Job losses, outsourcing and relocation, empirical evidence using microdata.

Using microdata, we analyse the determinants of firm relocation and conventional outsourcing decisions as a way to reduce employment. The results for a sample of 32 countries show the relevance of factors not considered previously in the literature. Firms that are below average in quality or innovation have a higher propensity to externalise part of their production through outsourcing, while lower relative profitability and longer time to market for new products each imply a higher probability of relocation.Job losses, outsourcing and relocation

The role of the tourism sector in economic development. Lessons from the Spanish experience

Tourism is one of the most important sectors in the global economy and is considered an efficient tool with which to promote economic growth. The case of Spain's economy is well known in this respect; in fact, widespread consensus exists on the part played by tourism in enhancing the industrialisation process in Spain and the part played by foreign currency receipts from tourism in financing the imports of capital goods, which made the expansion of manufacturing possible. This paper aims to assess the real role of foreign currency receipts from tourism in Spain 's economy from 1960 to the present. The results of Spain 's experience may well help to guide policy decisions in developing countries in similar circumstances.international tourism, economic development, industrialisation, spanish experience

Commuting in Catalonia: Estimates from a place-to-place model

Commuting consists in the fact that an important fraction of workers in developed countries do not reside close to their workplaces but at long distances from them, so they have to travel to their jobs and then back home daily. Catalonia (a Spanish region) is divided in 41 comarcas or small aggregations of municipalities (smaller than NUTS-3 level). Some of them have a positive commuting balance, attracting many workers from other comarcas and providing local jobs for almost all their resident workers. On the other side, other comarcas seem to be mostly residential, so an important fraction of their resident workers hold jobs in other comarcas. Which variables influence the comarca's role as an attraction pole or a residential zone? In previous papers (presented to the ERSA and Spanish Regional Science Association Congresses) we have brought out the main individual variables that influence commuting by analysing a sample of Catalan workers and their commuting decisions. Anyway, the comarcal economical structure has been analysed only at a descriptive level. Variables influencing comarcal quality of life ("amenities") have almost been ignored due to the lack of enough territorial disaggregation in the sample. These variables are supposed to influence commuting in two different ways: A zone with a dense, well-developed economical structure will have a high density of jobs. Work demand cannot be fulfilled with resident workers, so it spills over comarcal boundaries. On the other side, this economical activity has a series of side-effects like pollution, congestion or high land prices which make these comarcas less desirable to live in. Workers who can afford it may prefer to live in less populated, less congested comarcas, where they can find cheaper land, larger homes and a better quality of life. The penalty of this decision is an increased commuting time. Our aim in this paper is to highlight the influence of comarcal economical structure and comarcal amenities dotation in the workplace-residence location decision. A place-to place commuting model is estimated in order to find the economical and amenities variables with higher influence in commuting decisions. Data have been obtained from aggregate flow travel-matrix from the 1991 Spanish Population Census.

Are commuting and residential mobility decisions simultaneous?: the case of catalonia

In this paper we study the commuting and moving decisions of workers in Catalonia (Spain) and its evolution in the 1986-1996 period. Using a microdata sample from the 1991 Spanish Population Census, we estimate a simultaneous, discrete choice model of commuting and moves, thus indirectly addressing the home and job location decisions. The econometrical framework is a simultaneous, binary probit model with a commute equation and a move equation.residential location choice, commuting, suburbanization

Evaluating the optimality of Spanish industry (1980-1993)

This paper tests whether Spanish industry adjusted the amount of inputs and output to those considered optimal given their prices in each time period. With this aim, we use the short- and long-run equilibrium models given by duality theory, and we apply the optimality tests derived from them for the case of Spanish manufactures from 1980 to 1993. The results obtained point to a disequilibrium in manufactures' behaviour, although it has been vanishing through the period under consideration.

The regional distribution of spanish unemployment. A spatial analysis

This paper proposes a set of tools to analyse the regional distribution of unemployment. As we are interested in the characteristics of the whole distribution, we complement results from the traditional regression analysis with those from the estimation of its external shape before and after being conditioned to factors underlying regional unemployment. Besides, the paper explicitly addresses the spatial characteristics of the distribution, and the empirical model build to determine the explanatory factors includes spatial effects. We apply this framework to the study of the provincial distribution of unemployment rates in Spain in the mid-eighties and late nineties, when economic transformations could have caused different regional responses. Results point to increasing spatial dependence in the distribution of regional unemployment rates, and a change in the factors causing regional differentials over the last decade.

Spanish unemployment: Normative versus analytical regionalisation procedures

In applied regional analysis, statistical information is usually published at different territorial levels with the aim of providing information of interest for different potential users. When using this information, there are two different choices: first, to use normative regions (towns, provinces, etc.), or, second, to design analytical regions directly related with the analysed phenomena. In this paper, provincial time series of unemployment rates in Spain are used in order to compare the results obtained by applying two analytical regionalisation models (a two stages procedure based on cluster analysis and a procedure based on mathematical programming) with the normative regions available at two different scales: NUTS II and NUTS I. The results have shown that more homogeneous regions were designed when applying both analytical regionalisation tools. Two other obtained interesting results are related with the fact that analytical regions were also more stable along time and with the effects of scale in the regionalisation process.unemployment, regionalisation, analytical region, normative region

Public infrrastructure and the performance of manufacturing industries: Short-and long-run

We present a theoretical framework for determining the short- and long-run effects of infrastructure. While the short-run effects have been the focus of most previous studies, here we derive long-run elasticities by taking into account the adjustment of quasi-fixed inputs to their optimum levels. By considering the impact of infrastructure on private investment decisions, we observe how, apart from the direct effect on costs in the short-run, infrastructure exerts an indirect source of influence in the long-run through their effect on private capital. The model is applied to manufacturing industries in the Spanish regions.long-run vs short-run equilibrium, public ingrastructure, manufacturing costs

Evidence on the complex link between infrastructure and regional growth

Most studies analysing the infrastructure impact on regional growth show a positive relationship between both variables. However, the public capital elasticity estimated in a Cobb-Douglas function, which is the most common specification in these works, is sometimes too big to be credible, so that the results have been partially desestimated. In the present paper, we give some new advances on the real link between public capital and productivity for the Spanish regions in the period 1964-1991. Firstly, we find out that the association for both variables is smaller when controlling for regional effects, being industry the sector which reaps the most benefits from an increase in the infrastructural dotation. Secondly, concerning to the rigidity of the Coo-Douglas function, it is surpassed by using the variable expansion method. The expanded functional form reveals both the absence of a direct effect of infrastructure and the fact that the link between infrastructure and growth depends on the level of the existing stock (threshold level) and the way infrastructure is articulated in its location relative to other factors. Finally, we analyse the importance of the spatial dimension in infrastructure impact, due to spillover effects. In this sense, the paper provides evidence of the existence of spatial autocorrelation processes that may invalidate previous results.regional grwoth, infrastructure, spatial dependence, varying parameters