmental management within the service sector. This void is more evident if we focus on segments in which small businesses predominate and even more so if we look for highly competitive sectors that are very variable and that have high business mortality. After analysing 198 surveys of Spanish travel agency managers using structural equations, it can be concluded that practices of quality management have a significant direct impact on business competitiveness but not on this business's financial results, at least directly. However, there is a significant relationship between environmental management practices and economic benefits. This article suggests that commitment to quality and the environment can allow small businesses in the service sector to have a competitive advantage that will separate surviving and ceased operations, particularly in sectors that are rapidly evolving and highly competitive.

Incidence, prevalence and clinical significance of abnormal hematological indices in compensated cirrhosis.

Background & Aims: Patients with cirrhosis develop abnormal hematologic indices (HI) from multiple factors, including hypersplenism. We aimed to analyze the sequence of events and determine whether abnormal HI has prog-nostic significance. Methods: We analyzed a database of 213 subjects with compensated cirrhosis without esopha-geal varices. Subjects were followed for approximately 9 years until the development of varices or variceal bleeding or completion of the study; 84 subjects developed varices. Abnormal HI was defined as anemia at baseline (hemoglo-bin,<13.5 g/dL for men and 11.5 g/dL for women), leuko-penia (white blood cell counts,<4000/mm 3 ), or thrombo-cytopenia (platelet counts, < 150,000/mm 3 ). The primary end points were death or transplant surgery. Results: Most subjects had thrombocytopenia at baseline. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that leukopenia occurred by 30 months (95% confidence interval, 18.5-53.6), and anemia occurred by 39.6 months (95% confidence interval, 24.1-49.9). Baseline thrombocytopenia (P .0191) and leukope-nia (P.0383) were predictors of death or transplant, after adjusting for baseline hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG), and Child-Pugh scores. After a median of 5 years,a significant difference in death or transplant, mortality,and clinical decompensation was observed in patients who had leukopenia combined with thrombocytopenia at base- line compared with patients with normal HI (P < .0001). HVPG correlated with hemoglobin and white blood cell count (hemoglobin, r 0.35, P < .0001; white blood cell count, r 0.31, P < .0001). Conclusions: Thrombocy-topenia is the most common and first abnormal HI to occurin patients with cirrhosis, followed by leukopenia and anemia. A combination of leukopenia and thrombocytopenia at baselin predicted increased morbidity and mortality.

Market Index Biases and Minimum Risk Indices

Markets, in the real world, are not efficient zero-sum games where hypotheses of the CAPM are fulfilled. Then, it is easy to conclude the market portfolio is not located on Markowitz"s efficient frontier, and passive investments (and indexing) are not optimal but biased. In this paper, we define and analyze biases suffered by passive investors: the sample, construction, efficiency and active biases and tracking error are presented. We propose Minimum Risk Indices (MRI) as an alternative to deal with to market index biases, and to provide investors with portfolios closer to the efficient frontier, that is, more optimal investment possibilities. MRI (using a Parametric Value-at-Risk Minimization approach) are calculated for three stock markets achieving interesting results. Our indices are less risky and more profitable than current Market Indices in the Argentinean and Spanish markets, facing that way the Efficient Market Hypothesis. Two innovations must be outlined: an error dimension has been included in the backtesting and the Sharpe"s Ratio has been used to select the"best" MRI

Comparing N = 1 effect size indices in presence of autocorrelation

Generalization from single-case designs can be achieved by means of replicating individual studies across different experimental units and settings. When replications are available, their findings can be summarized using effect size measurements and integrated through meta-analyses. Several procedures are available for quantifying the magnitude of treatment"s effect in N = 1 designs and some of them are studied in the current paper. Monte Carlo simulations were employed to generate different data patterns (trend, level change, slope change). The experimental conditions simulated were defined by the degrees of serial dependence and phases" length. Out of all the effect size indices studied, the Percent of nonoverlapping data and standardized mean difference proved to be less affected by autocorrelation and perform better for shorter data series. The regression-based procedures proposed specifically for single-case designs did not differentiate between data patterns as well as simpler indices.

Nationalist neoliberalism? Minority Nationalism, competitiveness and the urban question

Presentation at: II IAS Annual Research Programme International ConferenceSession: Governing Regions, Lancaster Setember 17-19 2007

A state-space approach for measuring regional manufacturing production indices

In this paper we propose a latent variable model, in the spirit of Israilevich and Kuttner (1993), to measure regional manufacturing production. To test the validity of the proposed methodology, we have applied it for those Spanish regions that have a direct quantitative index. The results demonstrate the accuracy of the methodology proposed and show that it can overcome some of the difficulties of the indirect method applied by the INE, the Spanish National Institute of Statistics.

New approximation to the third-order density : application to the calculation of correlated multicenter indices

In this work we present the formulas for the calculation of exact three-center electron sharing indices (3c-ESI) and introduce two new approximate expressions for correlated wave functions. The 3c-ESI uses the third-order density, the diagonal of the third-order reduced density matrix, but the approximations suggested in this work only involve natural orbitals and occupancies. In addition, the first calculations of 3c-ESI using Valdemoro's, Nakatsuji's and Mazziotti's approximation for the third-order reduced density matrix are also presented for comparison. Our results on a test set of molecules, including 32 3c-ESI values, prove that the new approximation based on the cubic root of natural occupancies performs the best, yielding absolute errors below 0.07 and an average absolute error of 0.015. Furthemore, this approximation seems to be rather insensitive to the amount of electron correlation present in the system. This newly developed methodology provides a computational inexpensive method to calculate 3c-ESI from correlated wave functions and opens new avenues to approximate high-order reduced density matrices in other contexts, such as the contracted Schrödinger equation and the anti-Hermitian contracted Schrödinger equation