Claves del éxito de una historia de cooperación entre competidores: el caso de siete grandes cocineros vascos

El Cluster de la Nueva Cocina Vasca se podría situar en una fase de alto desarrollo, o incluso principio de madurez y con importante y previsible desarrollo futuro. Se trata de un legado de más de treinta y cinco años de colaboración, que a continuación desarrollaremos basándonos en la información facilitada por los cocineros socios fundadores el Basque Culinary Center (BCC): Juan Mari Arzak, Pedro Subijana, Karlos Arguiñano, Hilario Arbelaitz, Martín Berasategui, Andoni Luis Aduriz y Eneko Atxa. El BCC es uno de los más recientes, tangibles y ambiciosos frutos del cluster y posiblemente el fruto que vaya a ser más positivamente determinante del futuro de la gastronomía vasca. Todos ellos se han prestado a narrar la historia desde su perspectiva individual, a través de una entrevista personal en la mayoría de los casos, y cuando ha sido posible, contratando la información recopilada por las autoras. La visión integrada de todas estas perspectivas tal y como se presenta en el caso es fruto del trabajo de coordinación y fusión de la información realizado por las autoras.

Manifestación del ethos cultural vasco ante la muerte violenta de Aitor Zabaleta

El ethos vasco se activa una vez producida la muerte cuyo detonante es el sacrificio de un miembro de la cultura vasca. A partir de aquí ésta comienza a simbolizar para reconstruirse a sí misma, ésta reconstrucción se va a producir a varios niveles de la sociedad: en el estamento deportivo, en el familiar y en el social en general. La confluencia del estudio se hará en la familia de Aitor Zabaleta.

El viajero Wilhelm von Humboldt y sus sucesores: caracterización cultural del País Vasco en las descripciones de viaje del siglo XIX

Berta Raposo Fernández e Ingrid García Wistädt (editoras)

Erromaurreko Iberiar Penintsulako antzinaroari buruzko materialak : Iberiako hegoaldeko herri eta kulturak

Traducido por Iñaki Villoslada Fernández

Reference Points Based on Dynamic Optimisation: A Versatil Algorithm for Mixed Fishery Management with Bio-economic Agestructured Models

Single-species management objectives may not be consistent within mixed fisheries. They may lead species to unsafe situations, promote discarding of over-quota and/or misreporting of catches. We provide an algorithm for characterising bio-economic reference points for a mixed fishery as the steady-state solution of a dynamic optimal management problem. The optimisation problem takes into account: i) that species are fishing simultaneously in unselective fishing operations and ii)intertemporal discounting and fleet costs to relate reference points to discounted economic profits along optimal trajectories. We illustrate how the algorithm can be implemented by applying it to the European Northern Stock of Hake (Merluccius merluccius), where fleets also capture Northern megrim (Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis) and Northern anglerfish (Lophius piscatorius and Lophius budegassa). We find that optimal mixed management leads to a target reference point that is quite similar to the 2/3 of the Fmsy single-species (hake) target. Mixed management is superior to singlespecies management because it leads the fishery to higher discounted profits with higher long-term SSB for all species. We calculate that the losses due to the use of the Fmsy single-species (hake) target in this mixed fishery account for 11.4% of total discounted profits.

Resale in Auctions with Financial Constraints

This paper analyzes auctions where bidders face nancial constraints that may force them to resell part of the property of the good (or subcontract part of a project) at a resale market. First we show that the ine¢ cient speculative equilibria of second- price auctions (Garratt and Tröger, 2006) generalizes to situations with partial resale where only the high value bidder is nancially constrained. However, when all players face nancial constraints the ine¢ cient speculative equilibria disappear. Therefore, for auctioning big facilities or contracts where all bidders are nancially constrained and there is a resale market, the second price auction remains a simple and appropriate mechanism to achieve an e¢ cient allocation.

Consumer Expertise or Credit Risk? An empirical analysis of mortgage pricing

Loan mortgage interest rates are usually the result of a bank-customer negotiation process. Credit risk, consumer cross-buying potential, bundling, financial market competition and other features affecting the bargaining power of the parties could affect price. We argue that, since mortgage loan is a complex product, consumer expertise could be a relevant factor for mortgage pricing. Using data on mortgage loan prices for a sample of 1055 households for the year 2005 (Bank of Spain Survey of Household Finances, EFF-2005), and including credit risk, costs, potential capacity of the consumer to generate future business and bank competition variables, the regression results indicate that consumer expertise-related metrics are highly significant as predictors of mortgage loan prices. Other factors such as credit risk and consumer cross-buying potential do not have such a significant impact on mortgage prices. Our empirical results are affected by the credit conditions prior to the financial crisis and could shed some light on this issue.

The Effect of Data Revisions on the Basic New Keynesian Model

This paper proposes an extended version of the basic New Keynesian monetary (NKM) model which contemplates revision processes of output and inflation data in order to assess the importance of data revisions on the estimated monetary policy rule parameters and the transmission of policy shocks. Our empirical evidence based on a structural econometric approach suggests that although the initial announcements of output and inflation are not rational forecasts of revised output and inflation data, ignoring the presence of non well-behaved revision processes may not be a serious drawback in the analysis of monetary policy in this framework. However, the transmission of inflation-push shocks is largely affected by considering data revisions. The latter being especially true when the nominal stickiness parameter is estimated taking into account data revision processes.

