R Graphics (3rd Edition) Paul Murrell. Chapman & Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, 2019. ISBN 978-1-4987-8905-9. 423 pp.

It has been fourteen years since the first edition of R Graphics was published (Murrell 2006) and eight since the second one was released (Murrell 2012). For readers, like me, who read the first edition of R Graphics but skipped the second one, this third edition of R Graphics represents a new, fresh updated version of the book. In transit from the first to the third edition, in addition to including new material, Dr. Murrell has introduced key changes and some rearrangements that have made the whole book more understandable, especially the concepts related to viewports and coordinate systems. Although major changes were made in the second edition of the book (Cook and Hofmann 2011), this third edition also introduces some changes. This is evident comparing the indexes of the second and the third editions. In particular, paraphrasing the preface of this third edition, Chapter 8 (devoted to developing new grid graphical functions and objects) has been completely rewritten and the fourth part of the book extensively restructured (and, I would add, reduced)

Key Electoral Institutions and Rules Influencing Proportionality and Partisan Bias in Spanish Politics

The current paper focuses on the Spanish electoral rules governing political competition for the central "Congreso de los Diputados". It is well-documented that the system as a whole has traditionally favoured one or the other of the two main political parties (PP and PSOE) at the expense of proportionality and the remaining political parties. This paper focuses on some key Spanish electoral rules and investigates how much the observed biases could be altered by introducing some alternative rules taken from the Swedish electoral system, ceteris paribus. Measures of disproportionality are made through the Loosemore-Hanby index and the Gallagher index. The electoral raw data used for our estimations comes from the 2011, 2015 and 2016 last three Spanish general elections. The basic contribution of the paper is an empirical one as it provides a new example that institutions matter for result

An analysis of loan default determinants: the Spanish case

The Spanish financial system is experiencing a very turbulent economic period in which loan defaults has lived an unprecedented increasing period, going from being less than 1% in 2004 to levels of above 13% in 2013. The impact of this, along with other circumstances, has led to the greatest financial restructuring ever made to date in Spain, with important macroeconomic and microeconomic consequences. This paper studies the determinants of delinquency (loan default) in Spanish credit institutions for the period of 2004-2011 and introduces new variables that have been disclosed as relevant in the current financial crisis as well as others non-previously considered internal variables, such as hedging derivatives (which are having an increasingly greater importance in accounts of Spanish credit institutions). Among the most prominent variables that have had a significant impact on the increase of delinquency are, among external variables, house prices, unemployment rates and the number of companies declaring bankruptcy and, among internal variables, property investment, customer credits over active, interest rate, participated companies and solvency rates. The analysis also shows significant differences in delinquency¿s behavior between savings banks and banks and between credit institutions that needed recapitalization and those that did not

Desagregando estadísticas de población

Debido a cuestiones de confidencialidad y a fin de evitar que cualquier persona concreta pueda ser identificada (de forma directa, o indirectamente en conexión con cualquier otra información publicada), las leyes de protección de datos de carácter personal, tanto nacionales como internacionales, obligan a que las estadísticas referidas a variables sociales, económicas y demográficas deban ser publicadas agregadas por unidades espaciales (BOE, 1999; OJEU 2013; USC 2002)

Determinants of interest margins in Spanish credit institutions before and after the 2008 financial crash

As interest margins of credit institutions affect economic performance of countries, finding out which are the main determinants of their evolution is a research task of great interest at current times. This is the purpose of the present paper as regards to the Spanish case over the period 2004-2012. Based on the econometric contributions by Ho and Saunders (1981) and some of its extensions, the authors develop a model that includes as explanatory variables the factors usually examined in the literature and other singular variables that might be relevant. Particularly, the rate of leverage, the quality of their assets measured according to their risk, and the profit obtained from the selling of assets, including real estate ones. The research also provides an analysis of differences between banks and savings banks

