0000000000349345
AUTHOR
Alfonso Díez Minguela
A Happy Marriage: Academia, Professional and Scientific Associations
This paper advocates for a greater integration between Higher education and Professional and Scientific Associations (PSAs). With the development and adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the costs associated with the collection, storage, processing and transmission of information have been reduced. Eventually, the supply of information has boomed. However, more does not necessarily imply better. Free online resources can enhance the learning process, but the lack of quality controls is still a major concern. Additionally, learning demands some degree of organisation and structure. We argue that Higher education can potentially benefit from a closer relationship wit…
Mating (marriage) patterns and economic development
This paper looks at the relationship between economic development and mating (marriage) patterns in the very long run. For this purpose we introduce the Goldin and the Kuznets curves which relate female labour and income inequality with economic development respectively. To some extent, the Goldin and the Kuznets curves have followed opposite paths, which in turn, could illustrate how economic development has had an impact on mating (marriage) patterns, and thus household formation. Convergence in mating patterns among hunter-gatherers across societies vanished after the Neolithic revolution. Then, African polygyny and the ‘European’ marriage pattern developed into the most significant exce…
Starting high school? On the origins of secondary education in Spain, 1857–1901
AbstractThe development of modern educational systems radically altered the way knowledge and skills were transmitted. Yet, while elementary schooling rapidly expanded in late 19th and early twentieth centuries, secondary education struggled to find its way. This was also the case in Spain where, despite a growing demand, the provision of public secondary education during the second half of the 19th century was rather limited. As a result, private education, and especially that promoted by the Church, rushed to fill in the gap. Using a new database with municipal-level data, we examine what drove the expansion of private schools. As expected, demand-pull factors were critical. Still, the in…
Tracing the Evolution of Agglomeration Economies: Spain, 1860–1991
Trabajo presentado a Iberometrics VIII: Eight Iberian Cliometrics Workshop. Organizado por el Institute of Advanced Research in Business and Economics (INARBE) de la Universidad Pública de Navarra, en colaboración con Glocred y expertos de instituciones de España y Portugal. Celebrado en la Upna el 20-21 de abril de 2017. This article attempts to quantify how the effect of agglomeration economies on population growth has evolved over time. Using district population in Spain between 1860 and 1991, recorded approximately every decade, this article examines whether initial population affects subsequent population growth. Our results show that, while the relationship between these two variables…