showing 25 related works from this author
SOCIAL CAPITAL AND BANK PERFORMANCE: AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON FOR OECD COUNTRIES
2008
Over the last few years the literature on social capital and bank efficiency analysis has expanded rapidly. We merge them by analysing how social capital affects bank efficiency in OECD countries. We use activity analysis techniques to measure efficiency, and social capital, which is related to the concept of generalized trust, is considered an environmental variable. Results suggest that the effect of social capital is more relevant for those financial institutions operating in low-social-capital environments. In these cases, inefficiencies are biased upwards, and controlling for social capital enables these banks to move up in the efficiency rankings.
Growth and convergence profiles in the Spanish provinces (1965-1997)
2005
. Economic performance in Spanish provinces has led to a considerable improvement in standard of living of their populations. Intense capital accumulation since the 1950s played a key roll in this process. Provincial inequalities may increase or decrease as a result of this growth pattern. This study analyzes the evolution of the disparities by means of distribution dynamics techniques. It explicitly considers economic size of each province and whether spatial spillovers exist. Results indicate that the convergence process has been especially intense for labor productivity, total factor productivity, and capital intensity, while for per capita income the patterns of convergence are less ma…
Formal and Informal Institutions as Drivers of Life Satisfaction in European Regions
2021
For several years the attention of economists has focused mostly on income and related issues. This tendency changed during the last decade, when citizen’s well-being became a topic of increasing interest. In that regard, the appearance of new databases providing reliable data on variables such as happiness or life satisfaction spurred the number of empirical contributions. This chapter contributes to this literature by analysing the links between informal, formal institutions and life satisfaction for a wide sample European regions.
The Real Effects of Bank Branch Deregulation at Various Stages of Economic Development: The European Experience
2011
This paper provides evidence on the links between financial deregulation and economic performance in a European context. Specifically, we study the relaxation of bank branching restrictions in Spain which triggered off a remarkable inter-regional expansion of savings banks which was coincidental with an unprecedented period of sustained growth. Although related questions have been largely investigated for the US, the European experiences remain largely unexplored. An additional contribution is the use of quantile regression techniques which, unlike traditional OLS regression analysis, do not focus on the “average effect for the average province”. This change of focus helps to overcome the d…
The geography of Spanish bank branches
2014
This article analyzes the determinants of bank branch location in Spain taking the role of geography explicitly into account. After a long period of intense territorial expansion, especially by savings banks, many of these firms are now involved in merger processes triggered off by the financial crisis, most of which entail the closing of many branches. However, given the contributions of this type of banks to limit financial exclusion, this process might exacerbate the consequences of the crisis for some disadvantaged social groups. Related problems such as new banking regulation initiatives (Basel III), or the current excess capacity in the sector add further relevance to this problem. We…
Bootstrapping profit change: An application to Spanish banks
2012
The aim of this study is to provide a tool which enables us to conduct statistical analysis in the context of changes in productivity and profit. We build on previous initiatives to decompose profit change into mutually exclusive and exhaustive sources. To do this we use distance functions, which are calculated empirically using linear programming techniques. However, we may not learn a great deal by solving these linear programs unless methods of statistical analysis are used to examine the properties of the relevant estimators. Our purpose is to provide a methodology based on bootstrap that allows us to conduct statistical inference for the profit change decomposition. Thus, it will be po…
Sensitivity analysis of efficiency and Malmquist productivity indices: An application to Spanish savings banks
2008
Hypothesis testing and statistical precision in the context of non-parametric efficiency and productivity measurement have been investigated since the early 1990s. Recent contributions focus on this matter through the use of resampling methods-i.e., bootstrapping techniques. However, empirical evidence is still practically non-existent. This gap is more noticeable in the case of banking efficiency studies, where the literature is immense. In this work, we explore productivity growth and productive efficiency for Spanish savings banks over the (initial) post-deregulation period 1992-1998 using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and bootstrapping techniques. Results show that productivity growth…
Is full banking integration desirable?
