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Judgment 582/2023 of 20 April held that an investment agreement clause guaranteeing a new shareholder a minimum investment return constitutes prohibited financial assistance. The Supreme Court therefore confirms that the restrictive interpretation of a prohibitive rule does not extend, in particular, to interpreting the forms in which prohibitive financial assistance can be granted, which are open-ended under the Spanish Companies Law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign direct investment (FDI) and tourism are listed as essential components of economic growth in many countries. However, empirical evidence remains controversial and ambiguous. This paper investigates the long-run effects of international tourism and FDI inflows on the rate of economic growth in Spain as an economy with a great GDP share of tourism and FDI. By employing a non-linear ARDL analysis, this study suggests that although international tourism development improves the economic growth rate, it might be wishful thinking to improve this rate by increasing the current rate of FDI in this country if the quality of FDI and its rate of return is as low as in the past. The reasons and solutions are explored in detail, and policy implications are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every Atonomous Community in Spain has promoted nature tourism and rural tourism in the villages furthest from the centers and axes of urban development as an economic activity that could replace traditional agro-livestock activities and that would halt emigration bleeding. However, the data analysis shows that many of these places have barely sparked the interest of potential visitors and that the return on investment is at least questionable. In this communication, the tourist supply and demand of the so-called Emptied Spain is analyzed, taking into account the sustainability in the process of transformation into a tourist destination and the territorial resilience of abandoned spaces, although ancient inhabitants had strong objective and subjective relations with those places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Smoking at the time of surgery is associated with postoperative complications. Quitting smoking before surgery is linked to fewer complications during the hospital stay. This work analysed whether a smoking cessation intervention before surgery is economically worthwhile when funded by the National Health System (NHS) in Spain. Methods: The economic analysis considered costs and benefits of the intervention to the NHS for the year 2016. The population who would benefit comprised adult smokers who were ready to quit and for whom surgery requiring admission to hospital was planned. The intervention, a combination of medical counselling and use of a smoking cessation drug which should occur 12 weeks before surgery, considered one attempt only to quit smoking. Benefits were costs avoided by averting postoperative complications if cessation was successful. The analysis compared the net economic outcome (benefit minus cost of intervention) and the return on investment, for intervention funded by the NHS versus the current situation without funding. Results: Smoking cessation increased by 21·7 per cent with funding; the rate was 32·5 per cent when funded versus 10·7 per cent without funding, producing 9611 extra quitters. The cost per averted smoker was €1753 with a benefit of €503, achieving a net economic benefit of €4·8 million per year. Given the annual cost of the intervention (€17·4 million, of which €5·6 million (32·5 per cent) represents drugs), the return on investment was 28·7 per cent annually, equivalent to €1·29 per €1 of investment. Conclusion: From the perspective of the Spanish NHS, the benefit of funding smoking cessation before surgery, in terms of healthcare cost savings, appears to greatly outweigh the costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Aims: To assess the cost‐effectiveness of alternative smoking cessation scenarios from the perspective of the Spanish National Health Service (NHS). Design: We used the European study on Quantifying Utility of Investment in Protection from Tobacco model (EQUIPTMOD), a Markov‐based state transition economic model, to estimate the return on investment (ROI) of: (a) the current provision of smoking cessation services (brief physician advice and printed self‐helped material + smoking ban and tobacco duty at current levels); and (b) four alternative scenarios to complement the current provision: coverage of proactive telephone calls; nicotine replacement therapy (mono and combo) [prescription nicotine replacement therapy (Rx NRT)]; varenicline (standard duration); or bupropion. A rate of 3% was used to discount life‐time costs and benefits. Setting: Spain. Participants: Adult smoking population (16+ years). Measurements: Health‐care costs associated with treatment of smoking attributable diseases (lung cancer, coronary heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary infection and stroke); intervention costs; quality‐adjusted life years (QALYs). Costs and outcomes were summarized using various ROI estimates. Findings: The cost of implementing the current provision of smoking cessation services is approximately €61 million in the current year. This translates to 18 quitters per 1000 smokers and a life‐time benefit–cost ratio of 5, compared with no such provision. All alternative scenarios were dominant (cost‐saving: less expensive to run and generated more QALYs) from the life‐time perspective, compared with the current provision. The life‐time benefit–cost ratios were: 1.87 (proactive telephone calls); 1.17 (Rx NRT); 2.40 (varenicline‐standard duration); and bupropion (2.18). The results remained robust in the sensitivity analysis. Conclusions: According to the EQUIPTMOD modelling tool it would be cost‐effective for the Spanish authorities to expand the reach of existing GP brief interventions for smoking cessation, provide pro‐active telephone support, and reimburse smoking cessation medication to smokers trying to stop. Such policies would more than pay for themselves in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of the Expected Return into the rules governing the insurance regulation in Spain may be considered as an important step to improve the transparency of the insurance system. The implementation of the Expected Return will allow to carry out the comparison, in terms of profitability, between insurance products offered by different companies. One