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This article examines the relative employment situation of female employees from a novel perspective based on the construction of multidimensional indicators of employment precariousness that allow examining its scale and nature. The evidence obtained for Spain shows that both the intensity and incidence of precarious employment are significantly higher for women, to the point that half of the women are multidimensionally precarious (with an incidence which is 40% higher than that of men) and precarious females simultaneously suffer on average from nearly three deficiencies in their jobs. Although female employment precariousness is highly persistent over time, it also exhibits significant oscillations plausibly linked to changes in the economy's cyclical position and in labour market regulations. Moreover, it exhibits a great heterogeneity by subgroups (it has even an extreme nature for certain subgroups of females) and by individuals (25% of women suffer between three and six job deficiencies, which compares with 24% of women having jobs without any type of deficiency). Finally, although the greater labour precariousness of women is largely explained by their observed characteristics, particularly by their greater presence in part-time jobs, women still have a greater probability of being precarious than observationally similar men. This work was supported by the Department of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society of the Comunidad Valenciana, Agencia Estatal de Investigación, (grant number AICO/2021/062, PID2020-114896RB-I00) and by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (project number PID2020-118355RB-I00).

After the increase in inequalities following the Great Recession, studies on wage bargaining systems have increasingly focused on wage inequality. This research examines wage inequality associated with collective bargaining levels in Spain, based on matched employer–employee microdata and quantile regression methods. These methods are applied across the wage distribution, following the method proposed by Firpo et al. (2011), to estimate wage premiums associated with agreement levels and to decompose the wage differentials observed at different points of the wage distribution. From the evidence obtained it can be concluded that, although the higher wages found in firm-level agreements are explained by the better observed characteristics of firms and workers covered by these collective agreements, there remains a positive wage premium. Although this premium is seen throughout the wage distribution, it favours mostly workers in the middle and upper-middle end. This slightly increases wage inequality in comparison with sectoral agreements. In contrast, workers without collective bargaining coverage generally suffer a wage penalty. This penalty is only observed on the left of the wage distribution. It becomes a significant wage premium in the upper end of the distribution, which implies a significant increase in wage inequality. In short, the evidence of this research suggests that reducing the coverage of collective bargaining could be associated with a significant increase in wage inequality. A better policy option for countries with a predominant sectoral model, such as Spain, would be to move towards an organized decentralization model. This would cause significant gains in employment as suggested by OECD (2019) and only a slight increase in wage inequality. Support received from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI - 10.13039/501100011033) through projects PID2020-118800GB-I00, PID2020-114896RB-I00 and PID2019-108265RB-100 and from the Generalitat Valenciana (Consellería de Innovación, Universidades, Ciencia y Sociedad Digital) through action AICO/2021/062.

Sub-national economic policies increasingly use labor market areas (LMAs) rather than administrative areas for analysis and implementation. How a set of LMAs was defined influences the results of such analyses, and so accurate policy delivery needs appropriately defined LMAs. Multinational bodies need comparable LMA definitions in many countries, calling for a definition method that is transferable across national boundaries. This article applies quantitative metrics to evaluate LMAs defined in three contrasting countries by three methods that represent the main methodological approaches. The deductive approach—based on a center and hinterland—is too inflexible to deal with differing geographical circumstances and cannot cope with statistical zones that are very small, or do not respect settlement structure. The alternative inductive methods tested define appropriate LMAs in each country, with the newer method performing slightly better in statistical terms. The article also exemplifies the usefulness of the metrics for comparisons of alternative regionalizations. Funding for related Spanish analyses was via Project PID2020-114896RB-100/Agencia Estatal de Investigación, AEI/10.13039/501100011033, Spanish State Plan for Scientific and Technical Research, and Innovation 2017–2020, and Project AICO/2021/062, Generalitat Valenciana, Department of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society.

