Assessing the impact of foreign direct investment on regional growth - An analysis of the Spanish case

The massive increase in foreign direct investment inflows following the Spanish integration with the now European Union in 1986, has been one of the most important features shaping the behaviour of the Spanish economy in the last twenty years. In this paper we will try to provide an assessment of its impact on regional economic growth, using data for the 17 Spanish regions, from 1986 on. To that end, we will estimate an aggregate production function where the foreign-owned capital stock is included as an additional factor.

Insurance Mechanisms against Asymmetric Shocks in a Monetary Union : a Proposal with an Application to EMU

In this paper we propose a simple, automatic insurance mechanism designed to cope with asymmetric shocks in a monetary union, which could be used as starting point of a more elaborated policy instrument. The mechanism would use as indicator of the occurrence of a shock the changes in the unemployment rate of the countries belonging to the union, and would be financed through a fund built from contributions of these countries as a percentage of their tax receipts. The fund would be distributed among the countries affected by a négative asymmetric shock according to the proportion in which every one of them would hâve been affected by the shock. Our proposai is illustrated by means of an empirical application to the case of EMU.Monetary union, asymmetric shocks, insurance function

Profiling Nutritionally Important Carotenoids from Genetically-Diverse Tomatoes by IR Spectroscopy

The objective of this research was to develop a protocol for profiling tomato carotenoids based on their specific vibrational spectroscopic signatures. Twenty four tomato varieties that included eight groups of genetically manipulated carotenoid varieties (high trans-lycopene, poly-cis-lycopene, β-carotene, poly-cis-β-carotene, δ-carotene, tangerine virescent, alcabaca-tangerine, and a low-carotenoid control sample) were grown and harvested in a replicated trial. Hexane was used to extract the lipid fraction from samples, and the extract was directly applied onto an ATR ZnSe crystal plate for spectra acquisition and injected in a reverse phase HPLC system for carotenoid separation. SIMCA classified tomatoes based on unique infrared spectral signatures. Models exhibited tight and well-separated clusters (interclass distances >3.0) that correlated well with the information obtained by HPLC, and demonstrated the capability to classify tomatoes based on variety and carotenoid profile. Classification of lipid fractions was primarily based on the presence of trans double bonds and their cis and trans conjugations. Major discriminating bands were 957cm-1 and 964cm-1 associated with bending trans HC=CH out-of-plane deformation vibrations of carotenoids. ATR-IR and multivariate analysis provided a simple, rapid and high-throughput tool for the identification of dietary carotenoids. This technique will facilitate the effective selection of tomato varieties with specific pigment content, improving the screening process for carotenoid-rich products.USD

Optimal endowments of public investment: an empirical analysis for the spanish regions

The aim of this paper is to estimate the optimal endowments of public investment in Spanish regions. Starting from the standard dynamic neoclassical model, augmented with the public capital stock, the optimal condition for the provision of public capital would be that, in the steady state, the marginal productivities of both public and private capital should be equal. In the empirical application we will estimate a growth equation derived from a simple Cobb-Douglas production function, where the coefficients on the rates of investment in private and public capital would be their respective marginal productivities. The econometric estimation of such an equation with data for the Spanish regions would provide us estimates of the marginal productivities of both factors, which would allow us to infer whether public capital stock in the Spanish regions would be insufficient or otherwise excessive.

Optimal endowments of public investment: an empirical analysis for the Spanish regions