Data Revisions in the Estimation of DSGE Models

Revisions of US macroeconomic data are not white-noise. They are persistent, correlated with real-time data, and with high variability (around 80% of volatility observed in US real-time data). Their business cycle effects are examined in an estimated DSGE model extended with both real-time and final data. After implementing a Bayesian estimation approach, the role of both habit formation and price indexation fall significantly in the extended model. The results show how revision shocks of both output and inflation are expansionary because they occur when real-time published data are too low and the Fed reacts by cutting interest rates. Consumption revisions, by contrast, are countercyclical as consumption habits mirror the observed reduction in real-time consumption. In turn, revisions of the three variables explain 9.3% of changes of output in its long-run variance decomposition.

An Estimated New-Keynesian Model with Unemployment as Excess Supply of Labor

Wage stickiness is incorporated to a New-Keynesian model with variable capital to drive endogenous unemployment uctuations de ned as the log di¤erence between aggregate labor supply and aggregate labor demand. We estimated such model using Bayesian econometric techniques and quarterly U.S. data. The second-moment statistics of the unemployment rate in the model give a good t to those observed in U.S. data. Our results also show that wage-push shocks, demand shifts and monetary policy shocks are the three major determinants of unemployment fl uctuations. Compared to an estimated New-Keynesian model without unemployment (Smets and Wouters, 2007): wage stickiness is higher, labor supply elasticity is lower, the slope of the New-Keynesian Phillips curve is flatter, and the importance of technology innovations on output variability increases.

Time Variation in an Optimal Asymmetric Preference Monetary Policy Model

This paper considers a time varying parameter extension of the Ruge-Murcia (2003, 2004) model to explore whether some of the variation in parameter estimates seen in the literature could arise from this source. A time varying value for the unemployment volatility parameter can be motivated through several means including variation in the slope of the Phillips curve or variation in the preferences of the monetary authority.We show that allowing time variation for the coefficient on the unemployment volatility parameter improves the model fit and it helps to provide an explanation of inflation bias based on asymmetric central banker preferences, which is consistent across subsamples.

Moral cleansing and moral licenses: experimental evidence

Research on moral cleansing and moral self-licensing has introduced dynamic considerations in the theory of moral behavior. Past bad actions trigger negative feelings that make people more likely to engage in future moral behavior to offset them. Symmetrically, past good deeds favor a positive self-perception that creates licensing effects, leading people to engage in behavior that is less likely to be moral. In short, a deviation from a “normal state of being” is balanced with a subsequent action that compensates the prior behavior. We model the decision of an individual trying to reach the optimal level of moral self-worth over time and show that under certain conditions the optimal sequence of actions follows a regular pattern which combines good and bad actions. We conduct an economic experiment where subjects play a sequence of giving decisions (dictator games) to explore this phenomenon. We find that donation in the previous period affects present decisions and the sign is negative: participants’ behavior in every round is negatively correlated to what they did in the past. Hence donations over time seem to be the result of a regular pattern of self-regulation: moral licensing (being selfish after altruist) and cleansing (altruistic after selfish).

Prosocial norms and degree heterogeneity in social networks

We provide empirical evidence to support the claims that social diversity promotes prosocial behavior. We elicit a real-life social network and its members’ adherence to a social norm, namely inequity aversion. The data reveal a positive relationship between subjects’ prosociality and several measures of centrality. This result is in line with the theoretical literature that relates the evolution of social norms to the structure of social interactions and argues that central individuals are crucial for the emergence of prosocial behavior.

Selectivity, pulse fishing and endogenous lifespan in Beverton-Holt models

Optimal management in a multi-cohort Beverton-Holt model with any number of age classes and imperfect selectivity is equivalent to finding the optimal fish lifespan by chosen fallow cycles. Optimal policy differs in two main ways from the optimal lifespan rule with perfect selectivity. First, weight gain is valued in terms of the whole population structure. Second, the cost of waiting is the interest rate adjusted for the increase in the pulse length. This point is especially relevant for assessing the role of selectivity. Imperfect selectivity reduces the optimal lifespan and the optimal pulse length. We illustrate our theoretical findings with a numerical example. Results obtained using global numerical methods select the optimal pulse length predicted by the optimal lifespan rule.

Are Bar Associations Anticompetitive? An Empirical Analysis of Recommended Prices for Legal Services in Spain

The European Commission Report on Competition in Professional Services found that recommended prices by professional bodies have a significant negative effect on competition since they may facilitate the coordination of prices between service providers and/or mislead consumers about reasonable price levels. Professional associations argue, first, that a fee schedule may help their members to properly calculate the cost of services avoiding excessive charges and reducing consumers’ searching costs and, second, that recommended prices are very useful for cost appraisal if a litigant is condemned to pay the legal expenses of the opposing party. Thus, recommended fee schedules could be justified to some extent if they represented the cost of providing the services. We test this hypothesis using cross‐section data on a subset of recommended prices by 52 Spanish bar associations and cost data on their territorial jurisdictions. Our empirical results indicate that prices recommended by bar associations are unrelated to the cost of legal services and therefore we conclude that recommended prices have merely an anticompetitive effect.