Explaining movements in the labor share

In this paper we study the evolution of the labor share in the OECD since 1970. We show it is essentially related to the capital-output ratio; that this relationship is shifted by factors like the price of imported materials or the skill mix; and that discrepancies between the marginal product of labor and the real wage (due to, e.g., product market power, union bargaining, and labor adjustment costs) cause departures from it. We provide estimates of the model with panel data on 14 industries and 14 countries for 1973-93 and use them to compute the evolution of the wage gap in Germany and the US.

Empirical study about the effects of the application of IAS 32 in Cooperatives

Objecte: L'aplicació de la NIC 32 en les cooperatives ha generat una important controvèrsia en els últims anys. Fins al moment, s'han realitzat diversos treballs que intenten preveure els possibles efectes de la seva aplicació. Aquest treball pretén analitzar l'impacte de la primera aplicació de la NIC 32 en el sector cooperatiu. Disseny/metodologia/enfocament: S'ha seleccionat una mostra de 98 cooperatives, i s'ha realitzat una anàlisi comparativa de la seva informació financera presentada abans i després de l'aplicació de la NIC 32, per a determinar les diferències existents. S’ha utilitzat la prova de la suma de rangs de Wilcoxon per comprovar si aquestes diferències són significatives. També s’ha utilitzat la prova de la U de Mann Whitney per comprovar si existeixen diferències significatives en l’impacte relatiu de l’aplicació de la NIC 32 entre diversos grups de cooperatives. Finalment, s'ha realitzat una anàlisi dels efectes de l'aplicació de la NIC 32 en la situació patrimonial i econòmica de les cooperatives, i en l'evolució dels seus actius intangibles, mitjançant l’ús de tècniques d’anàlisi econòmico-financera. Aportacions i resultats: Els resultats obtinguts confirmen que l'aplicació de la NIC 32 provoca diferències significatives en algunes partides del balanç de situació i el compte de pèrdues i guanys, així com en les ràtios analitzades. Les principals diferències es concreten en una reducció del nivell de capitalització i un augment de l'endeutament de les cooperatives, així com un empitjorament general dels ràtios de solvència i autonomia financera. Limitacions: Cal tenir en compte que el treball s'ha realitzat amb una mostra de cooperatives que estan obligades a auditar els seus comptes anuals. Per tant, els resultats obtinguts han d'interpretar-se en un context de cooperatives de tamany elevat. També cal tenir en compte que hem realitzat una anàlisi comparativa dels comptes anuals de 2011 i 2010. Això ens ha permès conèixer les diferències en la informació financera de les cooperatives abans i després d'aplicar la NIC 32. Encara que algunes d’aquestes diferències també podrien estar causades per altres factors com la situació econòmica, els canvis en l'aplicació de les normes comptables, etc. Originalitat/valor afegit: Creiem que és el moment idoni per a realitzar aquest treball d'investigació, ja que des de 2011 totes les cooperatives espanyoles han d'aplicar les normes comptables adaptades a la NIC 32. A més, fins on coneixem, no existeixen altres treballs similars realitzats amb comptes anuals de cooperatives que ja han aplicat les normes comptables adaptades a la NIC 32 . Creiem que els resultats d'aquest treball d'investigació poden ser útils per a diferents grups d'interès. En primer lloc, perquè els organismes emissors de normes comptables puguin conèixer l'abast de la NIC 32 en les cooperatives i, puguin plantejar millores en el contingut de la norma. En segon lloc, perquè les pròpies cooperatives, federacions, confederacions i altres organismes cooperatius disposin d'informació sobre l'impacte econòmic de la primera aplicació de la NIC 32, i puguin realitzar les valoracions que creguin convenients. I en tercer lloc, perquè les entitats financeres, auditors i assessors de cooperatives i altres grups d'interès disposin d'informació sobre els canvis en els comptes anuals de les cooperatives, i puguin tenir-los en compte a l'hora de prendre decisions. Paraules clau: Cooperatives, patrimoni net, capital social, NIC 32, solvència, efectes de la normativa comptable, informació financera, ràtios.

