Displaying from 41 to 50 of 66 available piece of news category "Article"
-
What hampers or increases the R&D intensity of firms?
Many studies have analysed the determinants of firms' internal R&D expenditure-see, for example, (Montresor and Vezzani, 2015) or (Coad, 2019). Such studies typically find the heterogeneity of firm level R&D investment (Coad et al., 2020), the incidence of non-observable characteristics on the R&D effort (Cohen and Klepper, 1992), and the non-homogenous nature of R&D activity (Czarnitzki and Hottenrott 2011a; Barge-Gil and López 2014). The topic is important since R&D investment expands a country's technological frontier. Thus, we need to understand how the distribution of R&D investments is influenced by different firms' characteristics and by the economic cycle.
-
Impact of COVID-19 on vacation recreational walking: Evidence from an urban coastal destination
The study examines the impact of COVID-19 on recreational walking, a relevant activity for tourists. Observing the responses of a group of tourists on the Costa Daurada during August 2020, only 5% of the participants reported having walked less compared to normal circumstances; 20% reported having walked more. This is associated with the quality of urban facilities and the perceived safety of avoiding contagion compared to other spaces. It is shown that the pandemic has altered entertainment patterns, leading to an increase in outdoor activities.
-
Job-to-job transitions and the job satisfaction puzzle
This paper studies the impact of different types of job-to-job transitions (from salaried employment to self-employment, from self-employment to salaried employment, and within salaried employment) on job satisfaction. Considering the three types of job transition, allows us to separate the pure mobility effect from the type of employment effect. We design an identification strategy based on the diff-in-diff approach. This is possible because our panel data allow us to compare the same individuals before and after job-to-job transitions occur.
-
Investment expectations by vulnerable European firms in times of COVID”
The effect of the COVID shock on European economies has been severe and also unequal, with some firms being affected much more strongly than others. To improve the effectiveness of policy interventions, policymakers need to understand which types of vulnerable firms have been suddenly pushed into dire circumstances.
We fill this important gap by providing evidence from the European Investment Bank Investment Survey 2016-2020 on how the COVID shock has affected the investment activity and investment-related framework conditions of vulnerable firms. While data on actual investment activity post-COVID is not yet available to us, we focus on investment expectations. We exploit the fact that the same questions relating to investment expectations have been asked in several previous survey waves, which enables a difference-in-differences approach to investigate how investment expectations might have suddenly changed, for vulnerable groups of firms, immediately after the onset of the COVID crisis.
-
New empirical insights on conflicting claims problems
A conflicting claims problem is a distribution problem in which the available amount to be shared, the endowment, is insufficient to cover the agents' acquired rights, their claims. Ilustrative situations are water distribution during periods of drought and resource allocation procedures in the public healthcare sector (see, for instance, Hougaard et al. 2012; Moreno-Ternero and Roemer 2012). The design of efficient radio resource management policies to provide the best quality service while guaranteeing user fairness and environmental safety has also been modelled as a problem with conflicting claims (see Lucas-Estañ et al. 2012; Giménez-Gómez et al. 2016, respectively).
The empirical análisis of these problems are base don two different approaches to studying the acceptance of the main rules proposed in the theoretical literature can be found: (i) questionnaires, and (ii) laboratory experiments. Gaertner and Schokkaert (2012) is a survey about empirical social choice.
-
On the heterogeneity of the long-term leverage-growth relationship: A cross-country analysis of manufacturing firms
Despite a great deal of studies, the relationship between firm leverage and its impact on growth remains still unclear. We offer an analytical framework, which based on a comprehensive literature review and of related empirical reasoning, helps explaining the long-term leverage and firm growth nexus. Both the theoretical views and empirical evidence are mixed, and the lack of consensus may be the result of inconsistent estimation techniques and of the dual interpretation that firm leverage has.
Analysing debt from credit institutions to firms in France, Italy, and Spain, and observed from 2010 to 2016, we bring a selection framework to trial. The comparative perspective seeks the establishment of regularities, while the use of a dynamic quantile panel estimator unravels its heterogeneity.
Strong non-linearities are detected, but the selection framework finds no support. Indeed, only firms in the lowest-growing deciles of the growth distributions benefit consistently from leverage. On the contrary, the impact on the right part of the growth distribution is either non-significant or negative
-
A forecast of Cava wine sales applied to vine planting authorizations
The European Union's new vineyard planting authorization system came into force in 2016. This new system poses a challenge for EU ministries of agriculture, which must annually set the authorized areas for new plantings. In the case of Designations of Origin (DOs) and Protected Geographical Indications (PGIs), the challenge is, if anything, greater. On the one hand, variations in surface area must not restrict production in such a way as to generate price increases with negative repercussions on sales. On the other hand, increases in acreage can lead to overproduction and the consequent devaluation of the DO.
-
Resource allocations with guaranteed awards in claims problems
The so-called claims problem reflects a situation where the agents' claims cannot be totally honored when a resource must be distributed among them. The way of rationing this resource among the agents, taking into account their claims, is prescribed by a rule. In this context, we analyze how to distribute any increase of the endowment in terms of two general concepts: first, establishing that each agent should be guaranteed a minimum award, which is determined by a particular lower bound (respect of the lower bound); and, then, requiring that agents with equal guarantees, should be treated equally (equal treatment of equals).
It is noteworthy that the concern of ensuring some minimum individual rights has figured in a large number of contexts. Specifically, the Universal Basic Income is a classical issue that has attracted much attention in the social policy literature and the political agenda during the last two decades (Noguera 2010). Additionally, the establishment of a minimum wage in the labor market, the debate about ensuring a universal minimum health coverage in the U.S. Senate, the European Structural and Investment Funds, ensuring minimum quantities in heritage laws, fishing quotas (Iñarra and Prellezo 2008; Kampas 2015), or, the negotiations of
-
The Unanimity Rule under a Two-Agent Fixed Sequential Order Voting
The voting mechanism is a highly important decision-making procedure used in very different kinds of situations, such as political decisions, jury trials, or the election of the Catholic Pope. It is noteworthy that, in this last situation, the agreement is met only when unanimity arises. This requirement reveals some interesting questions about the voters' behaviour. For instance, in conclaves with misaligned preferences, is it possible to agree on an alternative? If this is the case, which alternative will be implemented? Which voter will have to give up first? When will this occur?
The study of these questions involves a vast number of different contexts, such as the bargaining in legislatures, multilateral bargaining models, and situations with asymmetric information and incomplete information. Recently, it has been studied how agents reach an agreement through a sequential random ordering voting procedure with, potentially, an infinite number of stages. The result of this negotiation process shows that the most patient agent's preferred alternative is chosen in the first round.
-
Non-manipulability by clones in bankruptcy problems
Bankruptcy problems (O'Neill, 1982) deal with situations where an amount of a perfectly divisible resource should be distributed among a group of agents presenting conflicting claims, that is, the total amount to divide is not enough to fulfill all demands. These problems are solved by rules proposing an allocation vector that takes into consideration the specifics of the agents.
An important topic in economics is the study of rules that are immune to the strategic behavior of the agents by misrepresenting their characteristics. For the bankruptcy problem, O'Neill (1982) introduces non-manipulability (or strategy-proofness) as the combination of non-manipulability via merging and splitting.
