Regional public support to airlines and airports: an unsolved puzzle.

This paper proposes a structural model to explain the motivation of regional public authorities to arrange marketing agreements for route and traffic development. Furthermore, using data from Spanish airports, we empirically test this model obtaining the demand function according to the preferences of public authorities. The results show that the public budget, airport’s attributes or intermodal competition affect to the demand for aircraft operations of regional public agencies. Finally, we propose an empirical method to determine the market power of airlines within these marketing agreements in a particular airport or route

Campesinado, cambio agrario y usos comunales: la dehesa de La Laguna (Tenerife), 1498-1769.

Este trabajo analiza las estrategias empleadas por el Cabildo de Tenerife en la gestión de la dehesa de La Laguna y sus repercusiones a largo plazo en la composición social del campesinado de la ciudad. Durante el siglo XVI el interés del Cabildo por aumentar sus ingresos favoreció un modelo de explotación de la dehesa basado en el cultivo del cereal en régimen de rotación bienal, con aprovechamiento comunal de barbechos y rastrojos y subastas anuales de las tierras orientadas al pequeño campesinado. A mediados del XVII la producción se derrumbó y el colapso de sus rentas llevó al Cabildo a cambiar de estrategia, modificando el sistema de cesión a fin de permitir la introducción de mejoras en el cultivo. Esta mudanza aceleró el desarrollo de un grupo de labradores acomodados que acabó capitalizando la explotación de la dehesa. Los labradores acomodados introdujeron nuevos cultivos, sistemas de rotación más complejos y un uso más eficiente del suelo cultivable, pero la mejora supuso también la práctica erradicación de los aprovechamientos comunales.This work analyses the strategies applied by the Council [Ancien Regime local authority] of Tenerife in the management of the Dehesa [enclosed common lands] and their long-term repercussions on the social profile of the peasantry. The Council sought to increase its revenues in the sixteenth century by promoting grain cultivation on a biennial rotation schedule, with communal use of fallow land and stubble, along with annual land auctions oriented toward the small peasantry. When grain production collapsed in the mid‐seventeenth century, diminishing revenues led the Council of Tenerife to change its strategy. The land transfer system was modified in order to facilitate the introduction of agricultural improvements, which favoured the development of a group of prospe‐rous farmers who eventually capitalised the cultivation of the common lands. They introduced new crops, more complex crop rotation systems and more efficient land use for cultivation; but these improvements virtually eradicated the communal use of the Dehesa

Hybrid model predictive control for freeway traffic using discrete speed limit signals

HYCON2 Show day - Traffic modeling, Estimation and Control 13/05/2014 GrenobleIn this paper, two hybrid Model Predictive Control (MPC) approaches for freeway traffic control are proposed considering variable speed limits (VSL) as discrete variables as in current real world implementations. These discrete characteristics of the speed limits values and some necessary constraints for the actual operation of VSL are usually underestimated in the literature, so we propose a way to include them using a macroscopic traffic model within an MPC framework. For obtaining discrete signals, the MPC controller has to solve a highly non-linear optimization problem, including mixed-integer variables. Since solving such a problem is complex and difficult to execute in real-time, we propose some methods to obtain reasonable control actions in a limited computation time. The first two methods (-exhaustive and -genetic discretization) consist of first relaxing the discrete constraints for the VSL inputs; and then, based on this continuous solution and using a genetic or an exhaustive algorithm, to find discrete solutions within a distance of the continuous solution that provide a good performance. The second class of methods split the problem in a continuous optimization for the ramp metering signals and in a discrete optimization for speed limits. The speed limits optimization, which is much more time-consuming than the ramp metering one, is solved by a genetic or an exhaustive algorithm in communication with a non-linear solver for the ramp metering. The proposed methods are tested by simulation, showing not only a good performance, but also keeping the computation time reduced.Unión Europea FP7/2007–201

The impact of public reforms on the productivity of the Spanish ports: a parametric distance function approach

This paper tries to analyse the evolution of total factor productivity and its decomposition between 1986 and 2005 in the Spanish port authorities using a parametric distance function approach. Panel data for different outputs and inputs for the last 20 years have been constructed. During this period, the Spanish port authorities suffered three important regulatory changes. The results show that technical progress and scale efficiency gains contributed to improve total factor productivity whereas pure technical efficiency affected negatively. The change in the model of port management from a service port model to a landlord port model, the adoption of certain technologies and the possible existence of overcapacity caused by an increasing port competition, could explain these results

