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The concept of financialisation is being widely used to describe certain structural changes in advanced capitalist economies. The main approaches to this concept are discussed in this paper. Firstly, the causes of the financial expansion that are synthesised in innovation, liquidification and deregulation processes are identified; secondly, the indicators concerning these processes relative to the structure of the balance sheet and profit and loss account of the main economic actors are empirically analysed for the Spanish case. The results of the analysis show a trend consistent with all capitalist economies, in which financial capital gains increase not only when the net profits of companies rise, but also when they collapse in a context of severe economic crisis and high unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the productivity growth of the Spanish dairy processing industry from 1996 till 2011, which concerns the period of increased EU regulation regarding food safety as well as economic crisis. Data envelopment analysis is used to compute the Malmquist index and its components. The results suggest that productivity on average declined during the period under investigation. The decomposition of the Malmquist index finds that technical regress contributed to productivity decline despite improvements in technical and scale efficiencies. Our results also suggest that food safety regulations did not have a negative impact on productivity growth. Technical change and scale efficiency change made significant negative contributions to productivity growth in the period under crisis, whereas firms significantly improved their technical efficiency in that period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article critically evaluates the Royal Decree-Law 16/2012, which regulates migrants’ access to public healthcare services in Spain. In particular, it examines the political rationale behind the restriction of migrants’ access to primary and specialised healthcare services. We depart from the right to health as it is defined in the Spanish and international legislations to deconstruct three arguments used by the Popular Party government – the administrative status, high health costs and possible pull effect of welfare policies – to legitimise irregular migrants’ exclusion from full medical coverage. We contend that the Royal Decree-Law 16/2012 not only fails to meet the requirements of a human rights based approach but it may also be economically inefficient in the medium to long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, public health scholars have grown increasingly interested in studying the health consequences of macroeconomic change. Reflecting existing debates on the nature of this relationship, research on the effects of the recent economic crisis has sparked considerable controversy. On the one hand there is evidence to support the notion that macroeconomic downturns are associated with positive health outcomes. On the other hand, a growing number of studies warn that the current economic crisis can be expected to pose serious problems for the public’s health. This article contributes to this debate through a review of recent evidence from three case studies: Iceland, Spain, and Greece. It shows that the economic crisis has negatively impacted some population health indicators (e.g., mental health) in all three countries, but especially in Greece. Available evidence defies deterministic conclusions, including increasingly “conventional” claims about economic downturns improving life expectancy and reducing mortality. While our results echo previous research in finding that the relationship between economic crises and population health is complex, they also indicate that this complexity is not arbitrary. On the contrary, changing social and political contexts provide meaningful, if partial, explanations for the perplexing nature of recent empirical findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the European debt crisis, neoliberal reforms question the legitimacy of the state in the direct provision of basic services. Water governance mirrors such issues. In Metropolitan Barcelona (northeast Spain) the water cycle is being redrawn with the leasing to private hands of the regional public bulk water supplier. The unbearable debt accumulated by the Catalan Water Agency is used as the discursive justification of the 'inevitability' of granting to private capital the control over the water cycle. We attempt to demonstrate that this debt is the result of large investments, required by European directives (Wastewater Directive, Drinking Water Directive, and European Water Framework Directive) to improve the quality of rivers and water bodies. These directives, combined with the restrictions imposed on budget deficits by the European Union and the inadequate regional financing model of water have put the Catalan Water Agency against the wall. The financial crisis, wreaking havoc in Spain and Catalonia, has finally exacerbated the tensions around the water cycle as the Catalan administration has observed how international markets turned off the credit tap. In the paper we wish to elucidate pervasive processes of private participation in Metropolitan Barcelona and analyze the intricate relationship between the emergence and deepening of the recent crisis, scalar processes of ecological modernization, and the production of neoliberal natures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]