The 2004 election in Spain: terrorism, accountability, and voting

In this paper the electoral consequences of the Islamist terrorist attacks on March 11, 2004 are analysed. According to a quantitative analysis based on a post-electoral survey, we show the causal mechanisms that transform voters’ reactions to the bombings into a particular electoral behaviour and estimate their relevance in the electoral results on March 14, 2004

Income growth and atmospheric pollution in Spain: an input-output approach

The relationships between economic growth and environmental pressures are complex. Since the early nineties, the debate on these relationships has been strongly influenced by the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis, which states that during the first stage of economic development environmental pressures increase as per capita income increases, but once a critical turning-point has been reached these pressures diminish as income levels continue to increase. However, to date such a delinking between economic growth and emission levels has not happened for most atmospheric pollutants in Spain. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between income growth and nine atmospheric pollutants in Spain. In order to obtain empirical outcomes for this analysis, we adopt an input-output approach and use NAMEA data for the nine pollutants. First, we undertake a structural decomposition analysis for the period 1995-2000 to estimate the contribution of various factors to changes in the levels of atmospheric emissions. And second, we estimate the emissions associated with the consumption patterns of different groups of households classified according to their level of expenditure

The Difficult and tortuous path of agricultural cooperative networks in spain, 1890-1935

The rural associationism developed from the last decades of the XIX century could be consider as an answer of the agriculturists to the increasing integration of agriculture in the market, and to the effects of the Great Depression. In the case of Spain, the initiatives in this sense arose with certain delay in relation to the countries of Western Europe. The beginning of the Spanish cooperativism is closely bound to the Law of 1906. It granted the agrarian cooperatives with fiscal exemptions and other types of supports to the associates, although the process did not really accelerate until the promulgation of the law regulation in 1908.

Labor productivity in Spain: 1977-2002

This study examines the evolution of labor productivity across Spanish regions during the period from 1977 to 2002. By applying the kernel technique, we estimate the effects of the Transition process on labor productivity and its main sources. We find that Spanish regions experienced a major convergence process in labor productivity and in human capital in the 1977-1993 period. We also pinpoint the existence of a transition co-movement between labor productivity and human capital. Conversely, the dynamics of investment in physical capital seem unrelated to the transition dynamics of labor productivity. The lack of co-evolution can be addressed as one of the causes of the current slowdown in productivity. Classification-JEL: J24, N34, N940, O18, O52, R10

Mediterranean diet changes during the nutritional transition in Spain

En este trabajo analizaremos en primer lugar la presencia i la importancia de los alimentos que caracterizan la dieta mediterránea en los sistemas alimentarios españoles del siglo XIX. Veremos como evoluciona esta presencia y el su peso a la dieta dentro del proceso de transición nutricional moderna española, contemplando dos períodos: desde finales del XIX hasta la década de 1930, y la segunda mitad del XX, períodos caracterizados por un aumento de la ingesta de alimentos, cereales y patatas primer, y de productos de origen animal después, y por la progresiva convergencia con las dietes de les sociedades desarrolladas, que diluirían o minimizarían progresivamente las características diferenciales mediterráneos. Situaremos los cambios que se producen a España en el contexto europeo, i finalmente, analizaremos en que medida, en la etapa inicial, la dieta seguida se ajustaba a les necesidades de la población y a la dieta actualmente recomendada, y si se produjeron cambios significativos en el curso de la transición alimentaria.

Comparing Governmental Agendas: Evolution of the Prioritization of Issues in the USA and Spain

This paper is the first step in a long term project investigating policy stability and change in Spain from an agenda setting perspective and comparing the Spanish policy agenda to that of other advanced democracies. Here we begin to compare the allocation of issue attention in Spain and the USA by comparing the substance of annual President and Prime Minister speeches from 1982 to 2005. Existing research argues that the public agenda has become more crowded, competitive and volatile in recent years. We find that in both countries there has been a transformation of the political agenda towards an increasing diversity of issues. However, most of the volatility in executive attention seems to be explained by salient events rather than by issue crowding. We conclude by discussing some limitations of executive speeches as a measure of governmental issue attention and directions for future research.

Political elites in federalized countries: the case of Spain (1980-2005)

This paper explores the social profile of the regional elite that has emerged in Spain since the federalization of the State. For the first time, researchers present data about crucial variables like gender, place of birth, age, education, and profession. They make interregional comparisons, and try to explain some unexpected findings like the behavior of political elites in some regions like Catalonia. The authors compare also the social profile of MPs of the two largest parties.

Entrepreneurial intention, cognitive social capital and culture: empirical anaylisis for Spain and Taiwan

The main purpose of this paper is building a research model to integrate the socioeconomic concept of social capital within intentional models of new firm creation. Nevertheless, some researchers have found cultural differences between countries and regions to have an effect on economic development. Therefore, a second objective of this study is exploring whether those cultural differences affect entrepreneurial cognitions. Research design and methodology: Two samples of last year university students from Spain and Taiwan are studied through an Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire (EIQ). Structural equation models (Partial Least Squares) are used to test the hypotheses. The possible existence of differences between both sub-samples is also empirically explored through a multigroup analysis. Main outcomes and results: The proposed model explains 54.5% of the variance in entrepreneurial intention. Besides, there are some significant differences between both subsamples that could be attributed to cultural diversity. Conclusions: This paper has shown the relevance of cognitive social capital in shaping individuals’ entrepreneurial intentions across different countries. Furthermore, it suggests that national culture could be shaping entrepreneurial perceptions, but not cognitive social capital. Therefore, both cognitive social capital and culture (made up essentially of values and beliefs), may act together to reinforce the entrepreneurial intention.

