Which Factors Determine Academic Performance of Undergraduate Students in Economics?: Some Spanish Evidence

This paper analyses the determinants of academic performance of first-year undergraduate students in Economics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, over the period 2001-2005. We focus on a few core subjects which differ in their degree of mathematical complexity. Type of school, specialization track at high school, and the grades obtained at the university entry-exam are among the key factors we examine. Our main finding is that those students who completed a technical track at high school tend to do much better in subjects involving mathematics than those who followed a social sciences track (tailor-made for future economics students) and that the latter do not perform significantly better than the former in subjects with less degree of formalism. Moreover, students from public schools are predominant in the lower and upper parts of the grade distribution while females tend to perform better than males.Banco de Santande

An econometric analysis of tourism in Spain: implications for the sectoral study of exports and some economic policy considerations

This paper deals with the construction of econometric models to explain the external demand for Spanish tourist services. The models include as explanatory economic variables a tourist income index and two real exchange rate indices, one with respect to client countries and the other with respect to competitor countries. The results obtained : a) support the hypothesis that the decision to expend on tourism is made in two stages with different price and income elasticities in each of them; b) show that the recent drop in demand is due to a -real exchange rate effect. With the models constructed it is possible to evaluate to what extent the drop in demand is due purely to the effect of prices and to 'what extent it is determined by exchange rate movements. The latter have had an important effect, so that a policy of appreciating the peseta indeed has different sectoral effects. This different sectoral effect, as well as the importance of distinguishing between client countries and competitors, suggest that economic policy must not be based on just one index of the effective exchange rate of the peseta but on several

Gravity and extended gravity: estimating a structural model of export entry

Exporters continuously enter and exit individual foreign markets. Although a given firm's status as an exporter tends to be persistent, the set of destination countries that a firm serves changes frequently. In this paper we empirically examine the determinants of a firm's choice of destination countries and show that their export paths follow systematic patterns. We develop a model of export dynamics where firms decide in each period the countries to which they sell. Our model allows prots from each possible destination country to depend on: (a) how similar it is to the firm's home country (gravity), and (b) how similar it is to other destinations to which the firm has previously exported (extended gravity). Given the enormous number of possible export paths from which firms may choose, conventional estimation approaches based on discrete choice models are unfeasible. Instead, we use a moment inequalities approach. Our inequalities come from applying an analogue of Euler's perturbation method to a discrete choice setting. We show that standard gravity forces have a much larger influence on sunk costs than on fixed costs of exporting and that extended gravity effects can be substantial.gravity; extended gravity; export dynamics; moment inequalities

Design and implementation of IPIS : an X-Window based image processing interactive system

Most of image processing systems are based on command line functions or can only display one image at a time. This is a serious inconvenience for those who need an interactive system session or want to compare two images processed by different techniques at the same time. The system was designed with these problems in mind. It is able to display the processed image right after an operation and to display several images simultaneously, making it simple to compare techniques. The system was also created with the purpose to be used in an academic environment. Its structured design makes it easy to understand and to aggregate new functions and features. Used properly it may be a valuable learning tool for the areas of image processing and X/Motif programming. Future work will expand the system in order to process color and multispectral images. An object oriented approach is being considered to achieve such goal

La regulación de la pena en conformidad con el artículo 164 del código orgánico de tribunales

The new penalty rules, when there are various sentences against the samedefendant, is regulated in Article 164 of the Organic Code of Courts, that replaced theformer institution of "unification of penalties" in order to adapt it to the features of theprocedures established in the new Code of Criminal Procedure issued in 2000. The articlestudies the current rule's sources and basis, as well as its legal requirements and someissues arisen by its practical application.    Las reglas de aplicación de la pena respecto de un mismo imputado quecontempla el artículo 164 del Código Orgánico de Tribunales sustituyeron la antiguainstitución de "unificación de penas", adecuándola a las características de losprocedimientos establecidos por el Código Procesal Penal del año 2000. En el presentetrabajo se estudian el origen y los fundamentos de la norma actual, sus presupuestos orequisitos y también se abordan algunos de los problemas que ofrece su aplicaciónpráctica.