Subcontracting and Vertical Integration in the Spanish Cotton Industry

This paper examines changes in the organization of the Spanish cotton industry from 1720 to 1860 in its core region of Catalonia. As the Spanish cotton industry adopted the most modern technology and experienced the transition to the factory system, cotton spinning and weaving mills became increasingly vertically integrated. Asset specificity more than other factors explained this tendency towards vertical integration. The probability for a firm of being vertically integrated was higher among firms located in districts with high concentration ratios and rose with size and the use of modern machinery. Simultaneously, subcontracting predominated in other phases of production and distribution where transaction costs appears to be less important.

College Students’ Views about the Journalism Education in Spain

The paper presents the results of a survey with a sample of 1,552 journalism students from five public universities during the academic year 2011-12. The research addresses two objectives: how students evaluate the journalism studies and to know if they believe the studies are necessary to purpose of exercising the profession. The results indicate that most students believe appropriate the journalism studies, but almost but almost 25% considered them unnecessary. Students assess the quality of the training received in schools with an approved. There has been a multiple linear regression to find which variables explain this evaluation. The most influential is the course you are enrolled, followed by functions that respondents give to faculties. The paper presents the advantage of working with data from the largest sample used so far, which also includes all courses and the first promotions of students in the undergraduate studies according to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). It can be a valuable starting point for further researchs to make decisions on the academic. The study is part of the Sudents Journalism Project with journalism students in seven countries: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland and the United States

Land markets and agrarian backwardness (Spain, 1900-1936)

To what extent were land markets the cause of Spanish agrarian backwardness? This paper uses new provincial data on average real land prices, together with provincial level variation in land productivity, to analyse land markets efficiency. To address this unresolved issue, we test whether land markets were spatially integrated and whether their prices can be explained with the present value model. Our results suggest that land prices converged across provinces and that variations were driven by fundamentals. In consequence, we conclude that institutional failure in land markets was not the cause of the relatively poor productivity performance of Spanish agricultureLand prices determinants, Price convergence, Panel unit-roots, Present value model

Crypto-test-lab for security validation of ECC co-processor test infrastructure

© 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting /republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksElliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is a technology for public-key cryptography that is becoming increasingly popular because it provides greater speed and implementation compactness than other public-key technologies. Calculations, however, may not be executed by software, since it would be so time consuming, thus an ECC co-processor is commonly included to accelerate the speed. Test infrastructure in crypto co-processors is often avoided because it poses serious security holes against adversaries. However, ECC co-processors include complex modules for which only functional test methodologies are unsuitable, because they would take an unacceptably long time during the production test. Therefore, some internal test infrastructure is always included to permit the application of structural test techniques. Designing a secure test infrastructure is quite a complex task that relies on the designer's experience and on trial & error iterations over a series of different types of attacks. Most of the severe attacks cannot be simulated because of the demanding computational effort and the lack of proper attack models. Therefore, prototypes are prepared using FPGAs. In this paper, a Crypto-Test-Lab is presented that includes an ECC co-processor with flexible test infrastructure. Its purpose is to facilitate the design and validation of secure strategies for testing in this type of co-processor.Postprint (author's final draft

Action following the discovery of a global association between the whole genome and adverse event risk in a clinical drug-development programme

Observation of adverse drug reactions during drug development can cause closure of the whole programme. However, if association between the genotype and the risk of an adverse event is discovered, then it might suffice to exclude patients of certain genotypes from future recruitment. Various sequential and non-sequential procedures are available to identify an association between the whole genome, or at least a portion of it, and the incidence of adverse events. In this paper we start with a suspected association between the genotype and the risk of an adverse event and suppose that the genetic subgroups with elevated risk can be identified. Our focus is determination of whether the patients identified as being at risk should be excluded from further studies of the drug. We propose using a utility function to determine the appropriate action, taking into account the relative costs of suffering an adverse reaction and of failing to alleviate the patient's disease. Two illustrative examples are presented, one comparing patients who suffer from an adverse event with contemporary patients who do not, and the other making use of a reference control group. We also illustrate two classification methods, LASSO and CART, for identifying patients at risk, but we stress that any appropriate classification method could be used in conjunction with the proposed utility function. Our emphasis is on determining the action to take rather than on providing definitive evidence of an association

Spanish housing markets during the first phase of the rural-urban transition process

This paper discusses how Spain’s housing markets reacted to the far-reaching changes that affected the demand for dwellings during the first phase of the rural-urban transition process. To this end, we construct a new hedonic index of real housing prices and assemble a cross-regional panel dataset of price fundamentals. The results of our econometric analysis suggest that housing markets did not face supply constraints, responded swiftly to the growing demand for accommodation and were efficient. In light of this new evidence, we conclude that housing markets were not a burden for Spanish economic development and that Spain’s institutional and regulatory frameworks were suitable for the housing needs at the time.Hedonic prices, Demand and supply of housing, Regulation in housing markets

The Sources of Long-run Growth in Spain 1850-2000

Between 1850 and 2000, Spain’s real income increased by about 40-fold, at an average rate of 2.5 percent. The sources of this long-run growth are investigated using Jorgenson-type growth accounting analysis. We find that growth upsurges are closely related to increases in TFP. Spanish economic growth went through three successive phases. The century before 1950 was characterized by slow growth driven by factor accumulation. TFP improvements pushed up explosive growth during the Golden Age and mitigated the deceleration during the transition to democracy years (1975-86). Since the accession to the European Union Spain has experienced a dramatic productivity slowdown.

Spanish land reform in the 1930s: economic necessity or political opportunism?

Spanish land reform, involving the break-up of the large southern estates, was a central issue during the first decades of the twentieth century. This paper uses new provincial data on landless workers, land prices and agrarian wages to consider if government intervention was needed because of the failure of the free action of markets to redistribute land. Our evidence shows that the relative number of landless workers decreased significantly from 1860 to 1930 before the approval of the 1932 Land Reform. This was due to two interrelated market forces: the falling ratio between land prices and rural wages, which made land cheaper for landless workers to rent and buy land plots, and structural change that drained rural population from the countryside. Given that rural markets did not restrict access to land, the government-initiated land redistribution had no clear-cut economic justification