Do institutions and culture matter for business cycles?

We examine the relationship between institutions, culture and cyclical fluctuations for a sampleof 45 European, Middle Eastern and North African countries. Better governance is associated withshorter and less severe contractions and milder expansions. Certain cultural traits, such as lack ofacceptance of power distance and individualism, are also linked business cycle features. Businesscycle synchronization is tightly related to similarities in the institutional environment. Mediterraneancountries conform to these general tendencies.

Power transformations in correspondence analysis

Power transformations of positive data tables, prior to applying the correspondence analysis algorithm, are shown to open up a family of methods with direct connections to the analysis of log-ratios. Two variations of this idea are illustrated. The first approach is simply to power the original data and perform a correspondence analysis this method is shown to converge to unweighted log-ratio analysis as the power parameter tends to zero. The second approach is to apply the power transformation to thecontingency ratios, that is the values in the table relative to expected values based on the marginals this method converges to weighted log-ratio analysis, or the spectral map. Two applications are described: first, a matrix of population genetic data which is inherently two-dimensional, and second, a larger cross-tabulation with higher dimensionality, from a linguistic analysis of several books.

Countervailing power? Collusion in markets with decentralized trade

We consider the collective incentives of buyers and sellers to form cartels in markets where trade is realized through decentralized pairwise bargaining. Cartels are coalitions of buyers or sellers that limit market participation and compensate inactive members for abstaining from trade. In a stable market outcome, cartels set Nash equilibrium quantities and cartel memberships are immune to defections. We prove that the set of stable market outcomes is non-empty and we provide its full characterization. Stable market outcomes are of two types: (i) at least one cartel actively restrains trade and the levels of market participation are balanced, or (ii) only one cartel, eventually the cartel that forms on the long side of the market, is active and it reduces trade slightly below the opponent's.

I want you! An experiment studying the selection effect when assigning distributive power.

We study whether selection affects motivation. In our experiment subjects first answer a personality questionnaire. They then play a 3-person game. One of the three players decides between an outside option assigning him a positive amount, but leaving the two others empty-handed and allowing one of the other two players to distribute a pie. Treatments differ in the procedure by which distributive power is assigned: to a randomly determined or to a knowingly selected partner. Before making her decision the selecting player could consult the personality questionnaire of the other two players. Results show that knowingly selected players keep less for themselves than randomly selected ones and reward the selecting player more generously.

Demand elasticity and market power in the spanish electricity market

In this paper we check whether generator's bid behavior at the Spanish whosale electricity market is consistent with the hypothesis of profit maximization on their residual demands. Using OMEL data, we find the arc-elacticity of the residual demand around the system marginal price. The results suggest thet the larger firms are not actually profit-msximization. We argue how the regulatory environment may drive these results. Finally, we repeat the analysis for the first session of the intra-day market where presumably firms may not have the same incentives as in the day-ahead market.

Two algorithms to find a power integral basis

"Vegeu el resum a l'inici del fitxer adjunt."

Diophantine approximation on projective varieties I: algebraic distance and metric Bézout theorem

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Encryption methods using formal power series rings

Recently there has been a great deal of work on noncommutative algebraic cryptography. This involves the use of noncommutative algebraic objects as the platforms for encryption systems. Most of this work, such as the Anshel-Anshel-Goldfeld scheme, the Ko-Lee scheme and the Baumslag-Fine-Xu Modular group scheme use nonabelian groups as the basic algebraic object. Some of these encryption methods have been successful and some have been broken. It has been suggested that at this point further pure group theoretic research, with an eye towards cryptographic applications, is necessary.In the present study we attempt to extend the class of noncommutative algebraic objects to be used in cryptography. In particular we explore several different methods to use a formal power series ring R && x1; :::; xn && in noncommuting variables x1; :::; xn as a base to develop cryptosystems. Although R can be any ring we have in mind formal power series rings over the rationals Q. We use in particular a result of Magnus that a finitely generated free group F has a faithful representation in a quotient of the formal power series ring in noncommuting variables.

