Euro Area SMEs under Financial Constraints: Belief or Reality?

During the recent financial crisis, euro area firms, and especially Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, have been reporting acute problems of access to external finance. Using firm-level replies to the SME survey on access to finance, we use two indicators of financing constraints based on perceptions on the one side and on experienced financing constraints on the other and run probit and multinomial regressions model to determine which firms’, sectoral or national characteristics drove perceptions and experienced financial constraints during the recent financial turmoil. We find that perceptions of financing crunch was broadly based across firms but those firms who really experienced a credit crunch tended to be small and young, confirming the fact that SMEs tend to suffer more when credit standards are tightened.financial crisis, financing constraints, credit rationing, small and medium-sized enterprises, survey data

Identifying labour market dynamics using labour force survey data

This paper evaluates the appropriateness of the standard methodologies and the quality of the data frequently used to analyse labour market dynamics in Europe. Our results indicate that, due to recall error and heterogeneous survey design, the retrospective approach tends to result in a considerable number of spurious transitions being recorded. Whilst the use of quasi-longitudinal data should overcome such problems, sample attrition and more importantly, misclassification error, is shown to result in significant over-reporting of transitions. Studies which failure to allow for the error structure of the underlying data are therefore, likely to be subject to considerable bias. --

Identifying Labour Market Dynamics Using Labour Force Survey Data

This paper evaluates the appropriateness of the standard methodologies and the quality of the data frequently used to analyse labour market dynamics in Europe. Our results indicate that, due to recall error and heterogeneous survey design, the retrospective approach tends to result in a considerable number of spurious transitions being recorded. Whilst the use of quasi-longitudinal data should overcome such problems, sample attrition and more importantly, misclassification error, is shown to result in significant over-reporting of transitions. Studies which failure to allow for the error structure of the underlying data are therefore, likely to be subject to considerable bias

The Catalonian Crises through Google Searches: A Regional Perspective

Resumen de la comunicación[EN] In this paper we focus in the period of political turmoil starting in September 2017 in Catalonia. Our research question is the following: can the Catalan crisis be tracked by the searches done by the public on different consumption items in the Internet? We do so by focusing in two set of consumption categories: Travel to Catalonia from the main international markets (France, Germany and United Kingdom) and searches on the main consumption categories done from Catalonia and from other five big regions (Madrid, Valencia, Aragón, Andalucía and Basque Country). The preliminary results show that the uncertainty in the political situation has translated unto a decline in searches on terms associated with tourism activities in Barcelona, one broad measure shows that searches for the term “Barcelona hotel” has declined by 12%, year on year for September 2017 to January 2018, by comparison searches for hotel in other comparable Spanish regions have increased slightly. When comparing searches done from Catalonia with other regions through simple time series models, a sizeable negative residual for Catalonia is present in October 2017 –the most difficult period in the Catalan conundrum- which is not observed in other geographical areas. This is the case for some search topics associated to durable goods and Catering and Accommodation services. The political turmoil in Catalonia had significant negative effects in two consumption categories: Theaters and Restaurants.Artola, C.; Pérez, JJ. (2018). The Catalonian Crises through Google Searches: A Regional Perspective. En 2nd International Conference on Advanced Reserach Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2018). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 264-264. https://doi.org/10.4995/CARMA2018.2018.8578OCS26426

Internet searches as a leading indicator of house purchases in a subnational framework: the case of Spain

[EN] Most people use web search tools to collect information on goods or services they intend to buy. Given the prominence of Google among the search engines and the availability of Google trends (GT) as a tool packaging some characteristics of those searches (geography, topic, categories, among others) it is only natural to use this instrument in order assess trends in the market. In this paper we build indicators reflecting the real estate market stance. To do so we rely GT’s TOPIC´s option that approximates the concept (housing, purchase, sale ...) instead of the exact wordings used by searchers. This approach is particularly useful in a country with several official languages and an important foreign market. The baseline quarterly model describes house sales (measured by its year-onyear growth rate) as an autoregressive AR (1/4) model and unemployment rate as a covariate. The alternative augments the baseline with contemporary a Google indicator. The models are estimated for 2004Q1-2014Q4 and recursive one period ahead forecasts are made for 2015Q1-2018Q4. The inclusion of Google indicator reduces the EAM of prediction errors (outside the sample) from 0.077 to 0.034. The forecasts also have greater accuracy and lower bias. The same procedure has been replicated for regions with very similar results for the main regional markets (Madrid and Catalonia) and more unequal in other regions.Artola, C.; Herrera De La Cruz, J. (2020). Internet searches as a leading indicator of house purchases in a subnational framework: the case of Spain. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 338-338. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/148776OCS33833