Spanish electoral archive. SEA database

This paper introduces the SEA database (acronym for Spanish Electoral Archive). SEA brings together the most complete public repository available to date on Spanish election outcomes. SEA holds all the results recorded from the electoral processes of General (1979-2019), Regional (1989-2021), Local (1979-2019) and European Parliamentary (1987-2019) elections held in Spain since the restoration of democracy in the late 70s, in addition to other data sets with electoral content. The data are ofered for free and is presented in a homogeneous and friendly format. Most of the databases are available for download with data from various electoral levels, including from the ballot box level. This paper details how the information is organized, what the main variables are on ofer for each election, which processes were applied to the data for their homogenization, and discusses future areas of work. This data has many applications, for example, as inputs in election prediction models and in ecological inference algorithms, to study determinants of turnout or voting, or for defning marketing strategies

COVID-19 and changes in social habits. Restaurant terraces, a booming space in cities. The case of Madrid

The COVID-19 pandemic and the fear experienced by some of the population, along with the lack of mobility due to the restrictions imposed, has modified the social behaviour of Spaniards. This has had a significant effect on the hospitality sector, viewed as being an economic and social driver in Spain. From the analysis of data collected in two of our own non-probabilistic surveys (N ~ 8400 and N ~ 2000), we show how, during the first six months of the pandemic, Spaniards notably reduced their consumption in bars and restaurants, also preferring outdoor spaces to spaces inside. The restaurant sector has needed to adapt to this situation and, with the support of the authorities (regional and local governments), new terraces have been allowed on pavements and public parking spaces, modifying the appearance of the streets of main towns and cities. This study, focused on the city of Madrid, analyses the singular causes that have prompted this significant impact on this particular city, albeit with an uneven spatial distribution. It seems likely that the new measures will leave their mark and some of the changes will remain. The positive response to these changes from the residents of Madrid has ensured the issue is being widely debated in the public arena

European Systemic Credit Risk Transmission Using Dynamic Bayesian Networks.

The analysis of systemic credit risk is one of the most important concerns within the financial system. Its complexity lies in adequately measuring how the transmission of systemic default spreads through assets or financial markets. The transmission structure of systemic credit risk across several European sectoral CDS is studied by dynamic Bayesian networks. The new approach allows for a more advanced analysis of systemic risk transmission, including long-term and more complex relationships. The modelling reveals as relevant only relationships between the original series and one- and twolagged series. Network structure learning displays a robust and stationary underlying risk transmission structure, pointing to a consolidated transmission mechanism of systemic credit risk between CDSs. Between 5% and 40% of sectoral CDS series variances are explained by the network relationships. The modelling allows us to ascertain which relationships between the CDS series show positive (amplifier) and negative (reducer) effects of systemic risk transmission

Dasymetric distribution of votes in a dense city

[EN] A large proportion of electoral analyses using geography are performed on a small area basis, such as polling units. Unfortunately, polling units are frequently redrawn, provoking breaks in their data series. Previous electoral results play a key role in many analyses. They are used by political party workers and journalists to present quick assessments of outcomes, by political scientists and electoral geographers to perform detailed scrutinizes and by pollsters and forecasters to anticipate electoral results. In this paper, we study to what extent more complex geographical approaches (based on a proper location of electors on the territory using dasymetric techniques) are of value in comparison to simple methods (like areal weighting) for the problem of reallocating votes in a large, dense city. Barcelona is such a city and, having recently redrawn the boundaries of its census sections, it is an ideal candidate for further scrutiny. Although previous studies show the approaches based on dasymetric techniques outperforming simpler solutions for interpolating census figures, our results show that improvements in the process of reallocating votes are marginal. This brings into question the extra effort that entails introducing ancillary sources of information in a dense urban area for this kind of data. Additional research is required to know whether and when these results are extendable. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness under Grant CSO2013-43054-R.Pavia, JM.; Cantarino-Martí, I. (2017). Dasymetric distribution of votes in a dense city. Applied Geography. 86:22-31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2017.06.021S22318