En el artículo se desarrolla un análisis empírico de la precariedad laboral en el sector turístico en España mediante un novedoso enfoque multidimensional. El estudio se realiza a partir de los microdatos de la Encuesta de Población Activa y permite identificar el intenso alcance de la precariedad en el turismo en relación con el resto del sector privado en un contexto en el que el sector se está viendo sometido a importantes impactos de naturaleza coyuntural que se superponen con procesos estructurales asociados a fenómenos como el cambio tecnológico y la automatización. This article develops an empirical analysis of labor precariousness in the Spanish tourism sector through a novel multidimensional approach. The study uses microdata from the Labour Force Survey to compare hospitality with the rest of the private sector in a context marked by significant temporary shocks that overlap with structural processes associated with phenomena such as increased digitization and automation. Este trabajo se ha realizado en el marco de los proyectos PID2020-114896RB-I00 (Agencia Estatal de Investigación, AEI / 10.13039/501100011033; Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2017-2020) y AICO/2021/062 (Conselleria de Innovación, Universidades, Ciencia y Sociedad Digital; Programa de I+D+I de la Comunitat Valenciana). Raquel Simón-Albert disfruta de una ayuda PRE2018-085908 (Agencia Estatal de Investigación, AEI, ayudas para contratos predoctorales, Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2017-2020 y Unión Europea – Fondo Social Europeo, FSE).

La pandemia ha tenido un gran impacto en el ámbito universitario. En la Universidad de Alicante la docencia de las asignaturas del segundo semestre del curso 2019-20 pasó a ser online, al igual que todas las pruebas de evaluación. Para el curso 2020-21 la docencia fue dual y se dio la opción al profesorado de elegir entre evaluación presencial u online. El objetivo de este trabajo es doble. Por un lado, analizar el impacto que ha tenido esta adaptación de la docencia universitaria sobre los resultados académicos del alumnado. Por otro lado, analizar la influencia del género en dichos resultados académicos a partir de dos modelos estimados. Para ello, se analizan en las cuatro asignaturas objeto de estudio los resultados académicos en cada una de las actividades de evaluación en los cursos 2018-19 (docencia normal), 2019-20 (docencia online desde el 14 de marzo de 2020) y 2020-21 (docencia dual). Los resultados revelan que en el curso 2019-20 el confinamiento afectó a las dos asignaturas impartidas en el segundo semestre con incidencia dispar. Por su parte, la docencia dual tuvo un efecto negativo en los resultados académicos del curso 2020-21. En relación a la influencia del género en las calificaciones finales del alumnado, los resultados difieren en función de las asignaturas analizadas.

Labour market areas (LMAs) are a type of functional areas that provides the appropriate framework for spatially-explicit analyses of the labour market to guide policymaking in this field. This resource presents a data base with the most recent definition of LMAs for Spain using a state-of-the-art methodology. All defined LMAs are highly self-contained in terms of travel-to-work flows and exceed a minimum size compatible with the usual requirements in terms of confidentiality and representativeness, allowing the recoding of microdata geographic referencing and therefore a much greater granularity compared to what is usual for this type of data. It can be downloaded from https://rua.ua.es/dspace/handle/10045/121236. This work was supported by grants PID2020-114896RB-I00 (Agencia Estatal de Investigación, AEI / 10.13039/501100011033; Spanish State Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2017-2020) and AICO/2021/062 (Generalitat Valenciana, Department of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society; R&D&I Programme of the Comunidad Valenciana).

Hightlights • This study analyzes for the first time for Spain the impact of the service offshoring on the employment of the service sector • The data drawn from the Input-Output Tables of Spain’s National Accounts • The empirical analysis is carried out by estimating a labour demand function with constant elasticity of substitution (CES), with panel data methods • The results show that the impact on employment of offshoring services by service industries is not significant and the values obtained are very small in all cases.

