La Mayor dotación de capital humano y sus problemas de adaptación en el mercado de trabajo español, 1986-2005

Desde 1975 y sobre todo a partir de su incorporación a la Unión Europea en 1986, los cambios que se han producido en la estructura económica y productiva española han favorecido la convergencia de la mayoría de sus indicadores económicos con los de los países de la Unión. Sin embargo, no ha habido el mismo éxito por lo que se refiere al mercado de trabajo. Esta comunicación es, por una parte, el resultado de mi trabajo de investigación sobre la evolución de la educación superior y el mercado de trabajo en España durante las últimas cuatro décadas del último siglo y, por otra parte, el punto de partida de un estudio más profundo sobre las diferencias regionales en la correspondencia entre la oferta y la demanda de trabajo cualificado en España y en Europa. El objetivo de esta comunicación es comparar la evolución de los niveles educativos y de los principales indicadores del mercado de trabajo en España y en otros países europeos (Alemania, Francia, Grecia, Italia, Portugal y Reino Unido) desde 1986, año de incorporación de España a la Unión Europea, hasta la actualidad, para determinar los factores o mecanismos que influyen en el mercado de trabajo cualificado español y su difícil convergencia con los de otros países europeos.

Olympic cities and communication

Article published in Greek in the special issue "The Olympic Games: the mega sports and media event" of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens journal Communication Issues (2004, no.1), discussing the need for establishing a communication model for city-games relations.

Pareto-improving optimal capital and labor taxes

We show a standard model where the optimal tax reform is to cut labor taxes and leave capital taxes very high in the short and medium run. Only in the very long run would capital taxes be zero. Our model is a version of Chamley??s, with heterogeneous agents, without lump sum transfers, an upper bound on capital taxes, and a focus on Pareto improving plans. For our calibration labor taxes should be low for the first ten to twenty years, while capital taxes should be at their maximum. This policy ensures that all agents benefit from the tax reform and that capital grows quickly after when the reform begins. Therefore, the long run optimal tax mix is the opposite from the short and medium run tax mix. The initial labor tax cut is financed by deficits that lead to a positive long run level of government debt, reversing the standard prediction that government accumulates savings in models with optimal capital taxes. If labor supply is somewhat elastic benefits from tax reform are high and they can be shifted entirely to capitalists or workers by varying the length of the transition. With inelastic labor supply there is an increasing part of the equilibrium frontier, this means that the scope for benefitting the workers is limited and the total benefits from reforming taxes are much lower.

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.

Immigration and Firm Growth: Evidence from Spanish cities

This article analyses the effect of immigration flows on the growth and efficiency of manufacturing firms in Spanish cities. To date, most studies have tended to focus on the effect immigrants have on labour markets at an aggregate level. Here, however, we undertake an exhaustive analysis at the firm level and report conclusive empirical findings. Ten years ago, Spain began to register massive immigration flows, concentrated above all on its most dynamic and advanced regions. Here, therefore, rather than focusing on the impact this has had on Spain’s labour market (changes to the skill structure of the workforce, increase in labour supply, the displacement of native workers, etc.), we examine the arrival of immigrants in terms of the changes this has meant to the structure of the country’s cities and their amenities. Thus, we argue that the impact of immigration on firm performance should not only be considered in terms of the labour market, but also in terms of how a city’s amenities can affect the performance of firms. Employing a panel data methodology, we show that the increasing pressure brought to bear by immigrants has a positive effect on the evolution of labour productivity and wages and a negative effect on the job evolution of these manufacturing firms. In addition, both small and new firms are more sensitive to the pressures of such immigrant inflows, while foreign market oriented firms report higher productivity levels and a less marked impact of immigration than their counterparts. In this paper, we also present a set of instruments to correct the endogeneity bias, which confirms the effect of local immigration flows on the performance of manufacturing firms.

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.

Portabilidad del capital humano y asimilación de los inmigrantes. Evidencia para España

La literatura sobre asimilación de los inmigrantes ha destacado la portabilidad imperfecta del capital humano acumulado por éstos en su país de origen (Chiswick, 1978; Friedberg, 2000). Ello explicaría la escasa asimilación en el momento de llegar al nuevo país, así como la gran brecha salarial inicial. Recientemente, una serie de trabajos (Chiswick y Miller, 2007 o Green, Kler y Leeves, 2007, entre otros) han abordado este tema desde la perspectiva de la sobreeducación. Enmarcado en esta literatura, el presente trabajo analiza la portabilidad del capital humano de los inmigrantes al mercado de trabajo español en función de su origen geográfico. Asimismo, trata de contrastar para el caso español las regularidades empíricas más destacables de dichos trabajos. Los resultados obtenidos señalan un distinto grado de transferibilidad del capital humano según origen geográfico, siendo superior la del capital humano acumulado en países de elevado desarrollo o de cultura e idioma próximos y menor la del procedente de países en desarrollo y culturas distantes. La evidencia es relativamente dispar para ambos componentes del capital humano: mientras que ello es especialmente claro para los estudios, resulta menos evidente para la experiencia. Se confirma, asimismo, para el caso español que los inmigrantes padecen una mayor sobreeducación, tanto en incidencia como en intensidad, y que ello implica una mayor penalización salarial relativa, con resultados siempre peores para inmigrantes del segundo grupo de países. A medida que los inmigrantes prolongan su estancia en España existe un proceso de asimilación, excepto para asiáticos y en algunas especificaciones tampoco para los procedentes del África subsahariana, si bien la velocidad de asimilación es notablemente lenta.

