Efficiency, endogenous and exogenous credit risk in the banking systems of the Euro area
The implantation of the Euro in 11 of the EU states has driven the big banks to expand their presence in other European countries, which may have negative consequences on their credit risk in view of the disadvantages involved in entering new markets. The aim of this study is to analyse the efficiency and the credit risk of the banks of the most important countries of the Euro area, using a one-stage parametric stochastic procedure that allows one to identify whether the behaviour towards risk of the banks analysed was more cautious or more reckless during the period analysed. The results indicate that adjustments for risk are important in the case of profit efficiency but not in the case o…
PERMANENT INCOME, CONVERGENCE AND INEQUALITY AMONG COUNTRIES
The literature on inequality has generally focused on the analysis of annual per capita income. This paper adopts a different approach by considering the life-cycle dimension of inequality and convergence between economies from 1960 to 2000. We analyze the present value of the set of incomes individuals obtain throughout their whole life (permanent income). On the basis of this approach, various simulations are made to determine the effect on inequality in permanent income of variables such as survival rates and the long-run growth rates in current income. The results indicate that survival rates are an important source of inequality. Inequality in permanent income is about one third higher…
The Real Effects of Bank Branch Deregulation at Various Stages of Economic Development: The European Experience
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…
Human capital in Spain and its distribution by provinces (1964-2013)
The regularly-updated database “Human capital in Spain and its distribution by provinces” provides information about the accumulation of human capital in Spain over the last five decades. The human capital estimates included in this database contain a wide range of information on how education levels in Spain have evolved, classified according to the level of studies completed and other human capital indicators. The database includes information that has been updated until the second trimester of 2013. It can be accessed at http://www.ivie.es/en/banco/caphum/series.php.
European Integration and Inequality among Countries: A Lifecycle Income Analysis
We analyze the effects of the expansions of the European Union on inequality using an approach based on individuals' lifecycle incomes. This allows us to consider the effect of different rates of growth and survival rates. This differs form the usual analyses of inequality that focus on the evolution of current per capita income for the period. Our results show that inequality in terms of permanent income was substantially less than in current per capita income at the time of all the expansions except those of the last ten years. The results point to the key role of policies that stimulate growth in the less developed countries. With an annual β-convergence of 2% in current income, inequali…
Formación, mercado de trabajo y crecimiento económico en España: ¿un nuevo modelo tras la crisis?
espanolEste trabajo analiza, usando tecnicas de contabilidad del crecimiento y microdatos individuales, el efecto de la acumulacion de capital humano sobre el crecimiento de la productividad y la influencia en este ambito de algunos rasgos diferenciales del mercado de trabajo espanol, como la temporalidad o el elevado desajuste entre el nivel educativo del trabajador y el requerido por el puesto de trabajo. Los resultados indican que la actual recuperacion repite en buena medida el patron de expansiones previas, tras la aceleracion transitoria de la productividad durante la crisis. Se ofrecen estimaciones del efecto de diferentes supuestos de mejora en temporalidad y desajuste educativo. En…
Convergence in OECD countries: technical change, efficiency and productivity
The aim of this study is to analyze labor productivity convergence in the countries of the OECD over the period 1965-90. A non-parametric frontier approach is used to calculate the Malmquist productivity index. By breaking it down, the contribution to the growth of labor productivity of technical progress, of changes in efficiency, and of the accumulation of inputs per worker are quantified. Unlike other studies, the results obtained show that technical change has worked against labor productivity convergence, since it has always been greater in the countries with higher labor productivity. El trabajo tiene como objetivo básico analizar la contribución de las distintas fuentes del crecimien…
Evaluating European railway deregulation using different approaches
Abstract There has recently been a great deal of interest in the impacts of the deregulating and restructuring measures in the European railway sector. A vast amount of literature is devoted to analyzing the effects of these deregulation and restructuring measures on efficiency and productivity and the results are not totally unambiguous. However, while most of the papers show that the introduction of competition within the sector (in both passenger and freight markets) has had a positive impact in terms of efficiency and productivity, the impact of vertical separation has produced different results in the literature. The contribution of this paper to the existing literature is twofold. Fir…
The Effect of Specialisation on Banks' Efficiency: An International Comparison
Abstract This study analyses the effects of specialisation on the cost efficiency of a set of banking systems of the European Union over the period 1992–1998. Unlike in the established literature in which specialisation differences are not considered, in this paper cost inefficiencies are decomposed into two different components: the first is related to the inefficiency associated with the composition of specialisations in each banking system and the second is related to specific inefficiencies of banks within their specialisation. The results show the existence of high cost inefficiencies. However, the intra‐specialisation inefficiencies indicate that the inefficiencies of the European ban…
Is technical change directed by the supply of skills?
