Growth and convergence profiles in the Spanish provinces (1965-1997)
. 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…
Three (marginal?) questions regarding convergence
This paper focuses on three (marginal?) questions surrounding the analysis of economic convergence and uses Spanish provinces as a means of illustration. The three questions in hand are the following: (i) given that the geographical units of analysis are usually quite different in economic size, is the weighting of economic units relevant in convergence analysis? (ii) the average per capita income of a given region, or country, is the first moment in the distribution of income, but what about the second moment, inequality? Have we converged in inequality? and (iii) an aggregate welfare index must take into account, at least, the evolution of the first two moments of the distribution of inco…
Intertemporal and interprovincial variations in income inequality: Spain, 1973–1991
Goerlich F. J. and Mas M. (2002) Intertemporal and interprovincial variations in income inequality: Spain, 1973–1991, Reg. Studies 36, 1005–1015. The paper presents the main findings on personal income distribution for the Spanish provinces over the period 1973–91. The information comes from the three structural Household Budget Surveys and has been elaborated by the authors on a homogeneous base (available at: http://www.ivie.es). It starts by reviewing the information provided by some dispersion statistics, including kernel density functions, applied to the provincial Gini indices and Lorenz percentiles. It goes on to test, making use of an ANOVA model, two propositions related with inter…
Inequality in Spain 1973-91: Contribution to a regional database
This paper provides the methodology and results of a database of inequality indices for the fifty provinces and seventeen regions of Spain on the basis of the Household Budget Surveys for the years 1973/74, 1980/81 and 1990/91. The inequality indicators considered are the indices of Gini, Theil (0), Theil (1) and Atkinson (1), as well as the distribution by deciles of the population. These indicators are drawn up for three variables: total income, total expenditure, and exclusively monetary expenditure. The variables are also expressed in terms of households, per capita and per capita equivalent. All are available on the Internet (http://www.ivie.es).
Interest rates, expectations and the credibility of the Bank of Spain
The purpose of the paper is to pinpoint the date of the change of monetary policy regime which occurred in Spain during the year 1984, when it moved away from controlling monetary aggregates towards interest rate targeting. The most likely date for the change is estimated and, surprisingly, there is evidence that agents learned about the new intermediate target quite rapidly.A week after the change, the term structure of interest rates showed how market agents attributed much more informational content to interest rate changes than they had previously. Two types of transitions are tried: a one-step and a gradual logistic swithing function.
Drivers of Agglomeration: geography VS. History
This paper focuses on the influence of two classical drivers of population agglomeration: geography and history. Geography is identified by two co-ordinates: coastal position and altitude. The prominence of history is also captured by two characteristics: the initial size of the municipalities, and their status as the administrative centre of the area. In first instance we examine localization patterns, at a small geographical scale, according to these characteristics and present empirical evidence of the progressive population concentration along the coast, on the plains and in the regional (provincial) capitals; a process that has not finished in the present days. Next, we show that both …
Quality of life ranking of Spanish cities: A non-compensatory approach
Abstract Urban areas are hubs of economic activity, but also consumption centers where a high quality of life may attract human capital and increase prospects of economic growth and well-being. We rank 73 Spanish cities on the basis of 35 individual indicators covering three basic facets of quality of life: socio-economic performance, general livability conditions, and residents' health status. We reject the conventional approach of compensability among different quality of life dimensions in favor of a Condorcet-inspired non-compensability approach. We obtain three partial composite indicators, one for each of the aforementioned dimensions, and a global indicator that synthesizes the three…
Typology and Representation of Alterations in Territorial Units: A Proposal
Abstract This article proposes a typology of boundary changes in territorial units at two points in time. The different types of changes are organized in a hierarchy and represented homogeneously, independently of the number of territorial units involved and of the changes to them. Each alteration is described precisely and unambiguously, and it is codified to allow the information to be treated automatically. In addition to providing efficient storage of the information about these changes, a canonical representation facilitates the automatic detection of inconsistencies in the database. At the same time, the typology allows us to define backward and forward equivalence rules, which helps …
A population density grid for Spain
This article describes a high-resolution land cover data set for Spain and its application to dasymetric population mapping (at census tract level). Eventually, this vector layer is transformed into a grid format. The work parallels the effort of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, in collaboration with Eurostat and the European Environment Agency (EEA), in building a population density grid for the whole of Europe, combining CORINE Land Cover with population data per commune. We solve many of the problems due to the low resolution of CORINE Land Cover, which are especially visible with Spanish data. An accuracy assessment is carried out from a simple aggregation of …
Income distribution in Spain: 2004-2013
Este documento presenta una revisión sobre la evolución de la distribución de la renta en España en el período 2004-2013. El objetivo es examinar el papel que ha jugado el mercado de trabajo en el incremento de las desigualdades, así como el efecto que han tenido las diversas actuaciones públicas a través de transferencias monetarias, impuestos directos y el suministro de servicios públicos en especie. En la metodología se usan índices clásicos de desigualdad aplicados a la Encuesta de Condiciones de Vida. Se concluye que durante este período el incremento en las desigualdades puede atribuirse con nitidez al deterioro del mercado de trabajo tras la crisis de 2007. This paper analyses the ev…