Price discrimination and market power in export markets: The case of the ceramic tile industry.

This paper combines the pricing-to-market equation and the residual demand elasticity equation to measure the extent of competition in the export markets of ceramic tiles, which has been dominated by Italian and Spanish producers since the late eighties. The findings show that the tile exporters enjoyed substantial market power over the period 1988-1998, and limited evidence that the export market has become more competitive over time.price discrimination, market power, export markets, ceramic tile industry

The Trade Creation Effect of Immigrants: Testing the Theory on the Remarkable Case of Spain

There is abundant evidence that immigrants' networks are associated with larger trade flows between countries of origin and the country (or province) where they settle. The causality of such relation and its magnitude, however, have not been proven beyond reasonable doubt. We use the simple predictions of the model by Chaney (2008) and treat networks of migrants as a device that reduces fixed bilateral trade costs. In so doing we have strong predictions on the effect of immigrants on total exports, exports by category of goods, and on the extensive and intensive margin of trade. We test these predictions using the remarkable and uneven increase of immigration to Spanish provinces between 1993 and 2008. The richness of our data, a panel of import and export by sector between 50 Spanish provinces and 77 countries over fifteen years, allows us to control for a very large set of covariates and fixed effects and to use an instrumental variable strategy so that we can isolate the trade-creation effect of new immigrants. We are also able to qualify the effect of immigration on bilateral trade of homogeneous and differentiated goods, and its impact on the intensive and extensive margin of trade. Our findings support all the implications of the Chaney model showing that migration network indeed seems to decrease the fixed costs of trade. Finally by decomposing the effect across provinces and over time we find evidence that the elasticity of trade creation to new immigrant is larger once a critical mass has been reached.

The impact of exchange rate fluctuations on profit margins: The UK car market, 1971-2002

We investigate the impact on profit margins of exchange rate fluctuations in order to examine optimal pricing policy by source countries in the UK car market. We first estimate a nested logit demand model of new cars to calculate model-specific profit margins. Next we use these estimates to analyse the pricing-to-market (PTM) behaviour of car importers and local producers. The results show that: (1) profit margins fell over the period 1971-2002 as the UK car market moved from being a concentrated market to a looser oligopoly structure; (2) there is a positive association between exchange rate changes and mark-up adjustments of imported cars. Following a 10% pound depreciation, exporters’ profit margins declined by up to 4% and local producers’ profit margins increased by up to 2%; (3) PTM behaviour is asymmetric between appreciations and depreciations in bilateral exchange rates.exchange rates, markup adjustment, pricing to market, cars

Rethinking regional competitiveness: Catalonia's international and interregional trade, 1995-2006

Studies of competitiveness tend to focus on a local economy's global interactions, particularly its international trade. But for countries that are at least mid-sized (such as Spain), interregional trade tends to be as large as or significantly larger than international trade. The case of Catalonia illustrates the importance of interregional flows in truly analyzing and devising strategies for a region's external competitiveness. Accounting for interregional trade changes and performing analyses of Catalonia's overall merchandise trade balance, which sectors generate external surpluses as opposed to deficits, and who Catalonia's key trading partners are, and the use of a gravity-model approach to estimate external border effects at the regional level for Catalonia and the rest of Spain, reveal significant variations by sector and by trading partner, generally higher external border effects for exports than imports, and declines in border effects over time - but with a discernible flattening in recent years.Border Effect; Gravity Model; Interregional trade; transport flows;

Is the Border Effect an Artefact of Geographic Aggregation?

The existence of a large border effect is considered as one of the main puzzles of international macroeconomics. We show that the border effect is, to a large extent, an artefact of geographic concentration. In order to do so we combine international flows with intranational flows data characterised by a high geographic grid. At this fine grid, intranational flows are highly localised and dropping sharply with distance. The use of a small geographical unit of reference to measure intra-national bilateral trade flows allows to estimating correctly the negative impact of distance on shipments. When we use sector disaggregated export flows of 50 Spanish provinces in years 2000 and 2005 split into interprovincial and inter-national flows, we find that the border effect is reduced substantially and even becomes statistically not different from zero in some estimations.border effect, distance, interregional trade, international trade, Spanish provinces

CNVxplorer: A web tool for the interpretation of copy number variants

Máster en Bioinformática Traslacional y Medicina PersonalizadaThe detection of Copy Number Variants (CNVs) has been gradually introduced into routine diagnostics over the last 15 years and has been described as an important source of pathogenic variants in rare diseases. Despite this, the clinical interpretation remains a challenge and our understanding of the functional impact of these alterations on biological processes is limited, which hinder the diagnosis and the discovery of new therapies. One main reason of these limitations is the lack of integrated data and resources that efficiently assess causative genes with the patient phenotype. To address this challenge, we present CNVxplorer, a user-friendly web application for the interpretation of CNVs. For any given genomic interval, CNVxplorer allows to assess genes mapped in the region, through the integration of human genetics databases of clinical interest, experiment-based information on tissue expression, biomedical ontologies, scientific literature, regulatory regions, functional annotation and the option to perform enrichment analysis. All the results are arranged into a concise output and an automated report can be downloadable. The app provides a highly dynamic and user-friendly interface and the website will be publicly available

The effects of immigration on the productive structure of Spanish regions

Immigrants have increased their participation in Spanish labour supply from less than 3 percent in 1996 to more than 13 percent in 2005. Using the factor proportion model of production, this paper analyses whether this labour supply shock has affected the industrial structure of Spanish regions. Our best specification suggests the need to include time varying region-specific effects to capture differences in technology and prices across regions. Our results confirm that, first, labour endowment differences across regions help to explain the pattern of industry specialisation across region. Second, immigrants and natives act as complementary factors in most industries. Third, the importance of factor endowment changes is relatively small compared to production technique changes and idiosyncratic industry changes in explaining the overall changes in industrial structure over 1996-2005, being only important in the case of Building, a sector where foreign workers represent an important share of its total labour force.

A hybrid application for parking search support

Se ha desarrollado una aplicación móvil híbrida capaz de presentar datos en tiempo real sobre la ocupación de los aparcamientos de la ciudad de Málaga, de los que el Ayuntamiento ofrece información mediante consulta de una de sus APIs, incluyendo no sólo información sobre turismos, sino también sobre el nuevo sistema de transporte en bicicleta ofrecido por la EMT “málagabici”. Dicha aplicación también ofrece datos relativos a los precios de cada aparcamiento según el día actual, y la distancia y el tiempo de viaje según el tipo de transporte, exceptuando los precios para las bicicletas. También muestra en un mapa la localización actual y la del aparcamiento seleccionado, así como en un mapa en un apartado diferente, las localizaciones de los cortes de tráfico en la ciudad. Finalmente se ha desarrollado un módulo de aprendizaje automático con Azure para realizar predicciones sobre la ocupación de los aparcamientos de coches y bicicletas dado el día de la semana y la hora de interés