Intangible capital and business productivity in the hotel industry

Intangible capital is a key factor of productivity growth. This paper analyses how the internal intangible capital of the company and external intangible capital influence its productivity. This contribution focuses on the hotel industry since it is a key industry of the Spanish economy, such that any increase in its productivity has an impact on the entire economy. Both, the intangible capital of the company and that of the region in which the company is located are considered as determinants of productivity. Likewise, the importance of other agglomeration economies in the productivity of hotel companies is taken into account. A model estimates firm level determinants of productivity, cont…

Innovation and R&D spillover effects in Spanish regions: A spatial approach

Abstract This paper analyses the spatial patterns of innovation, its regional interdependencies and evolution, as well as its role in determining local innovation in Spanish regions. Results indicate the suitability of a trade-based regional proximity when considering spatial spillovers in innovation. In this context, not only local capacity is relevant in determining domestic innovation, but also spatial innovation spillovers, which result mainly from efforts in both higher education and public administration. Moreover, a minimum level of regional development is required to improve the effectiveness of R&D policies. Therefore, it is necessary for R&D policies to act in combination with oth…

Size and survival of the hospitality industry: The case of Spain

The aim of this study is to analyse the determinants of survival of the hospitality industry. The study pays particular attention to the size of the enterprises since the majority of Spanish hospitality enterprises are microenterprises. Two approaches are considered. The first approach uses a binary choice model to analyse the determinants of survival probability as well as the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition, proposed by Yun (2004), to quantify the difference between enterprises according to their size and what proportion of this difference is due to observed factors or unobserved factors. The second approach is a survival analysis, carried out through the Cox proportional hazard model, whic…

Impacto económico del sector turístico en España

La actual crisis sanitaria, provocada por el denominado Covid-19, y la crisis económica devenida van a tener un elevado impacto en uno de los sectores más relevantes de la economía española: el sector del turismo. El objetivo de este trabajo es cuantificar el alcance que distintos escenarios, contemplados para el sector del turismo, pueden tener en la economía española. La metodología utilizada en este trabajo es un modelo, basado en las tablas Input-Ouput y propuesto por Leontief (1946), que permite medir la repercusión que variaciones en la demanda final de un sector tienen en la actividad económica de otros sectores y en el conjunto de la economía. Los resultados de los distintos escenar…

La importancia de los factores internos y externos en el éxito empresarial

El aumento de la productividad de una determinada economía requiere mejoras en la productividad de sus empresas, lo que se traduce en un mayor éxito empresarial. Cabe señalar que una empresa encaminada hacia el éxito es más productiva. El objetivo del trabajo es analizar cómo influyen los factores internos y los externos a la empresa en su productividad laboral. En este trabajo, se aporta evidencia que permite reconocer la importancia de la calidad de la gestión empresarial, por un lado, y de los factores relacionados con el funcionamiento de los mercados e instituciones, por otro, en la determinación de la productividad de las empresas. Los resultados evidencian que las prácticas de gestió…

On estimating contemporaneous quarterly regional GDP

Subnational regional jurisdictions rarely have at their disposal a reasonable array of timely statistics to monitor their economic condition. In light of this, we develop a procedure that simultaneously estimates a quarterly time series for all regions of a country based upon quarterly national and annual regional data. While other such techniques exist, we suggest a temporal error structure that eliminates possible spurious jumps. Using our approach, regional analysts should now be able to distribute national growth among regions as soon as quarterly national figures are released. In a Spanish application, we detail some practicalities of the process and show that our proposal produces bet…

Outlier detection with automatic modelling: TRAMO/SEATS versus X-12-ARIMA

Seasonality in Tourism: Do Senior Programs Mitigate It?

Seasonality is a widely recognised and accredited phenomenon known to cause an imbalance in tourism activity throughout the year, prompting tourist destinations, both public and private, to consider how best to plan the use of their resources. One way of mitigating the economic imbalances that seasonality can cause is to find strategies for seasonal adjustment, such as travel programmes aimed at the elderly. This paper analyses the seasonality of tourism activity in some EU countries, and in particular in Spain. Different indicators are used to compare the results and carry out a sensitivity analysis. The study then focuses on tourism programmes for the elderly in Spain to see whether this …

Declining Fertility: Implications for Regional Education Planning

The most important asset of any organisation or country is its reserve of human resource. The capacity of society to understand and successfully adapt to new situations is highly related to the levels of training and education of its individual members. The education system, therefore, is one of the main foundations of any society's future. Over the last decade, Spain and the Valencia region, in particular, have experienced precipitous drops in fertility that will inevitably reduce school enrolments. In this paper we quantify the magnitude of the reductions and, after some analysis, lay out the potential consequences for the regional education system, and for society as a whole.

Entrepreneurial capital and productive efficiency: the case of the Spanish regions

The aim of this paper is to analyse the interrelation between entrepreneurial capital and productive efficiency of the Spanish regions while verifying the importance that business dynamics and entrepreneurial activity have on regional economic growth. For this purpose, data are used from the seventeen Spanish regions during the period 2003−2016. A multi-equation model is estimated that enables the analysis, on the one hand, of the existence of a causal relationship between business dynamics and entrepreneurial activity and, on the other hand, of these variables on the total factor productivity. The results lead to the conclusion that the entrepreneurial activity and the net creation of comp…