Gender Gaps in Wages and Mortality Rates During Industrialization: The Case of Alcoy, Spain, 1860–1914
What role did women play during industrialization? Interpretations of this key period of our history have been largely based on analyses of male work. In this paper, we offer evidence of the effects of women's involvement in the industrialization process that took place in Alcoy, Spain, over the period 1860-1914. Using data drawn from historical sources, we analyse labour-force participation rates and wage series for women and men in the textile industry and three other sectors of activity (education, health and low-skill services). We then connect the gender pay gaps with life expectancy indicators. Our results suggest that women's contribution to household income might have favoured the f…
Competitive Pressure and Innovation at the Firm Level
This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between market competitive pressure and firms' innovation using panel data of Spanish manufacturing firms for 1990–2006. We depart from standard measures of competition, and construct variables capturing the fundamentals of competitive pressure (product substitutability, market size and entry costs) to test the theoretical predictions of Vives [2008, The Journal of Industrial Economics] for free entry. Our results line up favourably with these predictions. We obtain that greater product substitutability and higher costs of entry lead to more process innovation but less product innovation, whereas market enlargement spurs both produc…
Learning through experience in Research & Development: An empirical analysis with Spanish firms
In this paper we analyse the role of learning through experience in Research and Development (R&D) activities in strengthening firms' capabilities to achieve innovation outcomes and, subsequently, in obtaining rewards in terms of firms' performance. First, using an innovation production function approach, we estimate a count-data model and find that the number of years of engagement in R&D activities, or R&D experience, has a positive effect on the expected number of product innovations, although at a decreasing rate. In addition, our results suggest that, whereas large firms are more efficient than SMEs in converting R&D investment into product innovations, SMEs seem to be able to draw eff…
Gender Imbalance across Subfields in Economics: When Does It Start?
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...
Choosing among alternative technological strategies: an empirical analysis of formal sources of innovation
Abstract This work aims to offer a detailed conceptual and empirical analysis of the inter-firm differences in deciding the composition of their technological efforts. Using data for Spanish firms in the period 1990–1996, the study begins with the standard analysis of the determinants of innovative investment, then moves on to the less analysed question of the determinants of the generate versus import alternative and ends with a novel analysis of the characteristics which lead firms to organise research internally as compared to the possibility of contracting R&D services externally. In contrast to standard practice, the econometric approach takes into account the existence of non-linearit…
The path of R&D efficiency over time
Abstract In this paper we investigate the pattern of R&D efficiency in terms of the number of product innovations achieved by firms over time. Using a panel dataset of Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1990–2006, we follow the innovative performance of R&D active firms and observe that innovation rates change over firms' R&D histories. To explain these facts we propose a model that explicitly acknowledges the twofold composition of firms' R&D expenditures, comprising spending on both physical capital for R&D projects and payments to researchers. We regard this latter component of R&D as a source for dynamic returns to firms' R&D investments. Consequently firms' innovation outcomes …
Foreign capital, credit constraints and continuity of firms’ R&D
ABSTRACTIn this article, we investigate the role of foreign capital participation as a means for firms to overcome the obstacle posed by credit constraints to sustain R&D investments. Using data for Spanish manufacturing firms in the period 1990–2006, we show that firms with foreign capital are significantly less likely to stop already initiated R&D projects and also more likely to sustain R&D investment when facing credit constraints. Our results are robust to positive selection into foreign capital participation, which we control through a set of variables chosen from a propensity score estimation, and to firms’ fixed-effects.
Alternative tuition fees schemes: a simulation exercise
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...
Patents, Competition, and Firms’ Innovation Incentives
This paper presents fresh evidence on the interaction between industrial property rights (patents) and competition, and their joint effect on firms’ innovation. We use panel data of Spanish manufacturing firms for 1990–2006, as well as external information on European Patent Office and US Patent Office patent counts. We construct a new synthetic measure of competition and estimate the impact of patents on this measure at the industry level. Then, the effect of industry-wide competition and patenting on firms’ innovation is estimated at the firm level. Our results suggest that patents reduce the level of competition in the industry, whereas the effect of competition on innovation varies with…
A complete system of Engel curves in the Spanish economy
The main goal of this article is the estimation of the consumption–income relationship along with socio–economic factors using cross section data from the Spanish Household Expenditure Survey 1991. The data has been grouped according to exogenous criteria to avoid the problem of null expenditure. First, a non–linear system of equation is estimated, from which the linear form that best fits the used data is tested. Finally, income elasticities are calculated considering three alternative formulations depending on how an initial income increment is distributed among consumers. Income elasticities are shown for the whole income distribution
Competition and innovation with selective exit: an inverted-U shape relationship?
This paper extends the approach of the inverted-U relationship between competition and innovation at the industry level introduced by Aghion and coauthors. We use data of Spanish manufacturing firms from the Survey of Business Strategies (ESEE) spanning 1990–2006, as well as external information on patents from the European Patent Office and US Patent Office. Instead of an inverted-U shape, we obtain an unambiguous positive relationship between competition and patents. To explain this positive relationship, we modify their theoretical model to introduce the possibility of inefficient firms facing the threat of exit when competition intensifies. The modified model may explain both a positive…
Tuition fees and student effort at university
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.