Is the Spanish Inheritance and Gift Tax incompatible with the free movement of workers and capital?: The reasoned opinion of the EU Commission IP/10/513

The aim of my speech is answering to the question if the Spanish Inheritance and Gift Tax is incompatible with the free movement of workers and capital. We are going to pay special attention to the European Commission’s request to Spain to change its Inheritance and Gift Tax provisions for Non-Residents or Assets held abroad. In order to answer to the question mentioned above five points will be explained. At first place I am going to describe the infrengement procedure established in the Article 258 that the EU Commission can follow when a Member State doesn’t comply with Community Law. At second place, we are going to explain what is the content of the EU Commission delivered on 5th of may 2010 regarding the spanish Inheritance and Gift Tax. Then, we will analise what establishes the Community Law regarding the freedom of workers and capital and how they are understood by the EU Court of Justice in similar cases. Finally, we are going to provide possible amendments that Spain could undertake.

On the regional impact of public capital formation in Spain

The objective of this paper is to investigate, in a methodologically consistent manner, the regional effects of public capital formation and the possible existence of regional spillover effects in Spain. The empirical results are based on VAR estimates at both the aggregate and regional levels using output, employment, and private capital, as well as different measures of public capital. Empirical results suggest that public capital affects output positively at the aggregate level as well as in all but one region. For most regions, the effects of public capital installed in the region itself are important but the spillover effects induced from public capital installed elsewhere are also very important. In fact, the spillover effects account for over half of the total effects of public capital formation in Spain. Furthermore, these spillover effects have a clear geographical pattern in that they tend to be more important in the peripheral regions of the country. We also find that relative to their share of the Spanish output, the biggest beneficiaries of public capital formation are the largest regions in the country. This suggests that public capital formation has contributed to concentration of output in these regions. Finally, in terms of the effects of public capital formation on the private inputs we find that both private capital and employment are affected positively at the aggregate level as well as for most of the regions. Nevertheless, the effects on private capital seem to be larger. Also, the spillover effects are very important for private capital but not for employment. This reflects a great degree of dynamism and mobility in the capital markets as opposed to the labor markets.

Free Mobility and Taste-Homogeneity of Jurisdiction Structures

We consider a population of agents distributed on the unit interval. Agents form jurisdictions in order to provide a public facility and share its costs equally. This creates an incentive to form large entities. Individuals also incur a transportation cost depending on their location and that of the facility which makes small jurisdictions advantageous. We consider a fairly general class of distributions of agents and generalize previous versions of this model by allowing for non-linear transportation costs. We show that, in general, jurisdictions are not necessarily homogeneous. However, they are if facilities are always intraterritory and transportation costs are superadditive. Superadditivity can be weakened to strictly increasing and strictly concave when agents are uniformly distributed. Keywords: Consecutiveness, stratification, local public goods, coalition formation, country formation. JEL Classification: C71 (Cooperative Games), D71 (Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations), H73 (Interjurisdictional Differentials and Their Effects).

Factor shares, the price markup, and the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor.

In a Walrasian labor market, the labor income share is constant under the assumptions of a Cobb-Douglas production function and perfect competition. Given the observed decline of the labor share in recent decades, this paper relaxes these assumptions, proposes a time-series calculation of the aggregate price mark-up reflecting the degree of imperfect competition in the product market, and provides estimates of the elasticity of substitution under such product market imperfections. We focus on Spain and the U.S. and show that the elasticity of substitution is above one in Spain and below one in the U.S. We also show that the price markup drives the elasticity of substitution away from one, upwards in Spain, downwards in the U.S. These results are used to explain the declining path of the labor income share, common to both economies, and their contrasted patterns in terms of capital deepening.

