showing 17 related works from this author
Convergence in the OECD: Transitional Dynamics or Narrowing Steady-State Differences?
2004
I. INTRODUCTION Research on growth and convergence has proceeded through several stages that can be described as a process of accommodating cross-country heterogeneity into the convergence equation. In the first stage, the world could be described as countries approaching to equal (absolute convergence) or to different (conditional convergence) steady states. In both cases--see Baumol (1986) Barro and Sala i Martin (1992), or Mankiw et al. (1992)--the assumption of parameter homogeneity of the underlying production function was assumed and not tested. Later, some researchers (Knight et al. [1993], Islam [1995], Durlauf and Johnson [1995], or Caselli et al. [1996], among others) began to cha…
Effective Tax rates and Fiscal Convergence in the OECD: 1965-2001
2005
In this work we elaborate a data base that includes 21 OECD countries along the 1965-2001 period. It includes average effective tax rates on consumption, capital and labour, which are adequate to analyse macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy. Additionally, we make a description of the most important features of fiscal structures in OECD countries along the last decades. Thus, we find that the ratio of fiscal revenues to GDP has steadily increased in these countries, mainly due to the increase of taxation on labour earnings. This increase in fiscal revenues has gone together with a process of convergence across countries both in the level of fiscal revenues, as in labour and capital tax rat…
Households' Balance Sheets and the Effect of Fiscal Policy
2020
En este trabajo identificamos seis tipos de hogares en Estados Unidos en funcion de la composicion de su balance financiero en el Panel Survey of Income Dynamics. Desde 1999 se observa una acusada disminucion en la proporcion de hogares ahorradores y un aumento en la proporcion de hogares endeudados, en particular aquellos que presentan una riqueza neta negativa. Utilizando como marco teorico un modelo neokeynesiano con estos seis tipos de hogares, asi como con imperfecciones en los mercados de credito y de trabajo, exploramos como los cambios en la distribucion de los hogares en funcion de su balance afectan la transmision de los shocks del gasto publico al consumo agregado, al empleo y al…
Search, Nash bargaining and rule-of-thumb consumers
2011
Abstract This paper analyses the effects of introducing two typical Keynesian features, namely rule-of-thumb (RoT) consumers and consumption habits, into a standard labour market search model. RoT consumers use the margin that hours and wage negotiation provides them to improve their lifetime utility, by narrowing the gap in utility with respect to Ricardian consumers. This margin for intertemporal optimisation has not been studied yet, because this class of restricted agents has been mainly used in models with no equilibrium unemployment. Our approach allows for a deeper study of the effects of shocks on vacancies, unemployment, hours, wages and how they interact. As habits increase, RoT c…
RANKING DECISION MAKING UNITS BY MEANS OF SOFT COMPUTING DEA MODELS
2011
This paper presents a method for ranking a set of decision making units according to their level of efficiency and which takes into account uncertainty in the data. Efficiency is analysed using fuzzy DEA techniques and the ranking is based on the statistical analysis of cases that include representative situations. The method enables the removal of the sometimes unrealistic hypothesis of a perfect trade-off between increased inputs and outputs. This model is compared with other DEA models that work with imprecise or fuzzy data. As an illustration, we apply our ranking method to the evaluation of a group of Spanish seaports, as well as teams playing in the Spanish football league. We compar…
Technological differences and convergence in the OECD
2000
Abstract. In this paper we test the homogeneity of the technological parameters among OECD countries, which is the maintained hypothesis in most of the empirical growth literature. We first identify differences in the constant term of the convergence equation estimated for the OECD 1960/1990 sample using a fixed- effects estimator. Then we provide a formal test of the homogeneity of technological parameters across groups of countries. We identify at least two different groups within the OECD, with significantly different technologies. Convergence within each group is fast, supporting the notion of club convergence. Nevertheless, the implausible parameter values obtained for the leading tech…
Household Debt and Fiscal Multipliers
2015
We study the size of government spending multipliers in a general equilibrium model with search and matching frictions in which we allow for different levels of household indebtedness. The main results of the paper are: (a) the presence of impatient households and private debt helps generate government spending multipliers greater than 1; (b) as financial conditions worsen and impatient consumers find it more difficult to borrow (i.e. in a credit crunch), the size of the government spending multiplier falls; (c) conversely, employment, vacancies and unemployment multipliers are larger when access to credit becomes more difficult; and (d) the model explains the observed pattern of responses …
Instruments, rules, and household debt: the effects of fiscal policy
2015
In this paper, we look at the interplay between the level of household leverage in the economy and fiscal policy, the latter characterised by different combinations of instruments and rules. When the fiscal rule is defined on lump-sum transfers, government spending or consumption taxes, the impact multipliers of transitory fiscal shocks become substantially amplified in an environment of easy access to credit by impatient consumers, regardless of the primary instruments used. However, when the government reacts to debt deviations by raising distortionary taxes on income, labour or capital, the effects of household debt on the size of the impact output multipliers vanish or even reverse, no …
Household debt and labor market fluctuations
2011
Abstract The co-movements of labor productivity with output, total hours, vacancies and unemployment have changed since the mid 1980s. This paper offers an explanation for the sharp break in the fluctuations of labor market variables based on endogenous labor supply decisions following the mortgage market deregulation. We set up a search model with efficient bargaining and financial frictions, in which impatient borrowers can take an amount of credit that cannot exceed a proportion of the expected value of their real estate holdings. When borrowers' equity requirements are low, the impact of a positive technology shock on the marginal utility of consumption is strengthened, which in turn re…
Gender Imbalance across Subfields in Economics: When Does It Start?
