Documentos de trabajo DE - ES Lan Gaiak

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Open Access
The post-covid inflation episode
(2023) Casares Polo, Miguel; Aguirre Osa, Idoia; Economía; Ekonomia
The recent inflation episode has been examined in an estimated NK-DSGE model with sticky wages and unemployement. The rise of US price inflation resulted from a combination of a sudden rise in 2020, the expansionary monetary policy in 2021 and price-push shocks in the quarters of a global rising on the cost of energy. The projections of the disinflation path indicate that if either prices or wages are further indexed to lagged inflation, wage inflation will be higher and the price disinflation will slow down. Also, a severe tightening of Fed's monetary policy will barely reduce inflation at the cost of higher unemployment.
Open Access
Understanding soft commitment: evidence from a field experiment on recycling
(2022) Alonso-Paulí, Eduard; Balart, Pau; Ezquerra, Lara; Hernández Arenaz, Íñigo; Economía; Ekonomia
Taking advantage of a card-scanning system that records individual, real-time data on the use of bio-waste sorting bins, we run a randomized field experiment to analyze the effectiveness of soft commitments in promoting participation in waste sorting. Being given the offer to sign a soft commitment increased participation in waste sorting by 7-8 percentage points (0.22 s.d.). This represents a 23-28% increase relative to the control group of households that participated in the study but were not given the opportunity to sign a soft commitment. This positive effect of the soft commitment operates exclusively through the extensive margin (households start to sort their waste); it does not affect the intensive margin (household adherence to waste sorting). This implies that soft commitments can improve the effectiveness of environmental campaigns in cities or areas where a large part of the population has never participated in waste sorting, while they would have little impact in places where a majority of households have already participated in recycling. We also show that the positive effect of the soft commitment remains constant 35 weeks after being offered. The effect also persists after 36-47 weeks, although its size is reduced by one half.
Open Access
The other halves of fascist Italy: income inequality from dynamic social tables, 1900-1950
(2021) Gómez León, María; Gabbuti, Giacomo; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
This paper documents new, yearly estimates of overall income inequality for Italy, from the first industrial 'take-off' to the eve of the ‘Economic Miracle’, contributing both to the comparative literature on the evolution of inequality in the interwar decades, and to the historiography of Italian fascism and its distributive legacy. By constructing dynamic social tables, we are able to obtain the first comprehensive assessment of all major components of Italian society, shedding light on overlooked ‘halves’ (women, self-employed workers, capital earners), and to consistently compare these results to estimates available for Britain, Germany and Spain. We identify a steep decline in inequality (especially within-labour) after the Great War, followed by a reversal between 1922 and 1931, a relative stability, and a further increase during WWII, this time driven by capital income.
Open Access
Spatial inequality, civil conflict and cells: a dynamic spatial probit approach
(2021) Ríos, Vicente; Manotas Hidalgo, Beatriz; Gianmoena, Lisa; Economía; Ekonomia
This study examines the link between spatial income inequality and civil conflict in Africa. To that end we extend traditional empirical models of conflict to account for both endogenous and exogenous spatial interaction effects in the process of conflict by means of modern spatial econometric techniques. Using a geographically disaggregated annual high-resolution cell data for a sample of African countries during the period 1998 to 2013, we quantify the effect of spatial inequality on the probability of conflict incidence. Estimates show the existence of a positive and statistically significant relationship between spatial income inequality and conflict in African regions. This is partly due to the role played by spatial spillovers induced by spatial inequality in neighboring regions. The observed link is robust to the inclusion in the analysis of different explanatory variables that may affect both conflict and spatial inequality such as the level of economic development, the endowment of natural resources, infrastructures, geographical conditions, population density, fractionalization, polarization, social exclusion, or the share of urban population. The observed positive effect does not depend on the the level of data disaggregation, the type of conflict, the spatial inequality metric used in the analysis and the econometric specification employed to capture the nature of spatial spillovers.
Open Access
Addressing oil spills and agricultural productivity. Evidence of pollution in Nigeria
(2021) Manotas Hidalgo, Beatriz; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
This paper examines how the pollution generated by oil operations in Nigeria can affect agricultural total factor productivity. I analyze oil spills, which are the main ecological disaster in Nigeria and lead to major environmental, economic, and social problems. Following a consumer-producer household framework, and applying a difference-and-difference approach, I estimate an agricultural production function. I find that farmers located less than 10 kilometers from oil spills suffer a relative reduction in agricultural output of around 2.73%. I also examine alternative mechanisms and find that oil-spill pollution can explain my results. I detect less owner-occupied land and a drop in labor income in urban areas close to oil spills, which could also be explained by a decrease in the labor productivity component. This study highlights an externality through which the oil industry affects living conditions in rural areas and stresses the importance of clean-up in areas close to oil spills.
