Why do people invest in personal pension plans?

The aim of this article is to identify the variables affecting the decision to make contributions to personal pension plans and the amount of such contributions. For this purpose, we specify and estimate a Tobit model for a sample based on the 1995 Personal Income Taxpayers Panel prepared by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance) formed by 3041 taxpayers, of whom 358 made contributions to pension plans. Our results suggest that individuals decide to invest in pension plans on complex grounds combining the wish to benefit from tax savings and to ensure they will receive supplementary income upon retirement.

Innovation and Regional Socio-Economic Development - Evidence from the Finnish Local Administrative Units (1)

It is often argued that innovation plays a key role in the economic growth of regions. Therefore, the impacts of innovation on the socio-economic development of regions have been widely discussed in previous studies, but with divergent areal coverage, methods, and datasets. As a point for departure, these relationships redrawn from international literature are tested here with a single dataset from Finnish local administrative units and with coherent methods. As there does not seem to be a generally accepted indicator for innovation which can claim to be superior, despite the growing literature on the subject, research and development (R&D), and patent statistics are used in this paper to represent innovation activity. The significant, strong, and positive relationship between innovation and traditional socio-economic variables is verified using Finnish regions

Dinâmica espacial e temporal da inovação no estado de São Paulo: uma análise das externalidades de diversificação e especialização

O trabalho avalia em que medida o grau de especialização ou diversidade pode afetar o desempenho inovador regional. Além disso, outros fatores determinantes da inovação são considerados, como a capacidade de realização de P&D, o nível de escolaridade e a defasagem temporal da inovação. A base de dados é organizada em função das 63 microrregiões do Estado de São Paulo no período entre 1996 e 2003, e submetida a modelos de dados em painel espacial dinâmico. Os principais resultados revelam que a diversidade e a especialização produtiva são igualmente importantes para explicar o desempenho inovador das microrregiões