La reforma del sistema bancario español

Las reformas que se han ido materializando han estado encadenadas y condicionadas a la evolución de la crisis y el problema asociado a la misma. La crisis financiera internacional para España se diagnostica como un problema de liquidez. Después, el problema de liquidez se convierte en un problema de solvencia. Y la tercera etapa sería la del problema de confianza que vendría con la crisis soberana o del euro

Condiciones para el desarrollo de la empresa española

The Spanish economy is highly dependent on foreign firms, specially in the manufacturing and in medium and high tech sectors. Why relative size and technological capabilities of national firms are lower than firms in other countries of similar economic development, is an important question whose answer would help to calibrate the future growth prospects of the Spanish economy. This presentation contains a summary of some research findings in our study of family firms in Spain with the aim to contribute to a better knowledge of the conditions that seem to determine the endogenous growth of national firms. We point towards the relatively low attraction of highly educated people into entrepreneurial activities during the past twenty years as one possible answer to this question

Spanish non-financial corporations and the COVID pandemic: vulnerability, resilience and transformation

Purpose This paper aims to assess the vulnerability and resilience of the Spanish non-financial corporations (NFC) to the shock from the COVID pandemic with consolidated income accounts data, and shows comparative labor productivity and endowment of organizational capital of Spanish firms, as indicators of their capabilities at the outset of the new digital transformation wave proposed by the next generation EU program. Design/methodology/approach The paper first describes the recent evolution (quarterly 2020 data) of the Spanish non-financial corporate sector (gross value added, labor cost, capital formation, profits) in the assessment of the vulnerability and resilience of the sector to the shock of the COVID pandemic. Then second, it estimates a probit model to evaluate the EU country effects in the explanation of the different propensity firms in the European Company Survey database to adopt innovative management and organization practices. Findings In the Spring of 2020, the Spanish NFC were still recovering from the great recession (low resilience), and the severe contraction in value-added and profits of the corporate sector in the first three quarters of the year evidences its high vulnerability. The proved complementarity between organizational and information related assets implies that the low endowment of organizational capital of Spanish firms, could be a severe limitation for the advancement toward digitalization. Research limitations/implications The aggregate corporate sector data used in the analysis of vulnerability and resilience of Spanish firms does not account for the heterogeneous effects of the pandemic across economic sectors (manufacturing and services, for example) and across firms (large versus small ones). Originality/value The paper complements the country-level analysis of the impact of the COVID pandemic in the Spanish economy with the analysis of the impact of the pandemic in the performance of the corporate sector. It provides one of the first analysis of the current endowment of organization capital of Spanish firms and highlights its relevance for productivity growth

The effect of innovation activity on innovating quasi-rents: an empirical application

This paper investigates whether innovations generate quasi-rents and whether the size of those quasi-rents are affected by market conditions. Using a panel data of Spanish manufacturing firms during the period 1990-93 we answer affinnatevely to both questions. Product, process and both innovations generate quasi rents and such quasirents appears to be higher for process innovations. The size of innovation quasi-rents seems to be affected positively by demand growth, by product standarisation, and by low product market concentration. The three empirical results are in agreement with the theoretical predictions such as the Schmoockler' s theory of demandpool innovation, the price-elasticity of demand effects of Kamien and Schwartz and the replacement effect of Arrow. Process innovations are more affected by market conditions than the rest of innovations, at the tine of generating quasi-rents

Entrepreneurship, Management Servicesand Economic Growth

We set out to model the joint production of entrepreneurs and workers assuming that the former contribute to the output of the firm by making entrepreneurial decisions (with increasing returns), and managing the productive resources (with decreasing returns). The model explains the equilibrium output of the representative firm and the equilibrium share of entrepreneurs in the working population, as a function of the quality of the entrepreneur and of the elasticity of output to the entrepreneur’s management services. The time dynamics of the solution imply that the contribution to labor productivity growth from increases in the quality of entrepreneurs over time is higher in countries with a larger starting share of entrepreneurs and higher in countries with lower starting labor productivity (convergence enhancing). The model predictions are tested with data from OECD countries for the period 1970-2002. We find that improvements in the quality of entrepreneurs can make a substantial contribution to economic growth by means of more productive management services.Entrepreneurial quality, productivity growth, OECD countries, Coasian entrepreneur

Innovations' success and failure in the business cycle

This paper examines three channels of influence of the business cycle in the propensity of firms to introduce technological innovations: Aggregate demand (firms initiate more innovation projects in expansion than in recession; risk (the probability that initiated projects fail is higher in contraction than in expansion); and obstacles to innovate (more firms perceive the obstacles to innovate as high in recessions than in expansions and the high obstacles implies lower propensity to initiate innovation projects). With Spanish CIS data we find evidence that the three channels contributed to the fall in the proportion of firms that introduce technological innovations during the Great Recession, compared with the proportion of innovators in the years of expansion. The research methodology consists on estimating a multiprobit model with the probability that firms introduce technological innovations, the probability that firms abandon ongoing innovation projects, and the probability that firms perceive the obstacles to innovate as high

Agency Contracts under Maximum-Entropy

This article proposes the application of the maximum-entropy principle (MEP) to agency contracting (where a principal hires an agent to make decisions on their behalf) in situations where the principal and agent only have partial knowledge on the probability distribution of the output conditioned on the agent’s actions. The paper characterizes the second-best agency contract from a maximum entropy distribution (MED) obtained from applying the MEP to the agency situation consistently with the information available. We show that, with the minimum shared information about the output distribution for the agency relationship to take place, the second-best compensation contract is (a monotone transformation of) an increasing affine function of output. With additional information on the output distribution, the second-best optimal contracts can be more complex. The second-best contracts obtained theoretically from the MEP cover many compensation schemes observed in real agency relationships

Opciones e incentivos : un modelo binario de agencia

El trabajo analiza la eficiencia de las opciones como instrumento de retribución a directivos. Mediante un simplificado modelo de agencia en que la incertidumbre está descrita por una distribución binaria, el análisis permite comparar opciones y acciones como formas de crear incentivos a directivos adversos al riesgo cuando aportar esfuerzo conlleva un coste. Una de las conclusiones del trabajo es que cuando las opciones son preferidas a las acciones, el precio de ejercicio de aquéllas es óptimo fijarlo por encima del valor de mercado del proyecto. Además, el número de opciones que constituyen la retribución del directivo resulta ser el inverso de la probabilidad de ejercicio de aquéllas. En términos comparativos, el contrato de opciones resulta más eficiente cuando la incertidumbre del output es relativamente alta. Este hecho proporciona una posible explicación de porqué las opciones predominan como forma de retribución en empresas pertenecientes a sectores de mayor innovación tecnológica, y en sectores poco maduros en que la continuidad de las empresas no está garantizada a corto plazo.This paper uses an stylized agency model to evaluate the economic efficiency of options contracts when payoff uncertainty is bimodal, a situation rather common when projects either "fail" or "succeed". We find that options contracts weakly dominate linear contracts, and that options are strictly preferred by the principal when the spread between the modes of the payoff distribution is high enough. When options are the preferred alternative, the optimal contract will fix a number of options equal to the inverse of the probability of exercise together with an exercise price above the expected value of the project. The results are consistent with the extended use of stock options contracts in high tech firms