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We examine the trajectory of regional income dynamics in Colombia. Using data on all 33 Colombian departments from 2000 to 2016, we employ extensions of (spatial) Markov chains, space-time mobility measures, along with a fully weighted version of the distribution analysis approach. By considering these extensions, our analysis enables us to answer questions such as whether the role of spatial context influences the distributional dynamics of Colombian departments, or the magnitude of the moderating effect of department’s population. The inclusion of additional measures such as the asymptotic half-life of convergence provides additional results, informing on how long it would take to reach the hypothetical long-run distribution of per capita income. Results, which are reported for both pre- and post-2008 trends, complement previous literature on regional economic convergence in a relevant South American context, showing stronger convergence patterns when controlling for the population living in each department. The patterns do not particularly intensify when controlling for spatial spillovers, since the role of spatial context was already playing a relevant role from the beginning of the period analyzed. Therefore, although the ergodic distributions show a conditional-convergence pattern, addressing the problems of spatial exclusion fully, persistent polarization among geographical departments and populations, along with the relevant core-periphery gaps, still requires the design and implementation of specific policies. Funding for open access charge: CRUE-Universitat Jaume I We are grateful to the Editor, four anonymous referees and the participants at the XLV International Conference on Regional Science/Reunión de Estudios Regionales (Castelló de la Plana, Spain, 2019) for helpful comments and suggestions. We acknowledge the financial support of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PID2020-115450GB-I00 and PID2020-115135GB-I00 by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). Emili Tortosa-Ausina also acknowledges the financial support of Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2018/102) and Universitat Jaume I (UJI-B2020-27).

This paper analyses the impact of the university system performance on labour productivity growth for Spanish provinces during the period 2009–2016, showing a general positive link. These results enrich the debate on the economic spillovers of universities on their home regions. More specifically, we explore whether better managerial practices, which translate into more efficient organisations, have an economic effect on the territory. We decompose the effect into efficiency changes (approximations to the frontier) and changes due to technical progress (shifts of the frontier). Our results suggest that this impact is mostly driven by shifts in the frontier. However, the effect is only significant for provinces with productivity levels above the median. Therefore, our study suggests that the relative underperformance of the Spanish university system could be one of the factors slowing down the convergence path of Spanish provinces.

This paper analyzes the relationship between quality of government and economic growth at the municipal level in 1,820 Spanish municipalities during the period 2008–2015. At this level of dis- aggregation, the literature is virtually non-existent due to severe data constraints. To address this limitation, we proxy institutional quality with a measure of local government efficiency, which provides an accurate indicator of how good local authorities are at managing their budgets. This variable is expected to be highly correlated with other more traditional quality of government indicators such as corruption. After computing our measure, we then use it in a growth regression framework. We find a preponderant positive effect for local government quality on income per capita growth, which is robust to a wide variety of scenarios. Our findings also suggest that increases in local government quality are particularly rewarding for the poorest municipalities and in crisis times.

Early intervention in quality education is a way to equalize opportunities, a premise assumed by several countries. As a result, interest has grown in preschool education, which is now an important area of public policy. However, the performance of preschool education centers has received relatively scarce research attention. Consistent with the above, the aim of this study is to examine the problem and evaluate the performance of preschool education centers that serve children from lower socioeconomic families in Chile. To this end, a centralized DEA Assurance Region model is proposed and compared with two other models. In addition, a second stage analysis is carried out using decision trees to identify variables that determine the composition of homogeneous preschool groups according to their effectiveness. The results show an average efficiency index of 70.54% with important heterogeneities between regions of the country, and significantly less than the 84.47% obtained through a traditional benefit-of-the-doubt model. The centralized (unique) weights obtained were 45% for learning, and 32% for user satisfaction and job satisfaction. A second stage analysis reveals the importance of three structural factors that mark the effectiveness of kindergartens: (i) size of the kindergarten; (ii) family income; and (iii) urban or rural location of the kindergarten. These results are relevant to public policy since they propose a valid and useful methodology for decision makers, quantify the levels of effectiveness, and emphasize the importance of focusing efforts on the centers that, due to their structural conditions, are more prone to lower levels of effectiveness. Similarly, they validate and align with the changes at this level of education in Chile in recent years.

Although in recent years there has been a growth in banking services in Mexico, there is still a significant delay in terms of financial inclusion, which is also very uneven across municipalities. In this context, this paper analyses some of the factors that determine the probability of a municipality being financially included. The results show that financially included municipalities have a large number of inhabitants and high levels of income and education. The analysis also distinguishes between municipalities according to the region in which they are located and to their type of population. In general, rural and in transition municipalities are the least financially included, together with the municipalities located in the Sur region of the country. For these types of municipalities, results also show that both population and the Human Development Index (HDI) are important in determining the probability of being financially included. However, for urban municipalities, HDI is more important than the level of population as a factor influencing financial inclusion.

