QUALITY AND PRICES OF INTRA-EUROPEAN TRADE OF FOOD-INDUSTRY PRODUCTS

The completion of the European Single Market should bring out an exploitation of comparative advantages in production and trade. It is usually assumed that, given the predominance of intraeuropean trade flows in the global import figures of the European Union, efficiency gains from trade creation could be potentially important. However, the analysis of the effects of the Single Market on trade specialisation with a greater degree of accuracy requires trade quality indicators to be available. This paper uses the theory of index numbers to establish the relative quality levels of the food industry shipments to the European Internal Market from European Union member countries. It is found a positive relationship between the evolution of country shares on the European food in-dustry and the ability to achieve growing quality levels in the composition of export flows. Finally, intraeuropean food industry trade is analysed accordingly to the pattern of specialisation adopted. La conclusión del Mercado Único Europeo debería traer consigo una explotaciónde las ventajas comparativas en la producción y el comercio. Se supone habitualmenteque, dada la predominancia de flujos comerciales intraeuropeos en las cifras globales deimportación de la Unión Europea, las ganancias de eficiencia derivadas de la creación decomercio podrían ser potencialmente importantes. Sin embargo, un análisis máscuidadoso de los efectos del Mercado Único sobre la especialización comercial requierede la disponibilidad de indicadores de comercio relativos a la calidad. Este artículoutiliza la teoría de los números índice para establecer los niveles de calidad relativa delos envíos de la industria alimentaria al Mercado Interno Europeo desde los paíseseuropeos miembros de Unión. Se encuentra una relación positiva entre la evolución dela participación relativa de un país en la industria alimentaria europea y la capacidadpara lograr niveles crecientes de calidad en la composición de los flujos de exportación.Finalmente, se analiza el comercio intraeuropeo de la industria alimentaria teniendo encuenta el modelo de especialización adoptado.comercio intra-industrial; calidad; industria alimentaria, Mercado Único Europeo. Intra-industry trade; quality; food industry; European Single Market.

Calculating shadow wages for family labour in agriculture : An analysis for Spanish citrus fruit farms

This paper deals with the calculation of shadow wages for family labour in agriculture. Using the existence of a duality between input distance and cost functions, we use the former to derive individual labour shadow prices for a sample of Spanish citrus fruit producers. Our results show that the average shadow price representing the opportunity cost of family labour employed onfarm, is lower than the average market wage rate paid for hired labour. We relate this finding to a strategy of outsourcing of many growing tasks that is currently pursued by farmers to overcome the problems posed by a suboptimal farm size.shadow prices, duality, distance functions, on-farm labour opportunity cost, outsourcing

Can we be satisfied with our football team? Evidence from spanish professional football.

This paper assesses the sporting performance of Spanish professional football teams at competition level, namely, League, King’s Cup and European competitions (Champions League and UEFA Cup). Then, the gap between the result obtained by a team in a given competition and that expected according to its potential is used as a proxy of the degree of satisfaction that fans should feel: the narrower the gap the greater the level of satisfaction. Regarding methodology, Data Envelopment Analysis techniques and directional distance functions are used. Results reveal that most teams perform rather differently across competitions, the lower average performance corresponding to the King’s CupSpanish football League; specific-competition performance; Data Envelopment Analysis.

- SHADOW PRICES AND DISTANCE FUNCTIONS: AN ANALYSIS FOR FIRMS OF THE SPANISH CERAMIC PAVEMENTS INDUSTRY.

This paper deals with the calculation of shadow prices for two industrial wastes generated on their production processes by a sample of eighteen firms belonging to the Spanish ceramic pavements industry. These prices are used to construct a corrected index of productivity which allows for considering wastes going with the production of marketable goods. It is followed the ethodologicalapproach first proposed by Färe, Grosskopf, Lovell y Yaisawarng (1993), which establishes a duality between distance and revenue functions. The shadow prices obtained for watery muds and used oils allow to measure in terms of a loss of marketable output the cost of achieving a marginal reduction in the production of these wastes. It is also found a negative correlation between absolute shadow prices and the intensity of wastes production, reflecting a greater marginal cost of eliminating wastes for those firms that have already made investments on cleaner procedures. Finally, differences between a conventional labour productivity index and a corrected productivity index are related to some firms¿ characteristics: size, recorded investments in cleaner technologies ad affiliation to a Ceramics Technological Institute, and found to be statistically significant. En este trabajo se estiman los precios sombra de los residuos industriales que acompañan a laproducción de pavimentos cerámicos de un conjunto de dieciocho empresas del sector. Estosprecios son utilizados para construir una medida corregida de productividad que considera laproducción de residuos como outputs no deseables. Para la obtención de los precios sombra seutiliza un enfoque basado en la dualidad entre función distancia y función de ingresos propuestopor Färe, Grosskopf, Lovell y Yaisawarng (1993). Los resultados muestran que los preciossombra de los lodos acuosos y aceites industriales usados representan un notable coste deoportunidad para las empresas, cuantifica-ble en términos de pérdidas de producción deseable.Se observa, además, una cierta correlación nega-tiva entre la intensidad de producción deresiduos y el valor absoluto de sus precios sombra, lo que puede reflejar los mayores costesmarginales de la reducción de residuos para aquellas empresas que ya vienen aplicandoprocesos de producción más eficientes en términos medioambientales. Final-mente, secomprueba que las diferencias entre el índice convencional de productividad del trabajo y el índicecorregido están relacionadas en forma estadísticamente significativa con características de lasempresas tales como su dimensión, la realización previa de inversiones en tecnologías limpias yla afiliación al Instituto Tecnológico de la Cerámica AICE.precios sombra, función distancia, función de ingresos, industria de pavimentos cerámicos, medio ambiente, productividad shadow prices, duality, distance functions, revenue functions, ceramic pavements industry, environment, productivity

