Regional structure of wages and external economies in Spain

Regional data on wages for the Spanish economy show that workers who live in developed regions earn more than workers in other regions. Literature on external economies provides a possible explanation of why firms do not move from these regions to others where wages are lower. Previous studies for the Spanish case use aggregated sectoral data to explain in terms of external economies why average wages are different across regions. The original contribution of this paper consists of using individual data to detect the existence and nature of external economies as an explanatory cause of territorial wage differences. With this aim, we have used individual data from the EPF 1990-91 (INE). This information permits us to control the influence of individual and job characteristics on wages to, first, detect the existence of external economies and, second, to test alternative explanations of their presence. The empirical evidence obtained confirms the relevance of territorial external economies and their influence on wages, as a result of improvements in the productive efficiency of the firm. In concrete terms, the more relevant external economies are associated with the regional human capital stock and geographical productive specialisation.regional labour markets, wages, human capital, external economies

Wage curves for Spain. Evidence from the family budget survey

This study explores the existence of a wage curve for Spain. To quantify this relationship for the Spanish economy, we used individual data from the EPF 1990-1991. The results show the presence of a wage curve with an elasticity of 0.13. The availability of very detailed information on wages and unemployment has also shown that less protected labour market groups young workers, manual workers and building sector workers- have a higher elasticity of wages to local unemployment. These results could be interpreted as a greater facility of firms in these segments to settle wages as a function of the unemployment rate.regional labour markets, unemployment rate, wage curve

Spanish unemployment: Normative versus analytical regionalisation procedures

In applied regional analysis, statistical information is usually published at different territorial levels with the aim of providing information of interest for different potential users. When using this information, there are two different choices: first, to use normative regions (towns, provinces, etc.), or, second, to design analytical regions directly related with the analysed phenomena. In this paper, provincial time series of unemployment rates in Spain are used in order to compare the results obtained by applying two analytical regionalisation models (a two stages procedure based on cluster analysis and a procedure based on mathematical programming) with the normative regions available at two different scales: NUTS II and NUTS I. The results have shown that more homogeneous regions were designed when applying both analytical regionalisation tools. Two other obtained interesting results are related with the fact that analytical regions were also more stable along time and with the effects of scale in the regionalisation process.unemployment, regionalisation, analytical region, normative region

Design of Homogeneous Territorial Units: A Methodological Proposal

One of the main questions to solve when analysing geographically added information consists of the design of territorial units adjusted to the objectives of the study. This is related with the reduction of the effects of the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP). In this paper an optimisation model to solve regionalisation problems is proposed. This model seeks to reduce some disadvantages found in previous works about automated regionalisation tools.contiguity constraint, zone design, optimisation, modifiable areal unit problem

Spacialisation in Europe and asymmetric shocks: potential risks of EMU

Most optimistic views, based on Optimum Currency Areas (OCA) literature, have concluded that the probability of asymmetric shocks to occur at a national level will tend to diminish in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as a result of the intensification of the integration process during the most recent years. Therefore, since Economic Geography Theories predict a higher specialisation of regions, it is expected that asymmetric shocks will increase. Previous studies have examined to what extent asymmetric shocks have been relevant in the past using, mainly, static measures of asymmetries such as the correlation coefficients between series of shocks previously calculated from a structural VAR model (Bayoumi and Eichengreen, 1992). In this paper, we study the evolution of manufacturing specific asymmetries in Europe from a dynamic point of view (applying the model proposed by Haldane and Hall, 1991) in order to obtain new evidence about potential risks of EMU.structural var models, economic and monetary union, optimum currency areas, specialisation, asymmetric shocks, kalman filter