Labour market areas and other functional regions (FRs) are increasingly used within research and policy, but how FRs are best defined is an unresolved issue. This is important because the policy impacts, or the research results, will differ depending on the specific FR boundaries used. As a result of this sensitivity (termed the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem), quantitative metrics are needed so that differing sets of FR boundaries can be evaluated. To meet this need the paper firstly reviews the concept and use of labour market areas – the form of FRs most widely used in policy – to identify relevant criteria for evaluating any regionalisation comprising a set of FRs. Next a range of potential measurable indicators for each of the criteria is defined. These candidate indicators are then exemplified by applying them to a huge number of alternative sets of FRs. From this empirical evidence a short-list of preferred indicators is identified, creating a statistical ‘toolbox’ for evaluating sets of FRs. The paper ends by first sketching possible processes within which applying the indicators can help policy-makers with a decision over the appropriate set of FRs for a specific policy, before finally outlining some potential future research developments. This paper reflects on work supported by EUROSTAT (specific contract num. 50405.2010.004-2011.325) which was undertaken by the authors with Colin Wymer (CURDS, Newcastle University). The research at IEI, University of Alicante, was also supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grant CSO2017-86474-R (National R&D&i Plan, Spain) (MINECO/AEI/ERDF, EU).

Coinciding with the onset of the economic crisis in 2007, a reshoring process, consisting in the return to the home country of part or all of the activities previously offshored abroad can be observed in all advanced economies. This study aims to analyse for first time whether this strategy has affected the tourism sector. The results show that between 2007 and 2010 a major reshoring process took place in the tourism sub-sectors, while in 2015, the levels of offshoring recovered slightly but did not compensate the previous strong decline. This reshoring strategy in tourism has basically been carried out through a replacement of foreign suppliers with national suppliers. Coincidiendo con el inicio de la crisis económica en 2007, se observa en todas las economías desarrolladas un proceso de reshoring, consistente en el retorno al país de parte o del total de actividades previamente deslocalizadas en el extranjero. Este estudio tiene como objetivo analizar por primera vez si esta estrategia ha afectado al sector turístico. Los resultados muestran que entre 2007 y 2010 se produjo un importante proceso de reshoring en todos los subsectores turísticos, mientras que en 2015 los niveles de offshoring se recuperaron levemente, aunque sin compensar el fuerte descenso anterior. Esta estrategia de reshoring en turismo se lleva a cabo básicamente mediante la sustitución de proveedores extranjeros por proveedores nacionales.

This article examines the differences in commuting length between native and immigrant employees in Spain, a relevant issue since immigrants' longer commuting times may, among other factors, reflect an imperfect spatial matching of their labour supply and demand with negative implications for their relative labour outcomes and their individual well-being. The research differentiates immigrants according to their origin and is based on a rich, nationally representative database. A novel contribution of the research is the use of decomposition econometric techniques that allow quantifying the joint and individual influence of a wide range of explanatory factors. The evidence obtained shows that, although a relevant part of the explanation of the greater commuting observed for immigrants is related to observed elements such as a different use of modes of transport, they make overall significantly longer journeys when comparing with observationally similar natives. This commuting penalty occurs yet only in the case of immigrants from emerging countries as it does not exist for those from advanced economies. Although the penalty is overall rather similar along several sociodemographic and occupational lines, it is much more pronounced for individuals living in large municipalities, which implies that previous analyses focusing on specific densely populated territories could not be nationally representative. To conclude, we offer additional novel evidence about the potential explanations of the commuting penalty of immigrants showing that it does not seem to derive from a hypothetically greater tolerance to commuting. This work is part of the project CSO2017-86474-R (Spanish State Program of R&D&i), funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Agencia Estatal de Investigación, AEI) and the ERDF-EU. Raquel Simón-Albert thanks the funding received from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, AEI and the ESF-EU (PRE2018-085908).