Capital cities of federations. On the way to analysing the normative base of their asymmetrical status

Federal Capitals often have special statutes. Compared with member states, they often enjoy a lower degree of self-government and a lesser share in the governing of the federation. Why do actors choose such devices, and how can they be justified in a liberal democracy? Surprisingly, the burgeoning literature on asymmetric federalism (to which our research group has contributed significantly) has overlooked this important feature of a de iure asymmetry, perhaps because political theory up to now has concentrated on cases of multicultural and plurinational federations. However, comparative literature is also rare. This paper is the first step to filling in this gap by comparing some federal capitals. The Federal District model (Washington) is compared to capitals organized as member-states (Berlin and Brussels), and capitals that are cities belonging to a single member state (Ottawa in Ontario). The different features of de iure asymmetry will thereby be highlighted. Some light will be shed on the possible motives, reasons and justifications for the choice of each respective status. The paper opens the door to further research on such status questions by analysing public and parliamentary debates, for example. It paves the way for more thorough research. Sicne the author has been awarded a grant by the Institut d’Estudis Autonòmics, this research will be carried out soon.

Human Capital, the Structure of Production, and Growth

Recent decisions by the Spanish national competition authority (TDC) mandate payment systems to include only two costs when setting their domestic multilateral interchange fees (MIF): a fixed processing cost and a variable cost for the risk of fraud. This artificial lowering of MIFs will not lower consumer prices, because of uncompetitive retailing; but it will however lead to higher cardholders fees and, likely, new prices for point of sale terminals, delaying the development of the immature Spanish card market. Also, to the extent that increased cardholders fees do not offset the fall in MIFs revenue, the task of issuing new cards will be underpaid relatively to the task of acquiring new merchants, causing an imbalance between the two sides of the networks. Moreover, the pricing scheme arising from the decisions will cause unbundling and underprovision of those services whose costs are excluded. Indeed, the payment guarantee and the free funding period will tend to be removed from the package of services currently provided, to be either provided by third parties, by issuers for a separate fee, or not provided at all, especially to smaller and medium-sized merchants. Transaction services will also suffer the consequences that the TDC precludes pricing them in variable terms.

Free Flows, Limited Diversification: Explaining the Fall and Rise of Stock Market Correlations, 1890-2001

Using a new dataset on capital account openness, we investigate why equity return correlations changed over the last century. Based on a new, long-run dataset on capital account regulations in a group of 16 countries over the period 1890-2001, we show that correlations increase as financial markets are liberalized. These findings are robust to controlling for both the Forbes-Rigobon bias and global averages in equity return correlations. We test the robustness of our conclusions, and show that greater synchronization of fundamentals is not the main cause of increasing correlations. These results imply that the home bias puzzle may be smaller than traditionally claimed.

Factor shares, the price markup, and the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor

[spa] La participación del trabajo en la renta nacional es constante bajo los supuestos de una función de producción Cobb-Douglas y competencia perfecta. En este artículo se relajan estos supuestos y se investiga si el comportamiento no constante de la participación del trabajo en la renta nacional se explica por (i) una elasticidad de sustitución entre capital y trabajo no unitaria y (ii) competencia no perfecta en el mercado de producto. Nos centramos en España y los U.S. y estimamos una función de producción con elasticidad de sustitución constante y competencia imperfecta en el mercado de producto. El grado de competencia imperfecta se mide a través del cálculo del price markup basado en laaproximación dual. Mostramos que la elasticidad de sustitución es mayor que uno en España y menor que uno en los US. También mostramos que el price markup aleja la elasticidad de sustitución de uno, lo aumenta en España, lo reduce en los U.S. Estos resultados se utilizan para explicar la senda decreciente de la participación del trabajo en la renta nacional, común a ambas economías, y sus contrastadas sendas de capital.