Scheduled service versus personal transportation: the role of distance

This paper analyzes both theoretically and empirically the relationship between distance and frequency of scheduled transportation services. We study the interaction between a monopoly firm providing high-speed scheduled service and personal trans- portation (i.e., car). Most interestingly, the carrier chooses to increase frequency of service on longer routes when competing with personal transportation because provid- ing a higher frequency (at extra cost) it can also charge higher fares that can boost its profits. However, when driving is not a relevant option, frequency of service de- creases for longer flights consistently with prior studies. An empirical application of our analysis to the European airline industry con?rms the predictions of our theoretical model.

Price level convergence, purchasing power parity and multiple structural breaks: an application to US cities

This article provides a fresh methodological and empirical approach for assessing price level convergence and its relation to purchasing power parity (PPP) using annual price data for seventeen US cities. We suggest a new procedure that can handle a wide range of PPP concepts in the presence of multiple structural breaks using all possible pairs of real exchange rates. To deal with cross-sectional dependence, we use both cross-sectional demeaned data and a parametric bootstrap approach. In general, we find more evidence for stationarity when the parity restriction is not imposed, while imposing parity restriction provides leads toward the rejection of the panel stationar- ity. Our results can be embedded on the view of the Balassa-Samuelson approach, but where the slope of the time trend is allowed to change in the long-run. The median half-life point estimate are found to be lower than the consensus view regardless of the parity restriction.

Scheduled Service Versus Personal Transportation: The Role of Distance

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship be- tween frequency of scheduled transportation services and their substitutability with personal transportation (using distance as a proxy). We study the interaction between a monopoly firm providing a high-speed scheduled service and private transportation (i.e., car). Interestingly, the carrier chooses to increase the frequency of service on longer routes when competing with personal transportation because by providing higher frequency (at extra cost) it can also charge higher fares which can boost its profits. However, in line with the results of earlier studies, frequency decreases for longer flights when driving is not a viable option. An empirical application of our analysis to the European airline industry confirms the predictions of our theoretical model. Keywords: short-haul routes; long-haul routes; flight frequency; distance JEL Classification Numbers: L13; L2; L93

Water scarcity, social power and the production of an elite suburb: the political ecology of water in Matadepera, Catalonia

This article investigates the history of land and water transformations in Matadepera, a wealthy suburb of metropolitan Barcelona. Analysis is informed by theories of political ecology and methods of environmental history; although very relevant, these have received relatively little attention within ecological economics. Empirical material includes communications from the City Archives of Matadepera (1919-1979), 17 interviews with locals born between 1913 and 1958, and an exhaustive review of grey historical literature. Existing water histories of Barcelona and its outskirts portray a battle against natural water scarcity, hard won by heroic engineers and politicians acting for the good of the community. Our research in Matadepera tells a very different story. We reveal the production of a highly uneven landscape and waterscape through fierce political and power struggles. The evolution of Matadepera from a small rural village to an elite suburb was anything but spontaneous or peaceful. It was a socio-environmental project well intended by landowning elites and heavily fought by others. The struggle for the control of water went hand in hand with the land and political struggles that culminated – and were violently resolved - in the Spanish Civil War. The displacement of the economic and environmental costs of water use from few to many continues to this day and is constitutive of Matadepera’s uneven and unsustainable landscape. By unravelling the relations of power that are inscribed in the urbanization of nature (Swyngedouw, 2004), we question the perceived wisdoms of contemporary water policy debates, particularly the notion of a natural scarcity that merits a technical or economic response. We argue that the water question is fundamentally a political question of environmental justice; it is about negotiating alternative visions of the future and deciding whose visions will be produced.

Weak-type estimates for Haar shift operators: Sharp power on the A(p) characteristic

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Clustering or scattering: the underlying reason for regulating distance among retail outlets

Concerns on the clustering of retail industries and professional services in main streets had traditionally been the public interest rationale for supporting distance regulations. Although many geographic restrictions have been suppressed, deregulation has hinged mostly upon the theory results on the natural tendency of outlets to differentiate spatially. Empirical evidence has so far offered mixed results. Using the case of deregulation of pharmacy establishment in a region of Spain, we empirically show how pharmacy locations scatter, and that there is not rationale for distance regulation apart from the underlying private interest of very few incumbents.