Open Access
Profit sharing, interconnected autonomous teams, and employee productivity
(2021) Barrenechea-Méndez, Marco A.; Martínez de Morentin, Sara; Economía; Ekonomia
Interconnected autonomous teams (IAT) reflect a human resources policy of organizing employees into a network of autonomous teams and allowing individuals to work on more than one of those teams. This paper studies how such a policy influences the productivity effects of profit sharing (PS). We first argue that the presence of IAT could mitigate the 'free rider' problem in each team of the network. Next, using the European Working Conditions Survey, we document a positive relationship between employee productivity and the interaction between PS and IAT. We interpret this result as a confirmation that IAT might indeed alleviate the 'free rider' problem associated with profit sharing schemes.
Open Access
A journey in the history of sovereign defaults on domestic law public debt - sovereign histories
(2021) Erce, Aitor; Mallucci, Enrico; Picarelli, Mattia; Economía; Ekonomia
This document contains our collection of ‘sovereign histories’ for the 74 domestic-law default episodes that we include in our database. Sovereign histories are meant to complement our database and the associated paper, providing the full details of domestic-law defaults and restructurings. As we detail in the paper, domestic-law default were identified consulting a large number of sournces including country reports and program reviews from the IMF, documents from the World Bank and the OECD, Public Information Notes, policy reports from development banks and other international institutions, accounts from Ministries and Central Banks, rating agencies publications, debt exchange offers, academic books,research papers, an extensive google search, and a press review through Factiva. The vastity and the diversity of the sources we consulted makes us confident that our coverage is close to the universe of domestic-law defaults from 1980 to 2018. Histories are organized in alphabetical order from Angola to Zimbabwe. Each history is structured in two sections. The first section provides an overview of the events leading to either the default or the restructuring. The second section provides the full details of the restructuring process for each instrument and each creditor involved. The information presented in each history is meant to capture the complexitiy of soveriegn default restructurings and makes our collection of sovereign histories a unique and valuable source of examples for the ongoing policy and academic debates.
Open Access
A journey in the history of sovereign defaults on domestic law public debt
(2021) Erce, Aitor; Mallucci, Enrico; Picarelli, Mattia; Economía; Ekonomia
We introduce a novel database on sovereign defaults that involve public debt instruments governed by domestic law. By systematically reviewing a large number of sources, we identify 132 default and restructuring events of domestic debt instruments, in 50 countries from 1980 to 2018. Domestic-law defaults are a global phenomenon. Over time, they have become larger and more frequent than foreign-law defaults. Domestic-law debt restructurings are achieved faster than foreign ones, often through extensions of maturities and amendments to the coupon structure. While face value reductions are rare, net-present-value losses for creditors are still large. Unilateral amendments and post-default restructuring are the norm, but negotiated pre-default restructurings are becoming increasingly frequent. Finally, we document that domestic defaults are widely heterogeneous and we complement our analysis with a collection of documents, named ‘sovereign histories’, that provide the fine details about each default episode.
Open Access
La financiación exterior del desarrollo industrial español a través del IEME
(Banco de España, 2015) Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Torre Campo, Joseba de la; Economía; Ekonomia
El objetivo central del trabajo es, en primer lugar, reconstruir las grandes cifras del capital exterior que contribuyó a la financiación del desarrollo industrial de España entre 1950 y 1982; y, en segundo lugar, estudiar la vertiente financiera de las inversiones que las grandes empresas nacionales y extranjeras practicaron en dos sectores estratégicos a lo largo de ese período: el sector eléctrico y la industria del automóvil.