Grounded in the general equilibrium framework of regional adjustment models, this paper studies how the spatial distribution of sectoral employment can affect the intra-regional spatial location of a population, and so affect territorial development. Although spatial interactions, spatial heterogeneity and sectoral heterogeneity have been introduced in these models, no empirical studies reveal how spatio-sectoral heterogeneity affects the intra-regional distribution of population and jobs. This paper explores this effect through a complex set of interdependencies among the regional population, employment in the regional economic sectors and their respective regional neighbours within the different regional typologies (urban, semi-urban and rural areas), as suggested by the concept of proximity developed by Torre in 2019. We use a system of simultaneous equations to focus on the phenomenon of rural depopulation for the 542 municipalities of the Valencian region of Spain. The results provide evidence for the relevance of spatio-sectoral dynamics, suggesting that reversing depopulation in rural areas depends strongly on the services sector.

Altres ajuts: Universitat Jaume I B2017-33 i B2017-14 ; Generalitat Valenciana PROMETEO/2018/102 We analyse overall cost efficiency in Spanish local governments during the crisis period (2008-2015). To this end, we first consider some of the most popular nonparametric methods to evaluate local government efficiency, data envelopment analysis and free disposal hull, as well as recent proposals, namely the order-m partial frontier and the nonparametric estimator proposed by Kneip et al. (Econom Theory 24(6):1663-1697, 2008). Second, to compare the four methods and choose the most appropriate one for our particular context and dataset (local government cost efficiency in Spain), we carry out an experiment via Monte Carlo simulations and discuss the relative performance of the efficiency scores under various scenarios. Our results suggest that there is no one approach suitable for all efficiency analysis. We find that for our sample of 1846 Spanish local governments, the average cost efficiency would have been between 0.5417 and 0.7543 during the period 2008-2015, suggesting that Spanish local governments could have achieved the same level of local outputs with about 25% and 46% fewer resources.

The analysis of efficiency and productivity in banking has received a great deal of attention for almost three decades now. However, most of the existing literature to date has not explicitly accounted for risk when measuring efficiency. We propose an analysis of profit efficiency taking into account how the inclusion of a variety of bank risk measures might bias efficiency scores. Our measures of risk are partly inspired by the literature on earnings management and earnings quality, considering that loan loss provisions, as a generally accepted proxy for risk, can be adjusted to manage earnings and regulatory capital. We also consider some variants of traditional models of profit efficiency where different regimes are stipulated so that financial institutions can be evaluated in different dimensions—i.e. prices, quantities, or prices and quantities simultaneously. We perform this analysis on the Spanish banking industry, whose institutions are deeply affected by the current international financial crisis, and where re-regulation is taking place. Our results can be explored in multiple dimensions but, in general, they indicate that the impact of earnings management on profit efficiency is of less magnitude than what might, a priori, be expected, and that the performance of savings banks has been generally worse than that of commercial banks. However, savings banks are adapting to the new regulatory scenario and rapidly catching up with commercial banks, especially in some dimensions of performance.

For several years the attention of economists has focused mostly on income and related issues. This tendency changed during the last decade, when citizen’s well-being became a topic of increasing interest. In that regard, the appearance of new databases providing reliable data on variables such as happiness or life satisfaction spurred the number of empirical contributions. This chapter contributes to this literature by analysing the links between informal, formal institutions and life satisfaction for a wide sample European regions.

In recent years, Spanish local governments have come under increasing pressure to accommodate severe economic restrictions while maintaining their provision of local public services. We analyse overall cost efficiency in Spanish local governments during the period of the economic crisis (2008–2013), under four different non-parametric methodologies. Moreover, given how problematic it is to precisely define what municipalities do, we compare three different output models with various measures of quantity as well as quality. Results suggest that Spanish local government efficiency improved over the period 2008–2013 since budget expenditures (inputs) fell while local public services and facilities (outputs) were maintained. We also find evidence of the possible implications of service quality when measuring municipalities’ efficiency, and of structural differences in the average efficiency between municipalities located in different Spanish regions. Finally, our results confirm that the level and variation of efficiency scores are affected by the approach taken.

This study analyses the performance and market timing of US socially responsible (SR) mutual funds in relation to business cycle regime shifts and different grouping criteria: Ethical strategy focus, SR attributes scores and Morningstar category. Different methodologies are applied and results highlight the importance of considering specific benchmarks related to the investment style in evaluating the SR fund performance. Our results show that, in aggregate, the abnormal performance of SR funds is negative and significant in expansion periods, but no significant differences are found in recession periods. When specific benchmarks are considered, performance improves in recession periods, particularly for environmental funds, those with high SR attributes scores, and funds from the nine Morningstar style box categories. Market timing of SR funds takes positive values and is partially significant. Previous evidence of negative timing after a recent financial crisis vanishes when specific benchmarks are considered. For comparative purposes the performance of conventional US mutual funds is also analysed. There are no significant differences between the performance of SR and conventional mutual funds when a fair comparison is made within the same style categories. When all the SR funds are considered, they underperform conventional funds in expansion sub‐periods, but in recession sub‐periods they perform better, although the differences observed are not significant.