2020
The aim of this paper is to analyze the links between banking integration and economic development for a sample of OECD countries. We measure banking integration considering state-of-the-art indicators that measure not only how open a banking system is but also its degree of connectedness with other banking systems. In a second stage, we plug these indicators in a model of economic growth, also controlling for other relevant variables considered by the economic growth literature. In contrast to previous initiatives, this second stage explicitly takes into account the differing levels of economic development of the countries in our sample, since the benefits of enhanced banking inte- gration…
Revisiting the quiet life hypothesis in banking using nonparametric techniques
2014
Early studies testing the quiet life hypothesis in banking found strong evidence that banks in more concentrated markets exhibit lower cost efficiency levels. More recent studies have reexamined the issue in different contexts, with mixed results. These approaches are based on stipulating a linear re- lationship between market power and efficiency in banking, which might be problematic, as suggested by the literature on efficiency analysis. We explore how bank cost efficiency measures are related to market power using flexible techniques, which are more consistent with those employed to measure efficiency in the first stage of the analysis. Our study focuses on the Spanish banking industry,…
Quality of government and economic growth at the municipal level: Evidence from Spain
2021
This paper analyzes the relationship between quality of government and economic growth at the municipal level in 1,820 Spanish municipalities during the period 2008–2015. At this level of dis- aggregation, the literature is virtually non-existent due to severe data constraints. To address this limitation, we proxy institutional quality with a measure of local government efficiency, which provides an accurate indicator of how good local authorities are at managing their budgets. This variable is expected to be highly correlated with other more traditional quality of government indicators such as corruption. After computing our measure, we then use it in a growth regression framework. We find…
A network perspective on international banking integration
2011
Abstract The aim of this article is to develop new international banking integration indicators together with their components: openness and regularity (balance) of the bilateral bank flows. We define the Standard of Perfect Banking Integration (SPBI), which characterizes the scenario attainable when bank flows are not geographically biased, and cross-border asset trade is not affected by home bias. We assess the gap between a hypothetical scenario of geographic neutrality and the current level of banking integration, along with both of its components. The empirical application to the banking systems of 23 countries over the 2003–2009 period enables us to conclude that the level of banking …
Regional income convergence in Colombia: population, space, and long-run dynamics
2022
We examine the trajectory of regional income dynamics in Colombia. Using data on all 33 Colombian departments from 2000 to 2016, we employ extensions of (spatial) Markov chains, space-time mobility measures, along with a fully weighted version of the distribution analysis approach. By considering these extensions, our analysis enables us to answer questions such as whether the role of spatial context influences the distributional dynamics of Colombian departments, or the magnitude of the moderating effect of department’s population. The inclusion of additional measures such as the asymptotic half-life of convergence provides additional results, informing on how long it would take to reach t…
A bootstrap approach to analyse productivity growth in European banking
2010
This paper analyses productivity growth for European banks over the 1995–2001 period. In contrast to previous literature, our study covers the majority of current European Union (EU) countries—all except Greece and those joining the EU in 2004. We also use resampling methods so as to gain statistical precision, which turns out to be especially important due to the limitations of the database. In order to be consistent, we use additional nonparametric methods to disentangle why productivity differentials might exist. Results show that productivity growth has occurred in most countries, mainly due to improvements in production possibilities. The bootstrap analysis yields further evidence give…
Does social capital matter for European regional growth?
2015
Abstract This paper analyzes the role of different elements of social capital in economic growth for a sample of 85 European regions during the period 1995–2008. Despite the remarkable progress that social capital and European regional economic growth literatures have experienced over the last two decades, initiatives combining the two are few, and entirely yet to come for the post-1990s period. Recent improvements in data availability allow this gap in the literature to be closed, since they enable the researcher to consider the traditionally disregarded Eastern and Central European (ECE) regions. This is particularly interesting, as they are all transition economies that recently joined t…
Financial inclusion and exclusion across Mexican municipalities
2021
Although in recent years there has been a growth in banking services in Mexico, there is still a significant delay in terms of financial inclusion, which is also very uneven across municipalities. In this context, this paper analyses some of the factors that determine the probability of a municipality being financially included. The results show that financially included municipalities have a large number of inhabitants and high levels of income and education. The analysis also distinguishes between municipalities according to the region in which they are located and to their type of population. In general, rural and in transition municipalities are the least financially included, together …
European Energy Efficiency Evaluation Based on the Use of Super-Efficiency Under Undesirable Outputs in SBM Models
2020
Although Data Envelopment Analysis models have been intensively used for measuring efficiency, the inclusion of undesirable outputs has extended their use to analyse relevant fields such as environmental efficiency. In this context, slacks-based measure (SBM) models offer a remarkable alternative, largely due to their ability to deal with undesirable outputs. Additionally, super-efficiency evaluation in DEA is a useful complementary analysis for ranking the performance of efficient DMUs and even mandatory for dynamic efficiency evaluation. An extension to this approach in the presence of undesirable outputs is here introduced and then applied in the context of the environmental efficiency i…
Energy efficiency in the European Union: What can be learned from the joint application of directional distance functions and slacks-based measures?