Labour market areas (LMAs) are a type of functional region (FR) defined on commuting flows and used in many countries to serve as the territorial reference for regional studies and policy making at local levels. Existing methods rely on manual adjustments of the results to ensure high quality, making them difficult to be monitored, hard to apply to different territories, and onerous to produce in terms of required work-hours. We propose an approach to automatise all stages of the delineation procedure and improve the final results, building upon a state-of-the-art stochastic search procedure that ensures optimal allocation of municipalities/counties to LMAs while keeping good global indicators: a pre-processing layer clusters adjoining municipalities with strong commuting flows to constrain the initial search space of the stochastic search, and a multi-criteria heuristic corrects common deficiencies that derive from global maximisation approaches or simple greedy heuristics. It produces high quality LMAs with optimal local characteristics. To demonstrate this methodology and assess the improvement achieved, we apply it to define LMAs in Spain based on the latest commuting data. This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities / Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), and the EU ERDF, grant number CSO2017-86474-R.

La pandemia del coronavirus conllevo al cambio de docencia presencial (tradicional) a docencia dual (híbrido entre presencialidad y no-presencialidad) durante el curso 2020/2021. En este trabajo estudiamos el efecto que tuvieron estos cambios en el sistema docente en los resultados académicos de los estudiantes de la Universidad de Alicante (UA) matriculados en Economía mundial los cambios en docencia durante el primer semestre del curso 2020/2021. Hemos contado con datos detallados de 108 estudiantes. Los resultados, basados en una encuesta específica, muestran que una percepción positiva del sistema dual frente al sistema de docencia tradicional (presencial) influye positivamente en la nota y el nivel de aprobado. La asistencia presencial en las clases de teoría y el esfuerzo en la preparación de la asignatura Economía mundial influyen también positivamente el nivel de aprobado y la nota obtenida en dicha asignatura. Adicionalmente destaca la relación de causalidad bidireccional entre la percepción positiva del sistema dual y la nota obtenida, así como la relación unidireccional entre: (i) el tiempo de desplazamiento (commuting) y la presencialidad (tanto en las clases de teoría como de prácticas); (ii) la percepción positiva del sistema dual y la no-presencialidad en las clases de teoría.

La situación provocada por la pandemia causada por el COVID-19 ha hecho replantearse todo el sistema educativo en muy poco tiempo. En el ámbito universitario en concreto, la transformación de las clases presenciales a un sistema online o dual, incluidos los procedimientos de evaluación, se han desarrollado por necesidad, en ocasiones sin una adecuada planificación. Como consecuencia de lo anterior, el trabajo que queremos analizar el sistema de evaluación de las asignaturas relativas a la economía del turismo en un escenario pre-COVID comparativamente con lo ocurrido a raíz de la pandemia y el paso a un sistema de evaluación online. Los datos nos permiten valorar los resultados de las adaptaciones tanto curriculares como de procedimiento que se han llevado a cabo como consecuencia del COVID-19, identificar fortalezas y debilidades tanto de uno como de otro sistema y proponer elementos de mejora y consolidación de las prácticas que hayan tenido mejores resultados, que redunden en un sistema de evaluación de competencias online justo, proporcionado y transparente, que garantice la medición de la adquisición de las competencias indicadas en cada una de las guías docentes.

La consecuencia inmediata de las medidas de distanciamiento social supuso cambios contundentes en todos los ámbitos de nuestras vidas y en todos los sectores económicos, incluyendo el de la educación superior. El cambio forzoso al sistema online durante el confinamiento no fue el único cambio derivado de la pandemia, sino la implementación del sistema de docencia dual (híbrido entre asistencia presencial y online) durante el curso 2020/2021. El presente trabajo se centra en analizar la tolerancia del alumnado universitario de la Universidad de Alicante (UA) ante el cambio forzoso del sistema tradicional al sistema dual. El estudio se basa en información primaria facilitada por alumnado con menos de un año de experiencia con el sistema tradicional siendo alumnado de segundo curso matriculado en Economía mundial y Comercio internacional durante el segundo cuatrimestre del curso 2020/2021. La muestra es de 112 estudiantes (casi un 70% de la población analizada). Los resultados, basados en una encuesta específica, muestran que la percepción del sistema dual frente al sistema de docencia tradicional (presencial) viene determinada por el nivel de eficiencia del mismo percibido por el alumnado, así como por su preparación tecnológica (uso de gadgets, internet y herramientas del sistema dual).