Abstract In a recent contribution, Acemoglu [Quarterly Journal of Economics 113 (1998) 1055] modelled the effects of an increase in the supply of skills on the skill premium. We estimate a model to disentangle the short-run substitution effects and the effects of skill-biased technical change using industry data for South Korea for the period 1974–1998.
Supply and Use of Human Capital in the Spanish Regions
Besides enrichment at personal level entailed by the increase in the cognitive and intellectual levels of the person associated with education, a large number of studies have verified the greater the human capital of a person, the greater is his employability, his participation in the labour market, his functional and geographical mobility and, thereby, his productivity. This results in higher wages and less likelihood of unemployment for individuals with more schooling. From the social point of view, the accumulation of resources associated to higher educational attainment levels permits societies to make sustained progress towards higher levels of welfare. It makes possible to adapt to gl…
Total factor productivity measurement and human capital in OECD countries
Abstract This paper analyses the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) evolution in OECD countries by breaking down productivity gains into technical change and efficiency change. To avoid biases, Malmquist indices of productivity, including human capital, are estimated. The results indicate that, in fact, the inclusion of human capital has a significant effect on the accurate measurement of TFP.
Efficiency and productive specialization: an application to Spanish regions
MAUDOS J., PASTOR J. M. and SERRANO L. (2000) Efficiency and productive specialization: an application to the Spanish regions, Reg. Studies 34, 829-842. This paper shows the importance of the composition of production (productive specialization) and sector inefficiencies when evaluating efficiency in aggregate production. For this purpose, a new approach is proposed for obtaining efficiency scores which enables two components to be differentiated: one associated with the degree of efficiency within each sector (intra-sector efficiency); and another associated with the composition of production (composition efficiency). The application of this approach and its breakdown for the Spanish regio…
Human capital in OECD countries: Technical change, efficiency and productivity
The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of human capital in the productivity gains of the OECD countries in the period 1965-90, breaking down the productivity gains into technical change and gains in efficiency. For this purpose we use both a stochastic frontier approach and a non-parametric approach (DEA) and calculate Malmquist indices of productivity. The results obtained indicate the existence of both a level effect (a higher level of human capital raises labour productivity) and a rate effect (a higher level of human capital affects positively the rate of technical change) associated with human capital. The differences among countries in endowments of human capital have worked aga…
Rich regions, poor regions and bank branch deregulation in Spain
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 …
Measurement error in schooling data: the OECD case
The effect of human capital is difficult to estimate in cross-country analysis due to measurement errors in schooling data. Using data for OECD countries over the period 1960–1990, the reliability of the widely used Barro and Lee's data set and also the new De la Fuente and Domenech's data set is analysed. Results show that both suffer from measurement errors, but the latter seems to reflect the rate of growth of schooling more accurately, especially when taking long differences.
Higher education institutions, economic growth and GDP per capita in European Union countries
This paper presents an estimation of the contribution of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to economic growth and the Gross Domestic Product per capita of the European (EU) countries over the pe...
The economic impact of migration: productivity analysis for Spain and the UK
Over the past 20 years labour has become increasingly mobile and whilst employment and earnings effects in host countries have been extensively analysed, the implications for firm and industry performance have received far less attention. This paper explores the direct economic consequences of immigration on host nations’ productivity performance at a sectoral level in two very different European countries, Spain and the UK. Whilst the UK has traditionally seen substantial immigration, for Spain the phenomenon is much more recent. Our findings from a growth accounting analysis show that migration has made a negative contribution to labour productivity growth in Spain and a negative but negl…