Estimating allocative efficiency in port authorities with demand uncertainty

This paper aims to analyse the impact of port demand variability on the allocative efficiency of Spanish port authorities during the period 1986-2007. From a distance function model we can obtain a measure of allocative efficiency using two different approaches: error components approach and parametric approach. We model the variability of port demand from the cyclical component of traffic series by applying the Hodrick-Prescott filter. The results show that the inclusion of variability does not affect the efficiency measures, except in the case of containerised general cargo. Moreover, we demonstrate that port authorities have excess capacity and their resources are misallocated. Finally we establish that the allocative inefficiency of Spanish port authorities is difficult to resolve given the limited substitution possibilities among the different pairs of inputs

The effect of port activity on urban employment: an analysis for the Spanish functional urban areas

This study aims to evaluate the impact of port activity on local employment in Spain. To do so, we have used a novel panel data at the functional urban areas (FUAs) level, considering cities' functional and economic extent based on daily people's movements. We have estimated a set of equations related to the port throughput-employment relationship for 2010-2020. Several estimation techniques are applied to different employment equation specifications to check the robustness of the results to the methodology employed. Additionally, three different samples have been used to assess whether the results significantly change when non-port FUAs are considered. Our results are robust to the different specifications, finding that employment elasticity to port activity ranges between 0.005 and 0.008. We find that industrial employment is more sensitive to changes in the volume of port operations than total or service employment. Finally, the analysis shows that the results significantly change when non-port FUAs are not considered in the analysis

Un modelo genérico de funcionamiento para los centros tecnológicos españoles

La creciente presión competitiva sobre las empresas les obliga a mejorar constantemente sus procesos y los productos que ofrecen al mercado. Por lo tanto, la innovación se convierte en un requisito para la supervivencia y el crecimiento empresarial. Sin embargo, la capacidad de las empresas para innovar depende no sólo de la explotación de sus recursos internos sino también, y cada vez en mayor medida, de su habilidad para utilizar el conocimiento de otras organizaciones de su entorno. Dentro de estas organizaciones los centros tecnológicos desempeñan un papel clave

1-[2,3-Bis(tetradecyloxy)propyl]-3-[2-(piperazin-1-yl)ethyl]urea

Starting from 2,3-bis(tetradecyloxy)propan-1-amine (1), the synthesis of the target compound 1-[2,3-bis(tetradecyloxy)propyl]-3-[2-(piperazin-1-yl)ethyl]urea (2) is reported. The title compound was characterized by 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR and ESI/MS analysis.This work is supported by grants of the Spanish Ministry of Economy (MINECO) (CTQ2014-52588-R, RTC-2014-2038-1, CTQ2014-61758-EXP), Generalitat de Catalunya 2014/SGR/624) and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (CB06_01_0019). CIBER-BBN is an initiative funded by the VI National R&D&i Plan 2008-2011, Iniciativa Ingenio 2010, Consolider Program, CIBER Actions and financed by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III with assistance from the European Regional Development Fund. We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).Peer reviewe

Technological spillovers from multinational firms

This paper aims to identify genuine technological spillovers from multinational firms (MNEs). To this end, we use data on R&D from MNEs to measure spillovers, while most of the existing literature uses output to measure the foreign presence in an industry (what we call output-based spillovers). In line with the existing literature, we distinguish between horizontal spillovers (i.e., intra-industry linkages) and vertical spillovers (i.e., backward ?or downstream? and forward ?or upstream? inter-industry linkages). Our results show that the three types of technological spillovers from MNEs are positive, with the horizontal spillovers the larger ones, followed by backward spillovers. The effect of forward spillovers is much smaller in magnitude. Moreover, we find that not controlling for industry size (i.e., technological spillovers from all firms in an industry) leads to underestimating both horizontal and backward spillovers from MNEs, and to overestimating forward spillovers from MNEs. Finally, we find that the distinction between technological and output-based spillovers is of great relevance. The size of backward technological spillovers is approximately 44% of the size of output-based backward spillovers, while for horizontal spillovers both types of spillovers are quite similar. Importantly, output-based forward spillovers are negative while technological forward spillovers are positive