This paper provides a composite indicator of well-being for the 33 Colombian departments in the year 2016. The indicator is built by adapting the well-known OECD Better Life Index to the regional level, and includes the dimensions of income, health, education, safety, housing, environment, labour market, and civic engagement and governance. As to the methodology, Data Envelopment Analysis and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making techniques are employed, an approach which enables a comparison of well-being across departments and the construction of rankings. The results yield several take-away messages. First, there are substantial disparities in well-being across Colombian departments. Second, despite the fact that average well-being in Colombia is relatively low, the population is concentrated in the departments with the highest well-being levels. Third, geography matters, as neighbouring departments have similar well-being levels, giving rise to a core-periphery duality. Fourth, well-being generally improves and disparities decline when purely economic dimensions (income and labour market) are excluded from the composite indicator. We thank the participants at the XLV International Conference on Regional Science (2019) for helpful comments and suggestions—particularly those by Vicente Royuela—which contributed to an overall improvement of the paper. The comments from two referees have also contributed to a much improved research. We also acknowledge the financial support of the European Regional Development Fund and the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (ECO2016-75237-R and ECO2017-85746-P), Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2018/102) and Universitat Jaume I (UJI-B2017-33).

Sustainable investment responds to demands for carbon and climate‐neutral societies. To address the urgency around climate change and provide investors with more qualified information, Morningstar has developed the Low Carbon Designation (LCD) to indicate that the companies held in a portfolio are in general alignment with the transition to a low‐carbon economy. The designation is given to portfolios that have low carbon risk and fossil fuel exposure scores. The present study builds on the LCD by examining the relationship between these scores and financial performance. With this aim, we analyze 3920 socially responsible mutual funds from across the world. Results show differences in financial performance according to scores and investment areas. We find evidence that funds considered to have higher levels of sustainability achieved better performance than funds with higher exposure to companies involved in carbon and fossil fuel industries. We provide insights on the informativeness of these new scores with a focus on climate change and their relevance in helping investors to identify climate‐aware funds. This study highlights the importance of introducing strategies to develop green finance; the analysis confirms that sustainability improves performance. Finally, the LCD indicator is shown to be relevant for making fairer comparisons among socially responsible funds and, ultimately, for developing low‐carbon economies.

Although Data Envelopment Analysis models have been intensively used for measuring efficiency, the inclusion of undesirable outputs has extended their use to analyse relevant fields such as environmental efficiency. In this context, slacks-based measure (SBM) models offer a remarkable alternative, largely due to their ability to deal with undesirable outputs. Additionally, super-efficiency evaluation in DEA is a useful complementary analysis for ranking the performance of efficient DMUs and even mandatory for dynamic efficiency evaluation. An extension to this approach in the presence of undesirable outputs is here introduced and then applied in the context of the environmental efficiency in electricity and derived heat generation in the European Union, providing the necessary tool to detect influential countries.

This article presents a set of indicators to measure regional trade integration, focusing on the case of the European Union. We propose measures of openness, connectedness and integration which are tuned to evaluate not only how these components contribute to the advance of international integration, but also to control for the potential threat posed by the proliferation of regional trade agreements to trade globalization. Although this and related questions have been examined from several perspectives, the present article explicitly attempts to quantify how regional trade agreements either intensify or thwart trade globalization. Results show that the process of trade integration has intensified among European Union members, whereas integration with non-members is advancing slowly. Our indicators provide a more complete view of the differing speeds of integration, which depend on whether the component of integration considered is openness or connectedness.

This study analyses overratings and underratings in sovereign credit risk. The analysis uses partial frontier methods, a technique rarely applied in this literature. By combining a robust variant of the free disposal hull (FDH) estimator, we measure both underratings and overratings for individual countries and groups of countries. Particular attention is paid to comparing pre-crisis and crisis years in order to assess possible changes in the magnitude of the deviations. Our findings indicate a remarkable degree of both overratings and underratings during the analysed period (1999–2010), which partially vanish during the last years of the sample (2008–2010)—corresponding to the financial crisis—when many downgrades took place, especially in Eurozone countries. The results allow us to emphasize the importance of monitoring these deviations for sustainable financial stability. Our results also show the potential benefits of using partial frontier methods for measuring both underratings and overratings.