Open Access
On financial frictions and firm market power
(Banco de España, 2019) Casares Polo, Miguel; Deidda, Luca; Galdón Sánchez, José Enrique; Economía; Ekonomia
Construimos un modelo de equilibrio general estático con empresas monopolísticamente competitivas que toman prestados fondos de bancos competitivos en una economía sujeta a restricciones financieras. Estas fricciones son debidas a la imposibilidad de verificar tanto los beneficios de las empresas como el esfuerzo de sus gestores. El poder de mercado tiene dos efectos contrapuestos. Por un lado, las empresas marcan sus precios por encima del coste marginal y la producción resultante es inferior a la que se obtendría en competencia perfecta. Por otro, debido al incremento en la rentabilidad de las empresas, el poder de mercado reduce el impacto de las fricciones financieras. El resultado de la interacción de estos dos efectos es ambiguo. Este trabajo muestra que, ceteris paribus, existe un nivel óptimo positivo de poder de mercado que maximiza el bienestar. Este nivel aumenta con el riesgo moral y disminuye con la eficiencia del proceso de liquidación de las empresas en caso de quiebra.
Open Access
Did US business dynamism recover in the 2010s?
(2021) Aguilera Bravo, Asier; Casares Polo, Miguel; Khan, Hashmat; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
We provide evidence that both firm and establishment entry rates in the US have been increasing over the past decade, seemingly ending the secular decline observed over previous decades. However, the job-size of new businesses relative to incumbents has decreased substantially. Controlling for these opposite trends reveals that the size-adjusted entry rate continues to decline.
Open Access
Wars, depression, and fascism: income inequality in Italy, 1900-1950
(2021) Gómez León, María; Gabbuti, Giacomo; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
This paper documents new yearly estimates of income inequality in Italy from 1900 to 1950. By constructing dynamic social tables, we obtain the first comprehensive assessment of all major components of Italian society, as well as to consistent comparable inequality estimates to those available for Britain, Germany and Spain. In line with other European countries, Italy shows short-term inequality changes during this period. We identify a steep decline in inequality in Italy (especially within-labour) after WWI, followed by a reversal between 1922 and 1931, a relative stability, and a further increase during WWII, this time driven by capital income.
Open Access
Provincial health inequalities in Spain since 1860
(2021) Galofré-Vilà, Gregori; Gómez León, María; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
Using annual mortality rates at the provincial level for men and women, we construct a Gini index to estimate changes in regional health inequalities since 1860 in Spain. We find a long steady decline in health inequality across provinces from 1860 until today, interrupted only by World War I and the Spanish Civil War. Franco’s 40-year legacy in terms of health is one of health inequality. Today, regional differences across provinces are at their lowest historical levels.
Open Access
A lesson from history? The 1918 influenza pandemic and the rise of Italian fascism: a cross-city quantitative and historical text qualitative analysis
(2021) Galofré-Vilà, Gregori; Gómez León, María; Stuckler, David; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
Objectives: Evidence linking past experiences of worsening health and support for radical political views has generated concerns about the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The influenza pandemic that began in 1918 had a devastating impact on mortality. We test the hypothesis that deaths from the 1918 influenza pandemic contributed to the rise of fascism in Italy. Study design: Cross-sectional study comparing votes for the Fascist party and other mainstream parties in Italian cities in the general election of April 1924, using data that Corbetta and Piretti collected from state archives with yearly cause-specific mortality data, taken from the Italian historical statistical books (Statistica Delle Cause di Morte, edited by the Ministero per L'Industria, Il Commercio e Il Lavoro). Methods: We linked city-level regression models of Fascist vote shares in the 1924 election on changes in deaths from influenza in 1918 in 73 Italian cities, adjusting for socioeconomic factors, city-characteristics and regional dummies. To provide a 'thicker' interpretation of these quantitative patterns, we applied historical text mining to the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia (Mussolini's newspaper). Results: 4.1 million Italians contracted influenza and about 500,000 died. In cities with influenza death rates the Fascists gained higher vote shares. Each additional 1influenza death/1,000 population was associated with a 3.12-percentage-point increase in vote share for the Fascist party in 1924 (95 % confidence interval [CI]=0.44 to 5.79). These results were consistent even after adjusting for casualties in World War I and indicators of social conflicts and economic hardship. There was no association between higher mortality and vote share for the Socialist or Communist parties. Historical archival analysis also shows how the Fascists exploited the pandemic for political gain. Conclusions: Death rates from influenza in Italian cities were associated with a higher share of votes for the Fascist party. Our observations are consistent with evidence from other contexts that worsening mortality rates can fuel radical politics. Unequal impacts of pandemics may have polarizing political consequences.