Employees’ job satisfaction influences their commitment, affects quality and productivity and is, therefore, crucial for a labour-intensive industry such as tourism. In this article, the determinants of job satisfaction are examined in comparative terms for tourism workers versus those employed in the rest of the service sector. In contrast with previous research, the analysis is not restricted to hospitality workers, includes all types of occupations, and is based on a nationwide representative sample. The explanatory models of job satisfaction are estimated using ordered logit techniques, considering personal and household characteristics as well as objective and subjective job characteristics. The results indicate that job satisfaction is significantly lower among tourism workers and that in some cases notable differences exist between the factors influencing job satisfaction in the tourism sector compared with the rest of the service sector, which might be relevant for managers and policymakers. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under grants CSO2017-86474-R and CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P (National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation) (MINECO/AEI/ERDF, EU).

This article examines the gender wage gap in the Spanish hospitality industry versus the rest of the economy. Decomposition techniques are applied to a nationwide representative sample that includes matched employer–employee data allowing an accurate quantification of the phenomenon and its determinants. The methodologies used allow us to examine the average gender wage gap and also how this gap behaves throughout the wage distribution. According to the results, the gender wage gap in hospitality is rather significant (although slightly lower compared with the rest of the economy) and exhibits a steeper profile along the wage distribution. A large part of the gap is explained by observable characteristics, as female hospitality workers have lower levels of seniority than men, are overrepresented in low-skilled occupations, have less supervisory responsibilities, and are segregated into low-wage firms. Although potentially direct discrimination seems to be lower in hospitality, it is not a negligible problem, as, in its most conservative measure (namely, when observationally identical male and female employees working in the same firm are compared), it accounts for as much as 0.05 log points or 30% of the raw gender wage gap. The evidence also shows that the particularly intense gender wage gap observed in the uppermost part of the wage distribution in the hospitality industry arises because more qualified women in the sector are doubly penalized by an intense segregation into comparatively worse jobs and by an unfavorable wage treatment with respect to comparable men, which is consistent with the glass-ceiling phenomenon. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Agencia Estatal de Investigación) and the European Union (ERDF) under Grant CSO2017-86474-R (National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation, Spain).

Reshoring of services emerged in advanced economies barely a decade ago. It has hardly been analysed and there are no academic studies on its possible effects. This study addresses two objectives: The measurement of the reshoring of services in Spain for 2008 to 2010; and its impact on employment. The results reveal that there is a percentage reduction of imported services inputs per unit of product of over 29% in manufacturing sectors and of over 23% in service sectors. Its impact on employment for manufacturing and services is not significant.

The aim of the paper is to examine the commuting behaviour of self‐employed workers in Spain as well as its relationship with satisfaction with jobs and housing. According to our results although conventional estimations indicate that commuting trips are shorter among the self‐employed, the differences with employees vanish when the potential endogeneity of self‐employment is controlled for. We also show that the job and housing satisfaction levels of the self‐employed are less sensitive to commuting than those of employees, and that in fact no significant effect is observed for relevant segments of the former group, what gives partial support to the theoretical model that we propose where imperfect information problems affect the employees but not the self‐employed. This work was supported by ERDF (European Union) and the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Agencia Estatal de Investigación, AEI) [grant numbers CSO2017‐86474‐R and CSO2014‐55780‐C3‐2‐P (National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation, Spain). J.F. Albert is also grateful for the financial support offered by the University of Alicante (programme of grants for Master's studies and initiation to the research of the Vice‐Rectorate of Research and Knowledge Transfer).