Una propuesta de evaluación de las externalidades de capital humano en la empresa

Empleando la encuesta de estructura salarial se plantea una propuesta de estimación de externalidades de capital humano intraempresa que permite relajar las restricciones introducidas por las especificaciones que la literatura empírica existente ha usado. En concreto, la metodología propuesta evalúa las externalidades de capital humano aprovechando al máximo la variabilidad en la muestra, al permitir que todos los coeficientes de las ecuaciones estimadas varíen con el nivel de capital humano del establecimiento, relajando la hipótesis implícita de linealidad entre el efecto de externalidad y el nivel educativo de los individuos.

Capital humano: un análisis comparativo Catalunya-España

En este documento se analizan comparativamente algunos aspectos relativos al capital humano de la economía catalana y española. En primer lugar se compara la dotación de capital humano tanto desde una metodología más tradicional, como es el caso de años de educación, como desde el punto de vista de la valoración del activo mediante actualización de flujos salariales a lo largo del ciclo vital de los individuos. Los resultados muestran indicios de una cierta desaceleración en el crecimiento del stock de capital humano. Adicionalmente, se lleva a cabo una estimación de la existencia de externalidades de capital humano intra-establecimiento, con datos de la Encuesta de Estructura Salarial, desarrollando una metodología menos restrictiva que la tradicional. Los resultados muestran comportamientos similares de la economía española y catalana, apuntando a la existencia de externalidades.

Analysing the impact of public capital stock using the NEG wage equation: a panel data approach

This paper examines the relationship between the level of public infrastructure and the level of productivity using panel data for the Spanish provinces over the period 1984-2004, a period which is particularly relevant due to the substantial changes occurring in the Spanish economy at that time. The underlying model used for the data analysis is based on the wage equation, which is one of a handful of simultaneous equations which when satisfied correspond to the short-run equilibrium of New Economic Geography theory. This is estimated using a spatial panel model with fixed time and province effects, so that unmodelled space and time constant sources of heterogeneity are eliminated. The model assumes that productivity depends on the level of educational attainment and the public capital stock endowment of each province. The results show that although changes in productivity are positively associated with changes in public investment within the same province, there is a negative relationship between productivity changes and changes in public investment in other regions.

Investment and financing constraints in China: does working capital management make a difference?

We use a panel of over 120,000 Chinese firms of different ownership types over the period 2000-2007 to analyze the linkages between investment in fixed and working capital and financing constraints. We find that those firms characterized by high working capital display high sensitivities of investment in working capital to cash flow (WKS) and low sensitivities of investment in fixed capital to cash flow (FKS). We then construct and analyze firm-level FKS and WKS measures and find that, despite severe external financing constraints, those firms with low FKS and high WKS exhibit the highest fixed investment rates. This suggests that good working capital management may help firms to alleviate the effects of financing constraints on fixed investment.

International Capital Flows to Emerging and Developing Countries: National and Global Determinants

This paper examines international capital flows to emerging and developing countries. We assess whether commonalities exist, the permanence of shocks to commonalities and their determinants. Also, we consider individual country coherence with global capital flows and we measure the extent of co-movements in the volatility of capital flows. Our results suggest there are commonalities in capital inflows, although aggregate or disaggregate capital flows respond differently to shocks. We find that the US long run real interest rate is an important determinant of global capital flows, and real commodity prices are relevant but to a lesser extent. We also find a role for human capital in explaining why some countries can successfully ride the wave of financial globalisation.

Regional productivity variation and the impact of public capital stock: an analysis with spatial interaction, with reference to Spain

In this paper we examine whether variations in the level of public capital across Spain‟s Provinces affected productivity levels over the period 1996-2005. The analysis is motivated by contemporary urban economics theory, involving a production function for the competitive sector of the economy („industry‟) which includes the level of composite services derived from „service‟ firms under monopolistic competition. The outcome is potentially increasing returns to scale resulting from pecuniary externalities deriving from internal increasing returns in the monopolistic competition sector. We extend the production function by also making (log) labour efficiency a function of (log) total public capital stock and (log) human capital stock, leading to a simple and empirically tractable reduced form linking productivity level to density of employment, human capital and public capital stock. The model is further extended to include technological externalities or spillovers across provinces. Using panel data methodology, we find significant elasticities for total capital stock and for human capital stock, and a significant impact for employment density. The finding that the effect of public capital is significantly different from zero, indicating that it has a direct effect even after controlling for employment density, is contrary to some of the earlier research findings which leave the question of the impact of public capital unresolved.

Los salarios de los inmigrantes en el mercado de trabajo español. ¿Importa el origen del capital humano?

El objetivo del trabajo es analizar el papel de los diferentes componentes del capital humano como determinantes de los ingresos de los inmigrantes recientes en el mercado de trabajo español. A partir de los microdatos de la Encuesta Nacional de Inmigrantes 2007, se examina la rentabilidad del capital humano de este colectivo, distinguiendo el adquirido en origen del acumulado en destino, así como el impacto salarial de la situación documental. La evidencia obtenida muestra que el capital humano adquirido en España tiene una mayor rentabilidad marginal que el acumulado en origen, lo que refleja la limitada transferibilidad de este último. La única excepción se da en el caso de los inmigrantes procedentes de países desarrollados o que han estudiado en España, independientemente de su procedencia, los cuales obtienen una rentabilidad de sus estudios –incluso de aquéllos cursados en origen– comparativamente elevada. Una situación legal en España está asociada, por su parte, con una sustancial prima salarial positiva (15%). Por último, el conjunto de la evidencia confirma la presencia de una fuerte heterogeneidad, tanto en la rentabilidad de las diferentes formas de capital humano como en la magnitud de la prima por trabajar legalmente, en función de la zona de origen de los inmigrantes.