2014
Abstract Over the last few years concerns have increased about the energy mix in many countries. These concerns have been of greater magnitude for countries with a common energy regulation such as European Union (EU) member states. An important aspect to take into account when choosing a given energy mix is the efficiency involved in its generation. In this context, the present study analyzes the efficiency with which electricity and derived heat was produced in 25 EU member states over the last decade. This analysis considers not only the inputs and outputs involved but, more importantly, which undesirable by-products were generated during the production process, a relevant issue for EU cl…
Measuring Globalization of International Trade: Theory and Evidence
2009
Measuring globalization requires a Standard of Perfect International Integration as a benchmark that a single world space would reach under conditions of geographic neutrality in international trade. We define this standard and present indicators for openness, connectedness and integration, for each specific economy, and for the world economy. We apply our indicators to data on trade flows for 59 countries for the 1967-2004 period. Results show that trade integration is higher than what traditional openness indicators suggest. Several economies find high levels of integration, but the low degree of openness in some large economies jeopardizes the progress of globalization. © 2008 Elsevier L…
Explaining local governments' cost efficiency: Controllable and uncontrollable factors
2020
Abstract Efficient and effective management of public resources is essential at all levels of government. This issue has gained momentum due to the strains that affected public sector finances after the onset of the 2007/08 crisis in many countries, particularly in Europe. In this article, we evaluate the influence of environmental variables that affect local government efficiency in one European country, Spain, during the crisis years (2009–2015). To this end, and considering the possible influence of both controllable and uncontrollable factors, we use an approach that is able to analyse their impact across the conditional distribution of performance, and which controls for the (likely) e…
On the dynamics of eco-efficiency performance in the European Union
2016
This paper evaluates the evolution of environmental performance in the context of the European Union (EU), over the period 1993–2010. The context is particularly relevant, due to the traditionally high concerns of the EU about these issues, which has triggered off several initiatives and regulations on environmental protection. In this setting, we conduct a two-stage analysis which develops environmental performance indicators in the first stage for each pair country-year, and evaluates its evolution in the second. More specifically, in the first stage we estimate specific efficiencies for three air-pollutants (CO2e, SO2, NOx), along with an eco-efficiency indicator, for which we use the sl…
Trade integration in the European Union: Openness,interconnectedness, and distance
2020
Abstract This article presents a set of indicators to measure regional trade integration, focusing on the case of the European Union. We propose measures of openness, connectedness and integration which are tuned to evaluate not only how these components contribute to the advance of international integration, but also to control for the potential threat posed by the proliferation of regional trade agreements to trade globalization. Although this and related questions have been examined from several perspectives, the present article explicitly attempts to quantify how regional trade agreements either intensify or thwart trade globalization. Results show that the process of trade integration …
The analysis of convergence in ecological indicators: An application to the Mediterranean fisheries
2017
9 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables
Rich regions, poor regions and bank branch deregulation in Spain
2016
Rich regions, poor regions and bank branch deregulation in Spain. Regional Studies. The links between financial deregulation and economic performance are evaluated in a European context. Specifically, the study analyses the relaxation of bank branching restrictions in Spain, which triggered a remarkable interregional expansion of savings banks that coincided with an unprecedented period of sustained economic expansion. Although related questions have been widely investigated for the United States, experiences in Europe have received far less research attention. An additional contribution of the paper lies in its use of quantile regression, which enables the investigation of the possibility …
Measuring well-being in Colombian departments. The role of geography and demography
2021
This paper provides a composite indicator of well-being for the 33 Colombian departments in the year 2016. The indicator is built by adapting the well-known OECD Better Life Index to the regional level, and includes the dimensions of income, health, education, safety, housing, environment, labour market, and civic engagement and governance. As to the methodology, Data Envelopment Analysis and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making techniques are employed, an approach which enables a comparison of well-being across departments and the construction of rankings. The results yield several take-away messages. First, there are substantial disparities in well-being across Colombian departments. Second, de…
Data for: Does social capital matter for European regional growth?
2016
Abstract of associated article: This paper analyzes the role of different elements of social capital in economic growth for a sample of 85 European regions during the period 1995–2008. Despite the remarkable progress that social capital and European regional economic growth literatures have experienced over the last two decades, initiatives combining the two are few, and entirely yet to come for the post-1990s period. Recent improvements in data availability allow this gap in the literature to be closed, since they enable the researcher to consider the traditionally disregarded Eastern and Central European (ECE) regions. This is particularly interesting, as they are all transition economies…