espanolAunque durante mucho tiempo se ha reconocido que la gestion activa es un tema importante en el area de la evaluacion del rendimiento de los fondos de inversion, el consenso alcanzado acerca de la contribucion al valor anadido de los fondos por las habilidades de los directivos es limitado. Este estudio intenta explorar tanto las caracteristicas de los gestores como las de los propios fondos en si mismos con el fin de entender su influencia en la eficiencia conseguida para una muestra de fondos de inversion espanoles. Estos temas son explorados a traves de un enfoque de dos etapas, teniendo en cuenta los estimadores de fronteras parciales (orden-m y el orden α-) para evaluar el desempeno en la primera etapa, y asi como un enfoque de regresion cuantil para analizar los determinantes de la eficiencia en la segunda etapa. Nuestros resultados son relevantes especialmente desde el punto de vista de los inversores, al encontrar diferencias notables entre la influencia de los gestores de los fondos y las propias caracteristicas de los fondos. Nuestro analisis proporciona algunos argumentos como guia en la seleccion de fondos, asi como algunas caracteristicas de los gestores a tener en cuenta. Ademas, algunas de las diferencias de rendimiento entre los fondos encontrados son complejas, debido a que tanto la magnitud de los coeficientes de regresion estimados como su significado varian en funcion del cuantil de la distribucion del rendimiento de los fondos evaluado. EnglishWhile it has long been recognized that active management is an important issue in the area of mutual fund performance, little consensus has been reached about the value managers’ abilities can add. This study attempts to explore both fund and manager characteristics in order to understand their influence on the efficiency achieved for a sample of Spanish mutual funds. We explore these issues in a two-stage approach, considering partial frontier estimators (order-m and order-α) to assess performance in the first stage, and regression quantiles to isolate the determinants of efficiency in the second stage. Our findings shed light mainly on investors’ concerns, since differences do indeed arise among both funds and managers. Our analysis provides some arguments as a guide in selecting funds and some managerial features to be taken into account. In addition, some of the performance differences found among funds are rather intricate because both the magnitude of the estimated regression coefficients and their significance varies depending on the quantile of the distribution of fund performance.

In this paper, we analyze the performance persistence and survivorship bias of Islamic funds. The remarkable growth of these types of ethical funds raises the question of how non-financial attributes, including beliefs and value systems, influence performance and its persistence. A procedure commonly used in prior literature to assess persistence is the measuring of the performance of investment strategies based on past performance. In this context, we propose a refined version of this methodology that controls the cross-sectional significance of the performance of these strategies. This procedure correctly identifies whether abnormal performance is due to a dynamic investment strategy based on past performance, or whether it is obtained by investing in a particular set of mutual funds. The significance of the persistence varies depending on the time horizon (yearly/half-yearly), survivorship, or the tail of the distribution. In particular, we find that persistence only exists for the best funds, whereas for the worst funds, the results are not significant.

This chapter has two main objectives. First, we analyze per capita income convergence for a large sample of European regions (235) at the NUTS2 level during the pre-crisis period (1995–2008). Despite convergence analysis having attracted considerable debate, as well as yielding a large amount of research output, several issues such as the impact of the economic crisis, or the European Union enlargements, have contributed to revive the issue. Second, we exploit some virtues of the distribution dynamics approach to convergence analysis in order to control for how several dimensions of social capital, including trust, associational activity and social norms, might have shaped the per capita income converging (or diverging) patterns among European regions. Given the variety of objectives, results can be explored in several dimensions. Regarding the unconditioned convergence analysis, we find a relatively persistent bimodality in per capita income, suggesting that regional income in Europe is becoming polarized between the rich and the poor, the latter corresponding mostly to Eastern and Central European countries. These divergences are partly explained away when social capital enters the analysis – especially in terms of trust and active participation. However, this effect is stronger for middle-income regions, whereas for both the richest and poorest regions the impact of social capital is weaker.

This paper analyzes persistence in US equity mutual fund performance over the period 1990–2015. We apply commonly used measures of persistence, which we test using a set of simulated passive funds. In the first stage we apply contingency tables and transition matrices in accordance with previous literature. Results show how these methodologies are biased towards finding evidence of persistence too easily. In the second stage, we take a recursive portfolio approach, which assesses the performance of investing by following recommendations based on past performance. Results show the importance of both estimating persistence by distinguishing among fund style groups, and considering the cross-sectional significance of recursive portfolios. In general, our results support evidence of persistence in mutual fund performance, especially for the case of the best mutual funds. However, this evidence does not hold for the most recent subperiod, 2008–2015. Empirical evidence of persistence is conditioned by the sample period, a result that could explain the inconclusive results found in the literature This study is part of the research projects P1·1B2012-07 and P1·1B2014-17 supported by the Universitat Jaume I, the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (project ECO2014-55221-P) and Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEOII/2014/046 and ACOMP/2014/283).

In recent years the European airline industry has undergone critical restructuring. It has evolved from a highly regulated market predominantly operated by national airlines to a dynamic, liberalized industry where airline firms compete freely on prices, routes, and frequencies. Although several studies have analyzed performance issues for European airlines using a variety of efficiency measurement methods, virtually none of them has considered two-stage alternatives – not only in this particular European context but in the airline industry in general. We extend the aims of previous contributions by considering a network Data Envelopment Analysis (network DEA) approach which comprises two sub-technologies that can share part of the inputs. Results show that, in general, most of the inefficiencies are generated in the first stage of the analysis. However, when considering different types of carriers several differences emerge – most of the low-cost carriers’ inefficiencies are confined to the first stage. Results also show a dynamic component, since performance differed across types of airlines during the decade 2000–2010. We thank the comments and suggestions by the referees and the Editor. Diego Prior and Emili Tortosa-Ausina acknowledge the financial support of Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (ECO2013-44115-P and ECO2014-55221-P). Emili Tortosa-Ausina also acknowledges the financial support of Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEOII/2014/046 and ACOMP/2014/283) and Universitat Jaume I (P1.1B2014-17). The usual disclaimer applies.

