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The aim of this paper is to show the limited inclusion of journalists of migrant origin in Spanish mainstream media, analyzing not only their difficulties in getting a job in the media industry and the precarious working conditions here prevail, but also the struggle of these journalists to acquire visibility and recognition as media professionals. These journalists" inclusion must be framed in a highly unfavourable context, characterized by chronic deregulation. The analysis of migrant journalists" job inclusion surpasses work conditions to highlight the debate about the possibilities of development of a public sphere that really reflects the multicultural society in which we live. Thus, the basic argument that lies behind the analysis is the democratization of national media field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The aim of the European Commission''s Single European Sky initiative is to promote a series of structural changes within Air Transport to help improve its efficiency, continuity and sustainability. One of the key elements of the air transport system is Air Traffic Services (ATSs), which must guarantee safe and fluid operations. The Single European Sky initiative puts in place a series of mechanisms to replace the existing public monopolies with free market models. Taking advantage of this new framework, Spain has initiated a process of liberalisation of ATS Services, which may provide a business opportunity for operators with an interest in the area of air transport, and European providers who wish to expand their markets. This document sets out the new legal framework that has been put in place in Spain to promote this process, indicating the motives of these actions and the main implications the process will have, whilst maintaining the objective of guaranteeing continuity of service, and avoiding any barriers to entry, which changes of this type can give rise to. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We examine variations in financial and economic performance as a function of organizational form, and, over time. The forms we consider include Spanish commercial banks, savings banks, and financial cooperatives. We decompose multilateral variation in operating profit, our measure of financial performance, into price and quantity effects. We then decompose the latter into a margin effect and productivity change. Our measure of economic performance, productivity variation, is subsequently disaggregated into technical, cost efficiency, and scale. We find that deregulation and liberalization have acted to narrow performance gaps among organizational forms; this, despite less-than compelling evidence that increased competition has contributed to this convergence. For the Spanish banking system as a whole, the margin effect appears to deliver twice as much financial benefit as do improvements in productivity. Importantly, this finding does not vary across organizational form. Such regularity has an important implication: Incentives for growth are apparently provided by a positive margin rather than by the more elusive benefits of economies of scale and improved cost efficiency. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The ongoing financial crisis has exacerbated concerns about the need to redefine the role and characteristics of regulation. In the case of public services, deregulation was justified by the benefits that would accrue to consumers, though scant attention was paid to actual consumer experience in regulatory design. New European public services regulation policies argue that the citizens' perspective should be considered, with the aim of improving the functioning of the markets whilst protecting the general interest. The decisions and attitudes of Spanish citizens regarding two public services, electricity and telecommunications, are analysed. The novelty of this article is to contrast revealed and declared preferences, a method which has not yet been used in analysing public service use. The results show when and how socio-economic variables affect service use and satisfaction and the conclusions indicate how the results could be used to formulate better policies to address issues of social inclusiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the case of Spain in the period from 1993 to 2005, when intense reforms in several industries took place in the country. We observe an increase in collusion and trust practices in liberalized industries, what requires an increase in the resources dedicated to antitrust policy. An econometric estimation demonstrates the influence that certain regulatory dimensions have on antitrust activity. Deregulation has an additional positive effect on antitrust activity. We also observe a learning effect in industries due to previous sanctions. Finally, we find a complementarity effect of regulatory agencies on the antitrust policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalistic self-regulation recommends respect to the weak and disadvantaged people. In our quantitative analysis, journalists show themselves sensitive to disadvantaged groups. However, they disagree about the most appropriate treatment. The results of in-depth interviews reflect the same lack of consensus among journalists about the role the media should take to disadvantaged groups: a) giving visibility to certain disadvantaged; b) Certain economic benefits campaigns; c) Media are businesses. The disadvantaged are not their cause. Citizens see no objection to explicit certain attributes of the protagonists of the news, especially those related to age or gender. According to the results of the bivariate analysis, women and those who are more critical to journalistic ethics are less in favour to explicit certain attributes related to sexual orientation, ethnicity or nationality. In all other cases there are no significant differences. In focus groups, citizens perceive that, in general, minorities are distorted in the news. For all participants, disadvantaged groups, only have significance in the media on negative events. Youth and adults from Madrid consider that the media exploit the events associated with these groups to feed the curiosity and increase the audience. The more educated adults claim that the use of euphemisms can not change stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In new deregulated electricity market, price forecasts have become a fundamental input to an energy company’s decision making and strategy development process. However, the exclusive characteristics of electricity price such as non-stationarity, non-linearity and time-varying volatile structure present a number of challenges for this task. In spite of all performed research on this area in the recent years, there is still essential need for more accurate and robust price forecast methods. Besides, there is a lack of efficient feature selection technique for designing the input vector of electricity price forecast. In this paper, a new two-stage feature selection algorithm composed of modified relief and mutual information (MI) techniques is proposed for this purpose. Moreover, cascaded neural network (CNN) is presented as forecast engine for electricity price prediction. The CNN is composed of cascaded forecasters where each forecaster is a neural network (NN). The proposed feature selection algorithm selects the best set of candidate inputs which is used by the CNN. The proposed method is examined on PJM, Spanish and Ontario electricity markets and compared with some of the most recent price forecast techniques. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The place of labor in market reform coalitions, ranging from democratic inclusion to labor repression, triggers a trade-off between the degree of deregulation in the formal sector and the amount of compensations targeted to the unemployed and poor workers in the informal sector. Comparative analysis of Chile (1973-1989), Argentina (1989-99), and Spain (1982-96) reveals that, the more organized labor is included in the policymaking process, the less extensive reform of the system of industrial relations will be. Conversely, the more organized labor is repressed or excluded, the more labor law will be deregulated. In addition, when labor is excluded or repressed, the relative importance of compensatory policies in the form of subsidies to unemployed and unorganized workers in the informal sector is greater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of the Spanish gasoline market from the abolition of the state oil monopoly (January 1993) to "complete" liberalisation (October 1998). With the restructuring of the Spanish oil sector during the 1980s and early 1990s, a highly concentrated oligopoly emerged in the automotive fuels market. A system of price ceilings replaced the state administered prices in July 1990. Since then, new domestic and foreign operators have entered the market, particularly along the coast, near import terminals. Prices went up and then declined. These developments can be explained by an interplay of factors such as: the gradual decline in co-operation among the Spanish firms; the loss of market share of the largest of these, Repsol; the entry of independent operators and supermarkets; and the impact of the ceiling price system. By mid-1998 this system was abolished as the government considered it an "impediment" to further market liberalisation. However, some crucial barriers to the entry of new suppliers remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]