Following Aschauer's (1989) influential contribution, the role of public investment has been stressed as a crucial factor leading to higher private capital productivity, which would lead in turn to higher growth rates. According to this author, the decline in productivity growth experienced by the US economy during the seventies, would explained to a great extent by the decrease in the provision of public infrastructures during that period. In this way, the next years have witnessed the appearance of a great amount of empirical literature that analysed the impact of public investment on economic growth. Although the first empirical studies made use of aggregate time series for countries, this approach has been also extended to a regional framework using panel data, obtaining results that were quantitatively lower than those found with aggregate data. The reason would be the spillover effects related to the regional endowments of public capital, whose effect would extend not only the own region, but also to the neighbouring regions. In any case, public infrastructure seems to play an important role in the growth process of regions that should not be neglected. On the other hand, the issue of the optimal endowments of public infrastructure has been hardly discussed. In a recent paper, Karras (1997) has developed a simple condition to assess whether public capital is optimally provided, namely, whether the marginal productivities of both private and public capital are equal or not. By estimating a simple growth equation for fifteen European countries during the period 1960-1992, he is unable to reject the null hypothesis that the marginal productivities of private and public capital are equal, so that government investment would be neither underprovided nor overprovided in the fifteen countries of his sample. In this paper we try to address this issue (i.e., whether the endowments of public investment are optimal or not) in a regional framework, using Spanish data for the period 1967-91. Unlike Karras (1997), who assumes that the production function exhibits constant returns to scale in all factors, we are able to generalise his condition without the need of this constraint. On the other hand, the Spanish economy can provide an interesting case of study, since it has experienced a sustained period of growth in the last forty years, which has been accompanied by a strong process of structural change. In particular, the establishment of new regional governments after the restoration of democracy in 1977, coupled with the strong increase experienced by public investment since them, are all of them elements that can justify the interest of the Spanish case for the objectives of this paper. Therefore, in this paper we will first derive the theoretical condition under which public capital would be optimally provided, and then we will provide an empirical application of the model, for the case of the Spanish regions during the period 1965-1995.

Assessing the impact of foreign direct investment on regional growth - An analysis of the Spanish case

The massive increase in foreign direct investment inflows following the Spanish integration with the now European Union in 1986, has been one of the most important features shaping the behaviour of the Spanish economy in the last twenty years. In this paper we will try to provide an assessment of its impact on regional economic growth, using data for the 17 Spanish regions, from 1986 on. To that end, we will estimate an aggregate production function where the foreign-owned capital stock is included as an additional factor

Economic growth and the balance-of-payments constraint: The case of the Spanish regions, 1988-2008

The balance of payments can act as a constraint to the rate of growth of output, on putting a limit to the growth in the level of demand to which supply can adapt. This effect might be even stronger for regional economies, presumably more integrated among them. In this paper, we examine this issue for the case of the Spanish regions over the period 1988-2008, and calculate their balance of payments-constrained growth rates. By comparing these balance of payments-constrained growth rates with the actual growth rates, we would be able to assess whether the balance of payments has acted as a constraint to economic growth for the Spanish regional economies in the period analyzed

Educación virtual y el aprendizaje colaborativo en estudiantes del segundo ciclo de Informática de una institución tecnológica privada, Lima, 2023

El presente estudio tuvo como objetivo determinar la influencia de la educación virtual en la interdependencia positiva del aprendizaje colaborativo en estudiantes de segundo ciclo de Informática de una Institución Tecnológica Privada, Lima, 2023, el estudio tuvo un enfoque cuantitativo, tipo aplicada, de nivel explicativo, el método empleado fue hipotético-deductivo y de diseño investigativo. La muestra lo conformaron 53 alumnos del segundo ciclo de Informática en una Institución Tecnológica Privada en Lima. Los resultados descriptivos fueron, que los estudiantes encuestados ubicaron a la educación virtual en un nivel alto del 56,6%, un nivel medio de 43,4%. Así el 66% indicó que el aprendizaje colaborativo se desarrolló en el nivel confiable y el 34% en un nivel ponderado, por ende, demuestra que un 56,6% de los estudiantes considera la educación virtual alto, frente al 66% que evalúa el aprendizaje colaborativo como confiable. Se concluyó que la educación virtual es un predictor y determinante con (Rho=91.8%) en el aprendizaje cooperativo, ya que el nivel de significación que reporta el modelo está por debajo del margen de error (p= ,000<0,05), confirmando que el desarrollo educativo efectivo afecta el aprendizaje cooperativo