2021
We investigate the marked gender imbalance across subfields in economics and connect it with the relative scarcity of female students enrolling in economics. First, tracking authorship in the Ameri...
The Spanish Football Crisis
2008
Abstract This article analyses the economic results of Spanish professional football teams using data collected over the past few years. These data differ substantially from the information presented in the annual reports of the “Liga de Futbol Profesional” (Spanish professional football league), which are obtained from the initial budgets elaborated each season. Special attention is paid to the two most important teams in the Spanish league: Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. The results of this research show that Spanish football has the same problems as those evidenced by the Italian and English football leagues and, therefore, requires similar solutions in order to be able to survive in fort…
Fiscal Devaluations in EMU
2013
2013SummaryWe use a small open economy general equilibrium model to analyse the effects of a fiscal devalua-tion in an EMU country. The model has been calibrated for the Spanish economy, which is a goodexample of the advantages of a change in the tax mix given that its tax system shows a positive biasin the ratio of social security contributions over consumption taxes. The preliminary empirical evi-dence for European countries shows that this bias was negatively correlated with the current accountbalance in the expansionary years leading up to the 2009 crisis, a period when many EMU membersaccumulated large external imbalances. Our simulation results point to significant positive effects of…
A rational expectations model for simulation and policy evaluation of the Spanish economy
2010
This paper presents the model used for simulation purposes within the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance. REMS (a Rational Expectations Model for the Spanish economy) is a small open economy dynamic general equilibrium model in the vein of the New-Neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis models, with a strongly micro-founded system of equations. In the long run REMS behaves in accordance with the neoclassical growth model. In the short run, it incorporates nominal, real and financial frictions. Real frictions include adjustment costs in consumption (via habits in consumption and rule-of-thumb households) and investment into physical capital. Due to financial frictions, there is no per…
Increasing offensive or defensive efficiency? An analysis of Italian and Spanish football☆
2009
This paper analyses technical efficiency of Italian and Spanish football during three recent seasons, to shed light on the sport performance of professional football clubs. To achieve this we have used mathematical optimisation methods, particularly DEA models, which enable the calculation of the frontiers of efficient production. Some of the most interesting results are the following. Firstly, the Spanish league is clearly more homogeneous and competitive than the Italian league. Secondly, to obtain a better classification in the Italian league, it is much more important to improve defensive, rather than offensive, efficiency. The popular maxim holds in Italy: the best attack begins with a…
Alternative tuition fees schemes: a simulation exercise
2021
In this paper we use a theoretical model of effort optimization on the part of university students to simulate the effects of different tuition fees schemes. For each of such schemes, we present an...
Financial and fiscal shocks in the great recession and recovery of the Spanish economy
2020
In this paper we develop and estimate a new Bayesian DSGE model for the Spanish economy that has been designed to evaluate different structural reforms. The small open economy model incorporates a banking sector, consumers and entrepreneurs who accumulate debt, and a rich fiscal structure and monopolistic competition in products and labor markets, for a country in a currency union, with no independent monetary policy. The model can be used to evaluate ex-ante and ex-post policies and structural reforms and to decompose the evolution of macroeconomic aggregates according to different shocks. In particular, we estimate the contribution of financial and fiscal shocks to both the crisis of the …
Tuition fees and student effort at university
2018
Abstract This paper presents theoretical and empirical evidence that an increase in tuition fees may boost university students’ academic effort. We examine the tuition fee rise introduced in 2012 by Spanish universities, where students register and pay for their chosen modules and fees increase each time students retake a module until they pass it. Data refer to students of economics, business and medicine at the University of Valencia during 2010–2014. The fact that some students pay fees in full while others are exempt from payment provides an identifying source of variation that we exploit using a flexible difference-in-differences methodology.