En esta investigación se examina el efecto que sobre los resultados académicos del alumnado universitario tienen el tipo de alojamiento de los estudiantes (si residen o no en el domicilio familiar) y el tiempo de desplazamiento entre el domicilio y la universidad, cuestiones para las que no existe evidencia previa para España. En el análisis se usan datos procedentes de una encuesta realizada a alumnado de los grados en ADE y Turismo-ADE de la Universidad de Alicante. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que una mayor duración del desplazamiento entre el lugar de residencia y la universidad está asociada a menores logros académicos, si bien dicho efecto se aprecia únicamente en el caso de los estudiantes que mantienen su residencia en el domicilio familiar durante el curso académico. Por otro lado, mantener la residencia en el hogar familiar pudiera estar asociada per se a mayores logros académicos, pero dicho efecto resulta contrarrestado por la mayor duración del desplazamiento cotidiano a la universidad, de modo que en términos generales no se observan diferencias significativas en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes en función de su tipo de residencia durante el curso académico.

This paper examines the relationship between commuting time and satisfaction with different life domains. Based on data for Spain, the results show that commuting time exerts a negative impact on all areas of satisfaction for male and female workers, and that longer commutes affect women’s satisfaction disproportionally. Using public transport and walking/cycling worsen this effect, as do higher degrees of urbanization and population density. According to the evidence, whose robustness is tested in several ways, the negative effect of commuting time on satisfaction is greater for lower income workers, although for them the Great Recession moderated this effect. This work was supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) [grant numbers CSO2017-86474-R and CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P (National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation, Spain) (MINECO/AEI/ERDF, EU)].

En esta investigación se examina el efecto que sobre los resultados académicos del alumnado universitario tienen el tipo de alojamiento de los estudiantes (en función de la permanencia o no en el domicilio familiar) y el tiempo de desplazamiento entre el domicilio y la universidad, cuestiones para las que no existe evidencia previa para España. En el análisis se usan datos procedentes de una encuesta realizada al alumnado de segundo curso de los grados en ADE y Turismo-ADE de la Universidad de Alicante en el primer cuatrimestre del curso 2016/2017. Los resultados muestran, en primer lugar, que una mayor duración del desplazamiento entre el lugar de residencia y la universidad está asociada a menores logros académicos, si bien dicho efecto se aprecia únicamente en el caso de los estudiantes que mantienen su residencia en el domicilio familiar durante el curso académico. Por otro lado, mantener la residencia durante el curso académico en el hogar familiar en lugar de desplazarse a vivir en el entorno de la universidad pudiera estar asociado per se a mayores logros académicos, pero dicho efecto resulta contrarrestado por la mayor duración del desplazamiento cotidiano a la universidad, de modo que en términos generales no se observan diferencias significativas en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes en función de su tipo de residencia durante el curso académico.

The offshoring of services has steadily expanded in recent years and acquired growing importance in certain tourism subsectors. The present study analyses for the first time the offshoring indices and the trend seen in tourism services, based on input–output data (Spanish National Accounts) during the 2000–2007 expansive period. A distinction is made between offshoring associated with international fragmentation of production and offshoring due to a shift from domestic to foreign suppliers. The results point to a relocation of intermediate services to foreign countries in certain tourism subsectors (including travel agencies and air and maritime transport), involving both the international fragmentation of production and a substitution of the source of supply.

Producción Científica, This article proposes a new methodology to measure precarious employment with a multidimensional approach. The adjusted multidimensional precariousness rate employed to measure job precariousness is calculated on a counting approach and exhibit several advantages, including its decomposability according to the relative contribution to total precariousness of different dimensions and sub-populations. For illustrative purposes, the methodology is applied to the Spanish case using microdata from the Encuesta de Estructura Salarial (Wage Structure Survey) and considering three precariousness dimensions of jobs (low wages, fixed-term contracts and part-time work). The evidence obtained shows that at the beginning of the economic crisis there was an increase in the incidence and intensity of precariousness for new jobs created in the Spanish economy. Moreover, obtained evidence shows that the incidence of precarious employment is particularly high in certain economic sectors and for females., Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Project CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P), Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (Project S2015/HUM-3416-DEPOPOR-CM).