Este es el artículo que se ha publicado de forma definitiva en: https://www.elsevier.es/es-revista-brq-business-research-quarterly-424-articulo-risk-taking-behavior-earnings-quality-bank-S2340943619300854 Este es el post-print del editor del siguiente artículo: García Alcober, M.P., Prior, D., Tortosa Ausina, E. & Illueca, M. (2019). Risk-taking behavior, earnings quality, and bank performance: a profit frontier approach. BRQ Business Research Quarterly, In Press, que se ha publicado de forma definitiva en https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brq.2019.02.003. This is the editor peer reviewed version of the following article: García Alcober, M.P., Prior, D., Tortosa Ausina, E. & Illueca, M. (2019). Risk-taking behavior, earnings quality, and bank performance: a profit frontier approach. BRQ Business Research Quarterly, In Press, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brq.2019.02.003. After the financial crisis of 2007–2008, some bank performance dimensions have been the subject of debate, two of which are bank efficiency, and bank risk-taking behavior. The literature on bank efficiency and productivity has grown considerably over the last three decades, and has gained momentum in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Interest in bank risk-taking behavior, usually focusing on its links to monetary policy, has been relatively low, but has also increased exponentially in more recent years. This paper combines these two streams of research. Specifically, we test whether more inefficient banks take greater risks when selecting borrowers, charging interests and requiring collateral, and whether these links between inefficiency and risk change according to the type of bank. Our analysis centers on the Spanish banking system, which has been severely affected by the burst of the housing bubble and has undergone substantial restructuring. To test our hypotheses, we created a database with information on banks and savings banks, their borrowers (non-financial firms), and the links between them. The study also contributes to the literature by considering a novel profit frontier approach. Our results suggest that more inefficient banks take greater risks in selecting their borrowers, and that this high-taking behavior is not offset by higher interest rates.

Modern states are organized in multilevel governance structures with economic and political authorities dispersed across them. However, although there is relatively widespread consensus that this form of organization is preferable to a centralized authority, the same cannot be said about its jurisdictional design – that is, how to transfer authority from central states to both supra- and subnational levels. This lack of consensus also exists in contexts with explicit initiatives to strengthen political ties such as the European Union (EU), and even within EU member countries, a situation which is aggravated by the relative scarcity of contributions that measure the advantages and disadvantages of different territorial organizations. We explore these issues through a study of one EU country, Spain, whose provincial councils (diputaciones) are often the subject of debate and controversy due to their contribution to increasing public spending and their purported inefficiencies, corruption and lack of transparency. Specifically, we combine a variety of activity analysis techniques to evaluate how they impact on local government performance. Results suggest that, in general, the presence of a provincial council has a positive impact on local government performance, but when their activity levels are too high, the effect can become pernicious.

We measure performance change for the educational systems of 28 countries which participated in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in years 2007 and 2011 for eighth grade basic education students. We consider simultaneously variables related to academic achievement and inequality in the discipline of mathematics. From a methodological point of view, we use the global Malmquist–Luenberger productivity index due to the presence of bad outputs. To the best of our knowledge, this methodology had not been applied previously in the field of education despite these desirable which are particularly useful in this field. Results indicate that the countries participating in the study not only chose different paths to improve their educational performance but, in addition, results varied remarkably among them. They also suggest that, on average, educational performance deteriorated between 2007 and 2011, although we also found (successful) efforts in several countries to improve equality.

As is well established (Robinson and Acemoglu, 2012), the economic performance of countries depends on the level of quality of its institutions. Referring to the economic performance, this paper establishes the aggregate efficiency of 133 countries in the generation of GDP by using the production theory framework and considering the participation of human as well as physical capital. Additionally, it is analyzed to what extent the aggregated performance depends on the level of quality and effectiveness of the subsequent national public institutions. It is also determined whether or not the size of the public expending, and its level of efficiency, have an impact on the rate of economic growth. To conclude, the conditions to favor the public expending as a driver for economic growth are determined. After a general overview, the specific situation of Colombia is analyzed. The results confirm the importance of the quality of the institutions on the respective levels of efficiency. It is also verified how the level of efficiency is a key factor to obtain economic growth from the public spending. JEL Classification: E23, H21, O43. Resumen Como está bien establecido (Robinson y Acemoglu, 2012), el desempeño económico de los países depende del nivel de calidad de sus instituciones. Con relación al desempeño económico, este artículo estima la eficiencia agregada de 133 países en la generación de producción agregada (PIB) mediante el uso del marco de referencia de la teoría de la producción y considerando la participación tanto del capital humano como el físico. Adicionalmente, se analiza hasta qué punto el desempeño agregado depende del nivel de calidad y efectividad de las subsecuentes instituciones públicas nacionales. Se establece además si el tamaño del gasto público, y su nivel de eficiencia, tienen o no un impacto en la tasa de crecimiento económico. Para finalizar, se determinan las condiciones que favorecen el gasto público como fuerza impulsora del crecimiento económico. Después de ofrecer una visión general, se analiza el caso colombiano. Los resultados confirman la importancia de la calidad de las institucines sobre los niveles de eficiencia respectivos. Se verifica además cómo el nivel de eficiencia es un factor fundamental para conseguir crecimiento económico a partir del gasto público. Clasificación JEL: E23, H21, O43.