of the objectives of this paper is to propose the methodology that should be followed for the calculation of the Expected Return, so that this indicator fulfills its main purpose: to compare different insurance products. The second contribution of this paper will allow to analyze the impact that the change in the premium value has on the Expected Return, so that it can become a new element to be considered by insurance companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of the Expected Return into the rules governing the insurance regulation in Spain may be considered an important step to improve the transparency of the insurance system. The implementation of the Expected Return will allow to carry out a comparison, in terms of profitability, between insurance products offered by different companies. One of the objectives of this paper is to propose the methodology that should be followed for the calculation of the Expected Return, so that this indicator fulfills its main purpose: to compare different insurance products. The second contribution of this paper will allow to analyze the impact that the change in the premium value has on the Expected Return, so that it can become a new element to be considered by insurance companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enormous rise in installed wind power capacity worldwide over the last twenty years means most of the wind power plants will soon reach their end-of-life of service. The attention of owners, governments and investors is being drawn to strategies aimed at increasing the useful life of these facilities or the repowering of old wind farms, with the additional benefit of increasing generated power by using more efficient wind turbines. With the aim of evaluating ways to address an actual case of the end of life of a wind power plant in Spain, three strategies are studied to assess the most suitable solutions, allowing the useful life of the current wind turbines to be extended for another ten years, or adopting a repowering strategy, in which the old wind turbines are replaced by new ones with a service life of twenty years. A stochastic techno-economic model is proposed, and the Monte Carlo simulation technique is used, allowing uncertainties and risks associated with the key technical and economic input variables to be considered, also revealing those with the greatest impact on the economic performance of the project. Results provided by the stochastic model are more realistic than the deterministic analysis, revealing an increase in the annual energy production ranging from 9.53% to 56.93%, depending on the strategy adopted, with repowering being the most advisable project. Valuable, practical outcomes for making tactical decisions in optimizing wind energy resources are obtained, considering different levels of improvements to be implemented in wind power plants according to the available resources and the expected return on investments. • Assessment of end-of-life strategies for wind power plants. • Stochastic techno-economic model to consider uncertainties. • Results show the feasibility and profitability of the end-of-life strategies. • Practical, realistic and valuable outcomes for making tactical decisions. • The stochastic analysis shows the uncertainties affecting key parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The European-study on Quantifying Utility of Investment in Protection from Tobacco (EQUIPT) project aimed to study transferability of economic evidence by co-creating the Tobacco Return On Investment (ROI) tool, previously developed in the United Kingdom, for four sample countries (Germany, Hungary, Spain and the Netherlands). The EQUIPT tool provides policymakers and stakeholders with customized information about the economic and wider returns on the investment in evidence-based tobacco control, including smoking cessation interventions. A Stakeholder Interview Survey was developed to engage with the stakeholders in early phases of the development and country adaptation of the ROI tool. The survey assessed stakeholders' information needs, awareness about underlying principles used in economic analyses, opinion about the importance, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of tobacco control interventions, and willingness to use a Health Technology Assessment (HTA) tool such as the ROI tool.Methods: A cross sectional study using a mixed method approach was conducted among participating stakeholders in the sample countries and the United Kingdom. The individual questionnaire contained open-ended questions as well as single choice and 7- or 3-point Likert-scale questions. The results corresponding to the priority and needs assessment and to the awareness of stakeholders about underlying principles used in economic analysis are analysed by country and stakeholder categories.Results: Stakeholders considered it important that the decisions on the investments in tobacco control interventions should be supported by scientific evidence, including prevalence of smoking, cost of smoking, quality of life, mortality due to smoking, and effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and budget impact of smoking cessation interventions. The proposed ROI tool was required to provide this granularity of information. The majority of the stakeholders were aware of the general principles of economic analyses used in decision making contexts but they did not appear to have in-depth knowledge about specific technical details. Generally, stakeholders' answers showed larger variability by country than by stakeholder category.Conclusions: Stakeholders across different European countries viewed the use of HTA evidence to be an important factor in their decision-making process. Further, they considered themselves to be capable of interpreting the results from a ROI tool and were highly motivated to use it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we perform a statistical analysis of the high-frequency returns of the Ibex35 Madrid stock exchange index. We find that its probability distribution seems to be stable over different time scales, a stylized fact observed in many different financial time series. However, an in-depth analysis of the data using maximum likelihood estimation and different goodness-of-fit tests rejects the Lévy-stable law as a plausible underlying probabilistic model. The analysis shows that the Normal Inverse Gaussian distribution provides an overall fit for the data better than any of the other subclasses of the family of Generalized Hyperbolic distributions