Factor shares, the price markup, and the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor

[spa] La participación del trabajo en la renta nacional es constante bajo los supuestos de una función de producción Cobb-Douglas y competencia perfecta. En este artículo se relajan estos supuestos y se investiga si el comportamiento no constante de la participación del trabajo en la renta nacional se explica por (i) una elasticidad de sustitución entre capital y trabajo no unitaria y (ii) competencia no perfecta en el mercado de producto. Nos centramos en España y los U.S. y estimamos una función de producción con elasticidad de sustitución constante y competencia imperfecta en el mercado de producto. El grado de competencia imperfecta se mide a través del cálculo del price markup basado en laaproximación dual. Mostramos que la elasticidad de sustitución es mayor que uno en España y menor que uno en los US. También mostramos que el price markup aleja la elasticidad de sustitución de uno, lo aumenta en España, lo reduce en los U.S. Estos resultados se utilizan para explicar la senda decreciente de la participación del trabajo en la renta nacional, común a ambas economías, y sus contrastadas sendas de capital.

La Solvencia financiera del asegurador de vida y su relación con el coste de capital

Esta investigación relaciona el margen de solvencia que normativamente deben acreditar los aseguradores de vida con los recursos propios que cualquier empresa debe poseer para poder ejercer su actividad. Analizaremos la incidencia que la remuneración de esos recursos tiene en la propia actividad de comercialización de los seguros demostrando su relación inversa con el tipo de interés garantizado en los contratos. Analizaremos asimismo la incidencia que los eventuales cambios en los tipos de interés pueden tener en la remuneración que puede ofrecerse a esos recursos y propondremos una ecuación que incorpore todos estos aspectos, comprobando que las relaciones que actualmente ofrece la disciplina académica son casos particulares de la ecuación general, casos que demostraremos que incorporan unas hipótesis implícitas bastante restrictivas.

Opción de responsabilidad limitada y opción de abandonar: una integración para el análisis del coste de capital

El objetivo de este documento es formalizar el valor de las acciones de una empresa endeudada, la responsabilidad limitada de los accionistas de una sociedad anónima y la rentabilidad exigida en un horizonte perpetuo, aplicando la teoría de opciones. El modelo que se elabora parte del establecido por Fisher Black y Myron Scholes en 1973 sobre el valor de las acciones de una empresa endeudada en un horizonte monoperiódico. En este modelo se encuentra un problema: la limitación del horizonte a un solo período. El modelo que se desarrolla en este documento, se basa en que el horizonte de la empresa es, en principio, ilimitado, y es frecuente que se mantenga un determinado grado de endeudamiento a lo largo de su vida. Es decir, se considera el endeudamiento de la empresa de horizonte perpetuo. Como consecuencia, los accionistas pueden declarar la quiebra en cualquier momento independientemente del vencimiento de la deuda, dejando la empresa en manos de los acreedores. Basándose en este modelo de horizonte perpetuo, se introduce la opción de abandonar. Se utiliza el valor de venta que tiene el activo de la empresa en el mercado, los accionistas lo comparan con el valor de las deudas, y deciden si es más rentable seguir con la empresa o vender los elementos del activo en el mercado. Para la valoración, se utiliza la fórmula deducida por Merton (1990) de la opción de venta americana perpetua. También se utiliza las opciones de barrera. Una vez valorada la responsabilidad limitada de los accionistas en un horizonte perpetuo, se puede calcular el interés efectivo en condiciones de riesgo.

Examples of retracts in a free group that are not the fixed subgroup of any group of automorphisms

Let F be a free group of rank at least three. We show that some retracts of F previously studied by Martino-Ventura are not equal to the fixed subgroup of any group of automorphisms of F. This shows that, in F, there exist subgroups that are equal to the fixed subgroup of some set of endomorphisms but are not equal to the fixed subgroup of any set of automorphisms. Moreover, we determine the Galois monoids of these retracts, where, by the Galois monoid of a subgroup H of F, we mean the monoid consisting of all endomorphisms of F that fix H.

The automorphism group of a free-by-cyclic group in rank 2

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