This article analyzes the determinants of bank branch location in Spain taking the role of geography explicitly into account. After a long period of intense territorial expansion, especially by savings banks, many of these firms are now involved in merger processes triggered off by the financial crisis, most of which entail the closing of many branches. However, given the contributions of this type of banks to limit financial exclusion, this process might exacerbate the consequences of the crisis for some disadvantaged social groups. Related problems such as new banking regulation initiatives (Basel III), or the current excess capacity in the sector add further relevance to this problem. We address this issue from a Bayesian perspective, using a Poisson regression model within the framework of generalized linear mixed models. This proposal allows us to assess whether over-branching or under-branching has taken place. Our results suggest, among other findings, that both phenomena are present in the Spanish banking sector, although the implications for the three types of banks in the industry, namely commercial banks, savings banks or credit unions, vary a great deal.

This article analyses the impact of social capital on regional economic growth in Spain during the 1985–2005 period. The literature in this context is virtually nonexistent and, in addition, whereas most studies, regardless of their context, have used survey data in order to measure social capital, we use a measure whose construction is based on similar criteria to other measures of capital stock. Compared with more standard measures of social capital and trust, our measure is available with a high level of disaggregation, and with annual frequency for a long time period. Following a panel data approach, our findings indicate that social capital has a positive impact on GDP per capita growth in the context of Spanish provinces, implying that ‘social features’ are important for explaining the differences in wealth that one might find across Spanish provinces. We also explore the transmission mechanisms from social capital to growth, finding a highly positive relation between social capital and priv...

The last few years have witnessed a rapid evolution in the literature evaluating mutual fund performance using frontier techniques. The instruments applied, mostly DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) and, to a lesser extent, FDH (Free Disposal Hull), are able to encompass several dimensions of performance, but they also have some disadvantages that might be preventing a wider acceptance. The recently developed order- m and order- α partial frontiers overcome some of the disadvantages (they are robust with respect to extreme values and noise, and do not suffer from the well-known curse of dimensionality) while keeping the main virtues of DEA and FDH (they are fully nonparametric). In this article we apply not only the non-convex counterpart of DEA (FDH) but also order- m and order- α partial frontiers to a sample of US mutual funds. The results obtained for both order- m and order- α are useful, since a full ranking of the mutual funds' performance can be obtained. We merge these methods with the literature on mutual fund performance persistence. By combining the two literatures we derive an algorithm which establishes how the choice of m and α parameters intrinsic to order- m and order- α (respectively) relate to the existence of performance persistence and the contrarian effect.

While the beneficial effects of social trust on economic performance have been largely recognized, we analyze whether these effects can be generalized for economies at different stages of economic development. Contrary to previous studies on this issue based on average effects (mostly considering ordinary least squares estimations), we follow a quantile regression approach that enables us to capture heterogeneous effects of trust for different development levels. By considering data for 80 countries, and using trust indicators from five different waves of the World Values Survey (WVS), our results by quantile indicate that trust is not relevant for the poorest economies, showing the existence of a social poverty trap. In addition, results suggest that the impact of trust on income decreases as an economy becomes richer. This would suggest not only that trust benefits cannot be generalized for all countries, as some previous studies have proposed, but also that the extent of its implications are heavily dependent on the level of development.

This study uses the global non-radial Malmquist index to measure performance change in the educational systems of 29 countries/economies participating in PISA 2003 and 2012 for students at age 15 in the disciplines of mathematics and reading. This methodology is particularly appropriate both for its desirable properties as well as its suitability for the educational context. Results indicate a positive evolution in educational systems’ performance during this period. This improvement is mainly due a positive efficiency change, which offsets the negative technological change observed. Nevertheless, a deeper scrutiny at the country level shows that results varied remarkably among them. Claudio Thieme and Emili Tortosa-Ausina thank FONDECYT (National Fund of Scientific and Technological Development, grant #1121164 and #1151313) for generous financial support. Víctor Giménez, Diego Prior and Emili Tortosa-Ausina acknowledge the financial support of the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (ECO2013-44115-P and ECO2014-55221-P). Emili Tortosa-Ausina also acknowledges the financial support of Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEOII/2014/046) and Universitat Jaume I (P1.1B2014-17). All four authors are grateful to the Associate Editor and two anonymous referees, whose comments contributed to an overall improvement of the paper. The usual disclaimer applies.