Introducción. La investigación tiene dos objetivos: caracterizar a los estudiantes universitarios que simultanean trabajo y estudios y el tipo de trabajo que desempeñan, por un lado, y analizar el efecto que tiene trabajar sobre distintas medidas de su rendimiento académico, por otro. Método. El análisis se desarrolla a partir de información individual procedente de una encuesta (N=464) combinada con registros universitarios. Se han estimado modelos en los que se consideran distintas medidas del desempeño académico y en los que se controla por un amplio conjunto de factores (incluyendo características socioeconómicas así como medidas de motivación y de esfuerzo académico), distinguiendo entre distintos niveles de intensidad de la actividad laboral. Las técnicas usadas han sido la regresión logística, mínimos cuadrados ordinarios y variables instrumentales. Resultados. Se confirma, en primer lugar, que una proporción significativa de los estudiantes universitarios españoles simultanea los estudios con un trabajo remunerado, siendo muy frecuente que trabajen de forma habitual durante periodos prolongados. Se observa, además, que es frecuente que quienes trabajan lo hagan motivados por necesidad y en tareas no relacionadas con el contenido de sus estudios, y que la propensión a trabajar es mayor entre los estudiantes de mayor edad, los extranjeros y los de mayor motivación. En segundo lugar, los resultados obtenidos sugieren que, en contraste con la propia percepción manifestada por los estudiantes, trabajar regularmente no tiene aparentemente un impacto significativo en sus resultados académicos. Conclusión. El estudio añade evidencia sobre un tema relevante pero muy escasamente analizado en el caso español, sobre el que ni la teoría ni los estudios empíricos previos sobre casos internacionales ofrecen resultados concluyentes. Los resultados son útiles para la consideración que el desempeño de una actividad laboral debe recibir en el diseño de los itinerarios seguidos por los estudiantes universitarios. Introduction. The research has two objectives: to characterise college students who combine work and studies, and their jobs, on one hand; and to analyse the effect of work on various measures of academic performance, on the other. Method. The study is developed using individual information derived from a survey (N=464) and from university records. We have estimated models that consider diverse measures of academic performance and control for a wide set of factors (including socio-economic characteristics and diverse measures of motivation and academic effort), distinguishing between different levels of intensity in the labour activity. The techniques used are logistic regression, ordinary least squares and instrumental variables. Results. The evidence obtained confirms, first, that a noticeable proportion of Spanish university students have a paid job, and often work regularly for extended periods. It also is common for those who work to do so motivated by necessity, and to perform tasks unrelated to the content of their studies. Moreover, the likelihood of working is higher among older students, foreigners and those who have higher levels of motivation. Secondly, the results suggest that, in contrast to the perceptions expressed by students, working regularly does not appear to have a significant impact on their academic performance. Conclusion. The article provides additional evidence on a very relevant issue that has however received very little attention in the Spanish case and for which neither theoretical studies nor previous empirical research have reached conclusive results. The article provides useful support for the consideration of employment-related issues in the designing of the itineraries followed by university students. El presente trabajo se enmarca en el seno del Programa de Redes de investigación en docencia universitaria del Vicerrectorado de Calidad e Innovación Educativa-Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad de Alicante (convocatoria 2015-16), ref.: 3478. Además, los autores desean hacer constar su agradecimiento a la financiación recibida del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad en el marco del Plan Estatal de I+D+i, ref. CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P.