Capital humano local y productividad en las provincias espanolas

In the last decade, different studies have tried to contrast empirically the existence of a relationship between local human capital and the productivity of a given territory, and the possible presence of external economies. The most common result has been the finding of a positive relationship between both variables. However, there is no difference when trying to explain this result: a first group of authors remark the role of external economies associated to human capital, while a second group believes in the rellevance of complementary relationships among the different productive factors and, in particular, among human and physical capital. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the existence of a possible relationship between the stock of human capital in the Spanish provinces (NUTS-III) and their productivity, and next, find out if the channel of transmission is related to external economies. For this reason, a two-stage methodology is applied. In the first stage, a Mincer equation is estimated using information from the Encuesta de Presupuestos Familiares (Family Budget Survey) to obtain estimates of the average productivity of the Spanish provinces once the effect of individual human capital is controlled. In a second stage, the estimates of territorial productivity is introduced as the endogenous variable in a new equation where explanatory variables try to reflect the stock of human capital at every province. From this second regression, a positive relationship is found. However, the main conclusion of the paper is that this relationship cannot be explained by the impact of exogenous local human capital external economies, but by other demand factors.regional labour markets, wages, human capital, external economies

El mercado de trabajo espanol en la union monetaria. Flexibilidad de salarios y politica laboral

The low interregional labour mobility and the incapacity of the Community Budget to act as a stabilization tool imply that the Spanish labour market should have a high wage flexibility to react quickly in response to asymmetric shocks in the framework defined by the Monetary Union. In this paper, we study the rigidity of wages and its possible determinants using empirical evidence on wage rigidity for the OECD countries from the estimation of wage equations following a Phillips curve specification augmented with expectations. The obtained results permit to affirm that the Spanish labour market performs poorly with a high wage rigidity and as a result with a low capacity to react in response to recessive shocks. The analysis of the determinants of this high rigidity permits to obtain the following conclusions. First, a higher wage flexibility could be obtained through a coordinated and consensuated action of social and economic agents in the wage bargaining process. Second, active labour market policies, specially related to formation, or passive policies, like a decrease in the duration of unemployment subsidies, can also increase wage flexibility. And, third, a higher flexibility could be obtained moving to more centralized or decentralized wage bargaining systems.monetary union, institutions and labour markets, wage flexibility

Topics, techniques and applications in urban and regional science in the nineties: a bibliometric analysis

The current state of regional and urban science has been much discussed and a number of studies have speculated on possible future trends in the development of the discipline. However, there has been little empirical analysis of current publication patterns in regional and urban journals. This paper studies the kinds of topics, techniques and data used in articles published in nine top international journals during the 1990s with the aim of identifying current trends in this research field.regional and urban science, bibliometric analysis

Authors', Institutions' and Countries' rankings in regional and urban science. An analysis for nine top international journals from 1991 to 2000

This paper examines the most productive authors, institutions and countries in regional and urban science from 1991 to 2000 using information on published articles (and pages) from a sample of widely recognized journals in this field: ARS, JUE, JRS, IJURR, IRSR, PRS, RSUE, RS and US. We also consider the relation between the country of the institution named in articles and the country in which the journal is published, in order to know if there are a home publication bias in regional and urban science. Analysis was made for the whole decade and by subperiods, this allowed us to make a more dynamic interpretation of the results.rankings, regional and urban research, bibliometric analysis

Potencialidad de la modelizacion State-Space y el filtro de Kalman para el analisis regional. Una aplicacion para el indice de actividad industrial

The deficit existent in our country in order of the available of quantitative indicators to made a regional industrial activity conjuncture analysis have initiated a discussion in different forums about which is the best methodology for elaborating indicators of this characteristics. In this context, in this paper we summarise and extend the main conclusions obtained in previous studies (Clar, et al., 1997a, 1997b and 1998) about the possibility of extending the indirect methods that nowadays have been used in the Spanish regions to analyse the short term evolution of regional industrial production. This conclusions takes us to propose a different strategy for elaborating indirect quantitative indicators. In particular, (following Israilevich and Kuttner, 1993) a latent variable model for estimating the regional production activity is proposed. This kind of models can be specified in terms of state-space model and estimated by the Kalman filter. To validate the proposed methodology an indicators are estimated following this methodology for three of the four Spanish regions that have an Industrial Production Index (IPI) obtained by direct methods (Andalucia, Asturias and Pais Vasco) and we compare them with the published IPIs. The results obtained shows the good accuracy of the proposed strategy, opening a working line for surpassing the deficit existent nowadays in Spanish regions.industrial activity, conjuncture, regional indicators, state-space models, production industrial, kalman filter