9 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, Ecological indicators are increasingly used to examine the evolution of natural ecosystems and the impacts of human activities. Assessing their trends to develop comparative analyses is essential. We introduce the analysis of convergence, a novel approach to evaluate the dynamic and trends of ecological indicators and predict their behavior in the long-term. Specifically, we use a non-parametric estimation of Gaussian kernel density functions and transition probability matrix integrated in the R software. We validate the performance of our methodology through a practical application to three different ecological indicators to study whether Mediterranean countries converge towards similar fisheries practices. We focus on how distributions evolve over time for the Marine Trophic Index, the Fishing in Balance Index and the Expansion Factor during 1950–2010. Results show that Mediterranean countries persist in their fishery behaviors throughout the time series, although a tendency towards similar negative effects on the ecosystem is apparent in the long-term. This methodology can be easily reproduced with different indicators and/or ecosystems in order to analyze ecosystem dynamics, David Conesa thanks the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science) via research grants MTM2010-19528, MTM2013-42323 (jointly financed with the European Regional Development Fund). Marta Coll was partially funded by the European Commission through the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant Fellowships − PCIG10-GA-2011-303534 − to the BIOWEB project

Does political connection affect bank efficiency during both financial and political crises? This study addresses this question by adopting a two-stage approach that uses a quantile regression analysis of a unique dataset of listed banks in the Middle East and North Africa region. Our results show that political connection is a driving force behind bank inefficiency in the region. We find that the least efficient banks have the most significant association with political connections, thus supporting the bailout theory. We also find that political connections influenced the efficiency of banks during the 2008-9 global financial crisis but not during the 2011-13 regional political crisis. Our results provide new evidence on the applicability of established political connection theories in developing countries during political regime turmoil. We therefore recommend that global banking regulators and market participants scrutinize the political connections of banks more thoroughly.

espanolTras un largo periodo de intensa expansion territorial que culmino en 2008, la reestructuracion del sector bancario espanol ha llevado a que el numero de sucursales haya pasado de 45.000 a poco mas de 28.000 en menos de una decada. Las implicaciones de esta tendencia son notables, pues el acceso a la oficina fisica sigue siendo clave en comunidades remotas y/o desfavorecidas, ademas de existir un impacto todavia no medido en terminos de banca relacional. El objetivo del trabajo consiste en determinar, a traves de un modelo estadistico, si los fenomenos de over-branching y under-branching, esto es, exceso o escasez de oficinas, han estado presentes en el sector bancario espanol entre 1999 y 2011. La respuesta indicaria que la existencia de dichos fenomenos depende del tipo de entidad considerada (banco, caja o cooperativa), suponiendo la reestructuracion del sector cajas de ahorros una amenaza para el acceso a los servicios bancarios en algunas regiones. EnglishAfter a long period of intense territorial expansion that peaked in 2008, the restructuring of the Spanish banking sector has led the number of bank branches to decline from 45,000 to just over 28,000 in less than a decade. The implications of this trend are remarkable, as access to the physical office remains key in remote and/or disadvantaged communities, and there is an impact not yet measured in terms of relationship banking. The objective of this paper is to determine, through a statistical model, whether the phenomena of over-branching and under-branching have been present in the Spanish banking sector between 1999 and 2011. The responses suggest that the existence of such phenomena depends on the type of bank considered (commercial bank, savings bank or credit union), with the restructuring of the savings banks sector threatening access to banking services in some regions.

espanolDurante los ultimos 20 anos la industria bancaria espanola ha sido reestructurada en varias facetas. Una de las caracteristicas que mas ha contribuido a dicho cambio ha sido la expansion geografica de las cajas de ahorros, que han ido penetrando en otros mercados (diferentes a lo que podriamos denominar sus "mercados naturales") a ritmos elevados desde 1989. Practicamente a la vez, la economia espanola ha venido creciendo a tasas tambien elevadas, un patron que se detuvo abruptamente en 2008. En estas circunstancias, el presente trabajo analiza los patrones de expansion geografica de las instituciones financieras espanolas en la epoca de la desregulacion. Este objetivo extiende analisis previos en dos direcciones, al considerar un conjunto de variables mas amplio que pueden afectar a la localizacion de oficinas bancarias, y al utilizar regresion cuantil de cara a obtener resultados que pueden ir mas alla de lo que aportan los modelos que resumen los resultados en efectos promedio. Los resultados indican que: (i) los patrones de localizacion y diversificacion geografica varian entre empresas pero tambien entre tipos de empresas; (ii) la evaluacion del crecimiento y el desarrollo financiero a nivel municipal indica que algunas comunidades pueden haber experimentado exclusion financiera; (iii) es dificil establecer una relacion lineal que explique las estrategias de diversificacion geografica. EnglishOver the last twenty years, the Spanish banking industry has been deeply reshaped in several respects. One of the features that has allowed this has been the geographic expansion of most savings banks, which have been expanding into other regions (different from their regions of origin) at a significant pace since 1989. Almost simultaneously, the Spanish economy has grown at remarkable annual rates, a growth pattern which came to an abrupt halt in 2008. Under these circumstances, this paper analyzes the geographic expansion patterns of Spanish financial institutions during the post-deregulation period. This goal extends previous analyses in two main ways, considering a broader set of variables affecting bank branch location, and using a quantile regression in order to obtain results which go beyond conditional mean models. Results indicate: (i) location and geographic diversification patterns vary mostly across firms and by type of firm; (ii) the evaluation of growth and financial development at municipal level indicates that some communities have experienced financial exclusion; (iii) it is difficult to establish a linear relationship to explain bank branch geographic diversification strategies