The importance of time in referee home bias due to social pressure. Evidence from Spanish football

This paper analyses referee home bias due to social pressure with data from the matches played in the First Division of the Spanish football league between the 2002/03 and 2009/10 seasons. Finally, our main conclusion is that the time the referee has to make a decision does affect the final outcome; while there is no referee home bias when a free kick is awarded, in the case of booking players, when the referee has more time to make a decision, social pressure can influence the final outcome in favour of the home team.Social pressure; crowd effect; referee home bias; sports economics.

DOES SERVICE QUALITY MATTER IN MEASURING PERFORMANCE OF WATER UTILITIES?

Quality is a dimension of water services that has been repeatedly omitted in the study of performance of water utilities. In this paper, we make use of Data Envelopment Analysis techniques (DEA) to compute both conventional quantity-based and quality-adjusted indicators of technical efficiency for a sample of Spanish water utilities. The key assumptions are that a lack of quality (bad quality) can be regarded as a bad output, and the existence of a trade-off between quantity and quality. Our main results indicate that quality matters in measuring technical performance, the difference between conventional and quality-adjusted evaluations representing the opportunity cost of maintaining quality. Averages and distribution functions significantly differ between both assessments of performance, although water utilities do not seem to rank differently.water utilities; quality; Data Envelopment Analysis.

Precios y calidad de las importaciones españolas de productos textiles

Este trabajo tiene el objetivo de estudiar los niveles relativos de precios y calidad de las importaciones españolas de productos textiles según su origen geográfico; para ello, se calculan índices translog de precios que permiten atribuir las diferencias en el valor unitario de los flujos de importación a los distintos niveles de calidad de los productos que los integran y a diferencias en sus precios. El análisis se lleva a cabo para el período 1993-1997, con una desagregación de seis dígitos de la Nomenclatura Combinada y datos de EUROSTAT. Se obtiene que las diferencias en los valores unitarios de las importaciones españolas según su origen son muy notables, correspondiendo los mayores niveles a las procedentes de países europeos en comparación con las que proceden de China y los países asiáticos. El menor valor unitario de las importaciones asiáticas responde, fundamentalmente, a sus menores precios y, aunque los niveles de calidad son por lo general favorables a las importaciones de países europeos, las diferencias sobre tales niveles son menos [email protected]; [email protected]

Measuring environmental performance in the treatment of municipal solid waste: the case of the European Union-28

©2021. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This document is the Submitted, Accepted, Published, version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Ecological Indicators. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.107328This paper proposes a measure of environmental performance in the treatment of municipal solid waste, which is defined as a ratio between a composite indicator of waste treated through environmentally desirable operations –recycling and recovery in our case study– and a composite indicator of waste treated through undesirable operations –landfill and incineration. Moreover, it contributes both overall and treatment-specific indicators of performance. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) techniques are used to compute the environmental performance indicators and they are illustrated with an empirical assessment of the environmental performance of the European Union-28 (EU-28) members in their treatment of municipal waste, with data for the year 2017. Our results point to a worryingly low average level of performance, with the best performers being mainly Nordic and Central European countries such as Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Finland and Denmark; at the opposite end of the spectrum, environmental performance in the treatment of waste is particularly low in most of the Eastern European countries that joined the EU-28 from the 2000s, and some Southern member states. The determinants of performance are also investigated, the main finding being a positive and statistically significant association between environmental performance in municipal waste treatment and the level of economic development

Can we be satisfied with our football team? Evidence from spanish professional football

This paper assesses the sporting performance of Spanish professional football teams at competition level, namely, League, King’s Cup and European competitions (Champions League and UEFA Cup). Then, the gap between the result obtained by a team in a given competition and that expected according to its potential is used as a proxy of the degree of satisfaction that fans should feel: the narrower the gap the greater the level of satisfaction. Regarding methodology, Data Envelopment Analysis techniques and directional distance functions are used. Results reveal that most teams perform rather differently across competitions, the lower average performance corresponding to the King’s Cup

Are the determinants of CO2 emissions converging among OECD countries?

This paper studies convergence in CO2emission intensity (CO2 emissions over GDP) among OECD countries over the period 1960-2008 based on its determinants, namely, energy intensity (energy consumption over GDP) and the so-called carbonisation index (CO2 emissions over energy consumption). We apply the Phillips and Sul (2007) methodology, which tests for the existence of convergence clubs. Our results highlight that differences in emission intensity convergence are more determined by differences in convergence of the carbonisation index rather than by differences in the dynamic convergence of energy intensity