Car ownership and access to jobs in Spain

This study analyses the impact that job accessibility in public transport has on car ownership. An ordered probit explaining the number of cars per household is estimated as a function of head of household characteristics, household characteristics and job accessibility. The data used in the analysis come from the Microcensus of year 2001 of the Spanish Institute of Statistics for the areas of Barcelona and Madrid. Our results show a significant effect of accessibility on car ownership. Additionally, we carried out simulation exercises in which the expected number of vehicles decreases as accessibility improves. For instance, in the case of households living outside the central city, an improvement of accessibility up to the average level of the central city would offset the effect of the number of working adults on the expected number of vehicles.

Analog Modelling of N-S anticlines of the External Sierras (Jaca basin, Southern Pyrenees)

Report for the scientific sojourn carried out at the Uppsala Universitet, Sweden, from April to July the 2007. Two series of analogue models are used to explore ductile-frictional contrasts of the basal décollement in the development of oblique and transverse structures simultaneously to thin-skinned shortening. These models simulate the evolution of the Central External Sierras (Southern Pyrenees, Spain), which constitute the frontal emerging part of the southernmost Pyrenean thrust sheet. They are characterized by the presence of transverse N-S to NW-SE anticlines, which are perpendicular to the Pyrenean structural trend and developed in the hangingwall of the Santo Domingo thrust system, detaching on an unevenly distributed Triassic materials (evaporitic-dolomitic interfingerings). Model setup performs a décollement made by three patches of silicone neighbouring pure brittle sand. Model series A test the thickness ratio between overburden and décollement. Model series B test the width of frictional detachment areas. Model results show how deformation reaches further in areas detached on ductile layer whereas frictional décollement areas assimilate the strain by means of an additional uplift. This replicates the structural style of Central External Sierras: higher structural relief of N-S anticlines with regard to orogen-parallel structures, absence of a representative ductile décollement in the core, tilting towards the orogen and foreland-side closure not thrusted by the frontal emerging South-Pyrenean thrust.

Two different 3D biogeochemical models for the NW mediterranean sea: validation with Meris data and intercomparison

Report for the scientific sojourn carried out at the University of New South Wales from February to June the 2007. Two different biogeochemical models are coupled to a three dimensional configuration of the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) for the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea (Ahumada and Cruzado, 2007). The first biogeochemical model (BLANES) is the three-dimensional version of the model described by Bahamon and Cruzado (2003) and computes the nitrogen fluxes through six compartments using semi-empirical descriptions of biological processes. The second biogeochemical model (BIOMEC) is the biomechanical NPZD model described in Baird et al. (2004), which uses a combination of physiological and physical descriptions to quantify the rates of planktonic interactions. Physical descriptions include, for example, the diffusion of nutrients to phytoplankton cells and the encounter rate of predators and prey. The link between physical and biogeochemical processes in both models is expressed by the advection-diffusion of the non-conservative tracers. The similarities in the mathematical formulation of the biogeochemical processes in the two models are exploited to determine the parameter set for the biomechanical model that best fits the parameter set used in the first model. Three years of integration have been carried out for each model to reach the so called perpetual year run for biogeochemical conditions. Outputs from both models are averaged monthly and then compared to remote sensing images obtained from sensor MERIS for chlorophyll.

The Adoption of agricultural credit cooperativism in Spain (1890-1935) : solidarity from below?

The spread of agrarian credit cooperativism in Spain (1890-1934) was done under a variety of ideological and economic orientations. This article focuses on the construction of a few tools and indicators to explain the characteristics of agricultural credit cooperatives. An analysis of financial operations of rural savings banks is related with socio-political aspects that influenced their development; This analysis helps us to explain the relative success of German credit cooperative models adopted in the context of Spanish agriculture, as happened on European periphery.

Measuring intergenerational earnings mobility in Spain: a selection-bias-free approach

This paper analyses intergenerational earnings mobility in Spain correcting for different selection biases. We address the co-residence selection problem by combining information from two samples and using the two-sample two-stage least square estimator. We find a small decrease in elasticity when we move to younger cohorts. Furthermore, we find a higher correlation in the case of daughters than in the case of sons; however, when we consider the employment selection in the case of daughters, by adopting a Heckman-type correction method, the diference between sons and daughters disappears. By decomposing the sources of earnings elasticity across generations, we find that the correlation between child's and father's occupation is the most important component. Finally, quantile regressions estimates show that the influence of the father's earnings is greater when we move to the lower tail of the offspring's earnings distribution, especially in the case of daughters' earnings.

II Workshop on the use of Computed Tomography (CT) in pig carcass classification. Other CT applications: live animals and meat technology, 16-17th April 2009, Monells (Girona), Spain

Es va realitzar el II Workshop en Tomografia Computeritzada (TC) a Monells. El primer dia es va dedicar íntegrament a la utilització del TC en temes de classificació de canals porcines, i el segon dia es va obrir a altres aplicacions del TC, ja sigui en animals vius o en diferents aspectes de qualitat de la carn o els productes carnis. Al workshop hi van assistir 45 persones de 12 països de la UE. The II workshop on the use of Computed Tomography (CT) in pig carcass classification. Other CT applications: live animals and meat technology was held in Monells. The first day it was dedicated to the use of CT in pig carcass classification. The segond day it was open to otehr CT applications, in live animals or in meat and meat products quality. There were 45 assistants of 12 EU countries.