The aim of this article is to develop new international banking integration indicators together with their components: openness and regularity (balance) of the bilateral bank flows. We define the Standard of Perfect Banking Integration (SPBI), which characterizes the scenario attainable when bank flows are not geographically biased, and cross-border asset trade is not affected by home bias. We assess the gap between a hypothetical scenario of geographic neutrality and the current level of banking integration, along with both of its components. The empirical application to the banking systems of 23 countries over the 2003–2009 period enables us to conclude that the level of banking integration has advanced rapidly over the last few years and, according to our indicators, is close to 45% as of 2009, i.e., we are not halfway to the SPBI. However, notable differences among countries are both persistent and growing, and the integration level achieved for each banking system differs when either assessed from the bank inflows or outflows perspective.

We examine the performance of mutual fund managers for a sample of Spanish mutual funds considering data on active management, loads, size and the number of funds managed per manager. We find evidence of differences in fund performance according to management: independent managers outperform their banking counterparts even when the lower associated fees are considered. Overall, our results suggest that superior active managers do exist and the slight discrepancies which arise between managers can be interpreted as agency problems.

One of the most remarkable features of globalization is that advances in technology have contributed to reducing the costs of trade (e.g., transportation and communication costs) and thus have boosted international trade. Under these circumstances, the importance of distance should have diminished over time, which would constitute a boon for countries that are far from the main centers of economic activity. However, one of the best-established empirical results in international economics is that bilateral trade decreases with distance. This apparent contradiction has been labeled the 'missing globalization puzzle.' We propose yet another explanation for this apparent contradiction that is based on the concept of geographic neutrality, which we use to construct indicators of international trade integration for two different scenarios: when distance matters and when it does not. Our results indicate that the importance of distance varies greatly across countries, as revealed by disparate gaps between distance-corrected and distance-uncorrected trade-integration indicators for different countries. Some factors that are rooted in the literature explain away the discrepancies, but their importance varies according to the trade-integration indicator that is considered-trade openness or trade connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse per capita GDP convergence among 28 Chinese provinces between 1952 and 2005 using the distribution dynamics approach. Compared with previous studies, we provide a more complete view by including some additional information such as the asymptotic half-life of convergence, mobility indices and the continuous version of the ergodic distributions. In addition, we also extend the analysis to evaluate whether patterns could differ if weighted by either the population living in each province or their economic sizes, together with the existence and magnitude of spatial spillovers. The unweighted, unconditional analysis corroborates and supplements previous findings, especially those indicating that convergence patterns differ strongly under either pre- or post-reform trends. Both the weighted and space-conditioned analyses indicate that convergence could be much faster when these factors are introduced in the analysis. Implications are especially relevant when weighing by population, since results indicate that the number of people escaping from relative poverty would be much higher than the figure predicted by the unweighted analysis. Resumen Analizamos aqui la convergencia del PIB per capita entre 28 provincias de China entre 1952 y 2005, utilizando el enfoque de evolucion dinamica de distribuciones. En comparacion con estudios previos, proporcionamos una vision mas completa mediante la incorporacion de informacion adicional como la semivida (half-life) asintotica de la convergencia, indices de movilidad y la version continua de las distribuciones ergodicas. Ademas, ampliamos nuestro analisis a evaluar si pudiera haber diferencias en los patrones si se hiciera una ponderacion basada en la poblacion que vive en cada provincia o en sus tamanos economicos, junto con la existencia y magnitud de spillovers espaciales. El analisis incondicional, no ponderado, corrobora y complementa resultados de estudios anteriores, especialmente aquellos que indican que los patrones de convergencia difieren en gran medida bajo tendencias pre o post reforma economica. Tanto los analisis de naturaleza espacial como los ponderados indican que la convergencia podria suceder mucho mas rapidamente si en el analisis se introdujesen estos factores . Las implicaciones son especialmente relevantes para la ponderacion por poblacion, ya que los resultados indican que el numero de personas que podrian lograr salir de la una pobreza relativa podria ser mucho mayor que la cifra pronosticada por el analisis no ponderado.

This study analyzes the links between efficiency and the decentralization of power in Spanish local governments for the years 1995 and 2000. To this end, we carried out a two-stage activity analysis in which the performance of each municipality was first evaluated against other municipalities with a similar level of power and, in a second stage, compared with that of other municipalities for which decentralization remained at a more preliminary stage. Results suggest that some municipalities could manage their resources more efficiently if they were granted more power. Although these sort of decentralized economies do not emerge for all municipalities, their magnitude clearly overshadows the diseconomies found if downscaling of decision making goes too far and least decentralized municipalities dominate. In addition, the likely efficiency gains from enhanced decentralization increase over time.