and certainly much better than the Lévy-stable laws. Furthermore, the right (resp. left) tail of the distribution seems to follow a power-law with exponent (resp. ). Finally, we present evidence that the observed stability is due to temporal correlations or non-stationarities of the data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In contrast with other financial institutions in Spain, Saving Banks play a social function as well as a financial function, Considering this fact, and the limited evidence up to date, our paper aims to make an in-depth study of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)-financial performance relationship in this sector. More specifically, the main goal is to analyze such a relationship in both directions, trying to overcome the major limitations of previous studies. After employing different panel data methods (1996-2006), results showed a negative interactive relationship between CSR, measured as «obra social» -- a CSR practice that incurs a cost for the Saving Banks -- and financial performance, measured as ROA (return on assets) and ROE (return on equity). Consequently, results support the negative synergy hypothesis in Spanish Saving Banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In a context where it is of increasing importance to optimize resources, to refine the definition of the environment and to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI), preliminary research and evaluation in PR have not evolved significantly in the past two decades. There are very few publications examining the Spanish case and the results of this study indicate that these practices are uncommon. There is a slight preference for research prior to the development of the campaign at the expense of evaluative research. Furthermore, there is a notable discrepancy between the results of the Spanish study and the published studies from other countries: perception audits (outtakes) and views (outcomes) are undertaken more frequently than publicity audits (outputs). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Wage inequality in Spain decreased slightly between 1995 and 2006 despite significant changes in employment composition. Changes in the composition of the workforce would have increased inequality keeping constant wage structure, but changes in wage differentials are the most important factor determining the evolution of inequality. By subperiods, the low end of the wage distribution compressed between 1995 and 2002, while it experienced a slight increase in inequality afterward, as it was observed in the USA. On the other hand, in contrast to the American case, the high end of the wage distribution was strikingly compressed in the second period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The main objective of this paper is to analyse the link between human capital depreciation and the educational level of Spanish salaried workers. Design/methodology/approach – Wage equations are estimated by sector and occupation, following the empirical framework proposed by Neuman and Weiss. Data in this study refer to the Spanish labour market, using two cross-sectional employee-firm matched data. Findings – The estimates provided in this paper suggest that human capital depreciation rates are not homogeneous for the whole sample; in contrast, they vary across educational levels, being greater as the workers' school attainment increases. Research limitations/implications – The main restriction of the paper is the limited availability of quality longitudinal data to estimate human capital depreciation. Practical implications – Knowledge acquired by workers may quickly become obsolete in a context of technological change. Thus, the paper's main findings support the need for ongoing training programs to update workers' skills to changing market requirements. Originality/value – The added value of this paper is two-fold. On the one hand, returns to education and human capital depreciation for the Spanish labour force are estimated using a pseudo-panel created from two cross-sectional data bases. On the other hand, earnings equations are estimated by sector and occupation in order to calculate human capital depreciation rates; this procedure allows the authors to take into account the worker's occupation and their level of education as well as technological differences associated with their job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philip II of Spain accumulated debts equivalent to 60% of GDP. He also defaulted four times on his short-term loans, thus becoming the first serial defaulter in history. Contrary to a common view in the literature, we show that lending to the king was profitable even under worst-case scenario assumptions. Lenders maintained long-term relationships with the crown. Losses sustained during defaults were more than compensated by profits in normal times. Defaults were not catastrophic events. In effect, short-term lending acted as an insurance mechanism, allowing the king to reduce his payments in harsh times in exchange for paying a premium in tranquil periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In a recent paper, García-Mainar and Montuenga-Gómez [García-Mainar, I. & Montuenga-Gómez, V. M. (2005). Education returns of wage earners and self-employed workers: Portugal vs. Spain. Economics of Education Review, 24(2), 161−170] apply the generalized IV model of Hausman and Taylor to estimate education returns of wage earners and the self-employed in Portugal and in Spain. Our examination reveals several problems which relate to the validity and documentation of the instrumental variables, as well as the robustness of the results. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Theory says that, in an overlapping-generations context, intergenerational transfer agreements are efficient if they induce equality between certain implicit rates of return. We apply this theory to the case of public education and pensions, where public education is interpreted as a loan from middle age to young, and pensions are the repayment of this loan, plus interest, from middle age to old. We use micro- and macrodata from Spain to estimate how far actual arrangements are from the normative goal. When demographic stationarity is assumed, efficiency appears reachable. When demographic change is accounted for, efficiency is far from being achieved. Nevertheless, and contrary to earlier predictions in the generational accounting literature, our findings suggest that future generations may not necessarily be worse off than current ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents new evidence on potential risk-based explanations for the low SEO returns in the year after the issue. Specifically, we analyse whether the issue leads to a long-term higher stock liquidity that implies that SEO stocks have lower expected return due to lower exposure to liquidity risk factor. Therefore, we investigate if Spanish SEO firms experience significant changes in long-term liquidity after the issue. Results suggest that SEO-firm liquidity increases significantly in the year after the issue. Finally, we explore the post-performance of SEO firms explicitly accounting for liquidity risk. In particular, we employ the three factor model by Fama and French (1993) extended in one additional liquidity factor based on the illiquidity measure proposed by Amihud (2002). Our results show that underperformance disappears when accounting for liquidity risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is twofold: to demonstrate the actuarial imbalance in the Spanish pension system in its current form; and to measure the degree of aggregate economic risk to which pensioners are exposed when applying formulas for the calculation of retirement pensions based on notional accounts. The model used generates scenarios for various periods encompassing some 10,000 different permutations of the macroeconomic indices needed to calculate such parameters as initial pension, earnings replacement rate, or internal rate of return and value at risk. The findings are analysed both objectively and subjectively. The main conclusions are that if the projections for the macroeconomic indices used bear only a minimal resemblance to reality, the pension system will accumulate further financial imbalance in the future that will force it either to reduce initial pensions considerably or to make some radical adjustments to the parameters. In terms of risk, for beneficiaries with high risk aversion the preferred formulas would be those based on future variations in wages with a constant pension amount in real terms; on the other hand, those less averse to risk would prefer formulas that generate a smaller initial pension but one which grows in real terms with subsequent changes in wage levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, rates of return to education for men and women have been estimated for the Spanish case, controlling for the biases appearing in the least squares estimation of the basic Mincerian equation. The results show that the returns for women are greater than those for men. The gender differential increases when taking into account the endogeneity of the education and the selection bias, and appears to be specially important for vocational and university studies. The results are consistent with the evolution of the demand for education in Spain in the past two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Bilbao has made use of a museum as one of the multiple means to restructure its former industrial base. However, the effectiveness of this costly formula is not always clear. Three major issues have arisen: the effects of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao on Bilbao's image, the effects on overnight stays, and the effects on the local economy. There is little debate about the first issue, and room for more evidence on the second and third issues. The aim is to quantify the museum's impact on tourism and employment and to calculate its yield (Return on Investment and Net Present Value). The approach adopted is the quantitative analysis of statistical data to try to isolate the economic contribution of the Guggenheim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the determinants of the salaries that Spanish university graduates earn on the labor market. Different earnings equations are estimated that allow us to measure the economic returns to investment in human capital at the university level, demonstrating that: on the one hand, considering schooling to be an exogenous variable gives a downward bias to the estimations of the private rates of return to an university education; on the other hand, not taking into account the aspects of the demand-side of the labor market in the traditional Mincerian earnings function, even though schooling is considered as an endogenous variable, the rates of return estimated for an university education would be given an upward bias. The problem concerning the endogeneity of schooling has been corrected in this article by using the instrumental variables technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, rates of return to education for Spanish male employees are calculated and compared using different methods. We derive rates of return from the estimation of three alternative models of human capital. The rates of return obtained by each of these models are different when they are calculated by least squares. Nevertheless, when the endogeneity of education is considered, the rates of return obtained from each of these models are approximately the same, reaching a value close to 9%. In addition, we compute internal rates of return on investments in education. We find that, on average, social returns are about two points lower than private ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of solar energy for power generation using the innovative solar chimney concept has been explored by many researchers mostly with the help of analytical models as well as CFD simulations while experimental studies for a pilot and bench scale facilities have been carried out. The efficiencies of these chimneys, however, are less than 1% (~0.07% for 50 kW pilot plant similar to Manzanares plant in Spain). In the present study, an effort has been made to make modifications in the chimney design to improve the efficiency of the chimney in terms of power generation. CFD simulations have been carried out for this modified design and the efficiency is seen to improve to 0.12% for a 50 kW chimney. Furthermore, a techno-economic feasibility analysis has been carried out for a conventional 5 MW solar power plant which can be installed on the western part of India, which receives good solar irradiation throughout the year. Two cases with and without government subsidies have been considered. It is observed that a high rate of return (~20.4%) is obtained for a selling price of electricity of Rs 5 per kWh with government subsidy, while a rate of return of ~19% is obtained for Rs 10 per kWh without government subsidy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]