Open Access
The costs of hyperinflation: Germany 1923
(2021) Galofré-Vilà, Gregori; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
I study the link between monetary policy and populism by looking at the hyperinflation in Germany in 1923, one of the worst spells of inflation in history, and the Nazi electoral boost in 1933. Contrary to received wisdom, inflation data for over 500 cities show that areas more affected by inflation did not see a higher vote share for the Nazi party in each and every German federal election between 1924 and 1933. Yet, the inflation does predict the vote share of the Volksrechtspartei, an association-turned-party of inflation victims, and the vote share of the Social Democrats. In places where hyperinflation was higher, mortality and anti-Semitism also increased. Unobservables areunlikely to account for these results.
Open Access
COVID-19 pandemic and economic scenarios for Ontario
(2020) Casares Polo, Miguel; Gomme, Paul; Khan, Hashmat; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
To study the efficacy of the public policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we develop a model of the rich interactions between epidemiology and socioeconomic choices. Preferences feature a 'fear of death' that lead individuals to reduce their social activity and work time in the face of the pandemic. The aggregate effect of these reductions is to slow the spread of the coronavirus. We calibrate the model, including public policies, to developments in Ontario in spring 2020. The model fits the epidemiological data quite well, including the second wave starting in late 2020. We find that socioeconomic interventions work well in the short term, resulting in a rapid drop off in new cases. The long run, however, is governed chiefly by health developments. Welfare cost calculations point to synergies between the health and socioeconomic measures.
Open Access
A dynamic model of COVID-19: contagion and implications of isolation enforcement
(2020) Casares Polo, Miguel; Khan, Hashmat; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
We present a dynamic model that produces day-to-day changes in key variables due to the COVID-19 contagion: the number of ever infected people, currently infected, deaths, healed, and infected people who require hospitalization. The model is carefully calibrated to Spanish data and we conduct simulation exercises to study the role of isolation measures to contain the virus spread. We find that virus containment from isolation exhibits increasing returns. Our model simulations show that the State of Alarm intervention of the Spanish government on March 14th, 2020 reduces deaths by almost 85%, and lowers the maximum number of infected people who need daily hospitalization by a factor of 1/12. The simulations also indicate that both the timing and the intensity of the isolation enforcement are key for the evolution of the virus spread and the smoothing of the hospitalization needs.
Open Access
A theory of choice under internal conflict
(2012) Arlegi Pérez, Ricardo; Teschl, Miriam; Economía; Ekonomia
In this paper we discuss, inspired by some psychological literature, that choices are the outcome of the interplay of different, potentially conflicting motivations. We propose an axiomatic approach with two motivations, which we assume to be single-peaked over a certain given dimension. We first consider the case in which motivations are given and stable, and then introduce the possibility for motivations to change. We show first that in the no-motivation change case, certain choice behaviours that appear to be inconsistent from the standard rational choice point of view may be explained in our framework as the outcome of conflicting motivations. Afterwards, in the case of motivation change, we present two psychologically-flavoured assumptions about how motivations are influenced by choices. We show that, with some additional weak assumptions of rationality, motivation change leads to a smaller range of potentially inconsistent choices and not to a larger one as one may think. In particular, conflicts between two motivations can eventually be resolved by choosing different actions and consequently a definite and final preference for an action be revealed.
Embargo
On staggered prices and optimal inflation
(2019) Aguilera Bravo, Asier; Casares Polo, Miguel; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa
This paper computes the steady-state optimal rate of inflation assuming two different sticky-price specifications, Calvo (1983) and Taylor (1980), in a model with monopolistic competition. The optimal rate of inflation in steady state is always positive. This result is robust to changes in the degree of price stickiness. In both cases of staggered prices, the optimal rate of inflation is approximately equal to the ratio between the rate of discount and the Dixit-Stiglitz elasticity.
Open Access
A portfolio-choice model to analyze the recent gross capital flows between Canada and the US
(2019) Casares Polo, Miguel; Villar Olano, Alba del; Economía; Ekonomia
We calibrate a two-country New Keynesian model with endogenous portfolio choice and valuation effects to discuss the determinants of the increase in Canadian Net Foreign Assets with the US observed after 2012. Furthermore, we discuss the shocks that may explain the “reversed two-way” capital flows pattern recently characterizing the Canada-US asset trading: Canada has a negative position on bond holdings owned by US investors while a positive balance emerges on its equity holdings from US firms. The combination of a global technology shock, the US fiscal contraction, an adverse wage-push shock in the US and the greater monetary stimulus in the US than in Canada (QE) provide insights to describe the recent capital flows between Canada and the US. Both the QE and the negative wage-push shock in the US play a crucial role as explanatory factors through substantial valuation effects.