The literature on immigrant assimilation highlights the imperfect portability of the human capital acquired by immigrants in their country of origin, which accounts for their low levels of labor market integration upon arrival in the new country, as well as their initially wide earnings gap. Recent studies have examined this issue from the perspective of overeducation. This study analyzes the portability of immigrants’ human capital into the Spanish job market according to their geographic origin. Spain’s immigrants originate from a highly varied range of countries, with origins as diverse as Latin America, the Maghreb, and Eastern Europe. Here, the use of public microdata files from the Spanish Census permits us to identify up to six regions of immigrant origin comprising developed countries and developing economies, distinguishing, furthermore, different regions of origin on the basis of their language and level of development. The results obtained indicate differing degrees of transferability of human capital depending on geographic origin, with transferability being greater for immigrants from countries that are highly developed or which have a similar culture or language and lower for those from developing countries and with more distant cultures. As an immigrant’s period of residence in Spain is prolonged, integration does take place but the pace is slow (between 7 and 9 years).

This article analyses the interrelationship between educational mismatch, wages and job satisfaction in the Spanish tourism sector in the first years of the global economic crisis. It is shown that there is a much higher incidence of over-education among workers in the Spanish tourism sector than in the rest of the economy despite this sector recording lower educational levels. This study estimates two models to analyse the influence of the educational mismatch on wages and job satisfaction for workers in the tourism industry and for the Spanish economy as a whole. The first model shows that in the tourism sector, the wage penalty associated with over-education is approximately 10%. The second reveals that in the tourism sector the levels of satisfaction of over-educated workers are considerably lower than those corresponding to workers well assigned. With respect to the differences between tourism and the overall economy in both aspects, the wage penalty is substantially lower in the case of tourism industries and the effect of over-education on job satisfaction is very similar to that of the economy as a whole in a context where both wages and the private returns to education are considerably lower in the tourism sector. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant CSO2011-29943-C03-02 (National R&D&I Plan).

A general trend in the study of international retirement migration has been the increased attention paid to the social contacts and network connections of the migrants in both the destination and the origin areas. These studies have examined the extent to which migrants build social relationships with their neighbours and the host society while also maintaining social links with their countries of origin, addressing the central role that leisure travel plays in sustaining increasingly dispersed social networks and maintaining the social capital of these networks and of the individuals involved in them. Using a case study approach to examine British retirement migration to Spain, we explore the relevance of transnational social networks in the context of international retirement migration, particularly the intensity of bidirectional visiting friends and relatives (VFR) tourism flows and the migrants’ social contacts with friends and/or family back in their home country. Building on the concept of social capital and Putnam's distinction between bonding and bridging social capital, we propose a framework for the analysis of the migrants’ international social networks. The results of a study conducted based on a sample of 365 British retirees living in the coast of Alicante (Spain) show both the strength of the retirees’ international bonding social capital and the role of ‘VFR's travel and communication technologies in sustaining the migrants’ transnational social practices and, ultimately, their international bonding social capital. It also provides evidence for the reinforcing links between tourism-related mobility and amenity-seeking migration in later life. This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education Mobility Programme [SB2006-0058].

This article examines wage differences across Spain's NUTS‐2 regions along the entire wage distribution based on matched employer‐employee microdata from 2006 to 2014. Unlike previous related studies, we properly control for differences in regional purchasing power parities, which are very large in practice. Although part of the raw regional wage differences observed is explained by differences between regions in productive structures, and, to a much lesser extent, in labor forces, noteworthy, very similar throughout the wage distribution regional differences net of composition effects arise even after controlling for a broad set of individual and firm characteristics. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Agencia Estatal de Investigación), the European Union (ERDF), and the Junta de Extremadura (grant numbers CSO2017‐86474‐R, ECO2014‐53702‐P, and ECO2016‐75805‐R, National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation, Spain, and GR18106).

En esta investigación se examina si los resultados académicos del alumnado universitario están relacionados estadísticamente con el tipo de centro (público o de otro tipo) en el que los estudiantes cursaron la educación secundaria. La información utilizada en el análisis empírico proviene de una encuesta realizada al alumnado de segundo curso de los grados en ADE y Turismo-ADE de la Universidad de Alicante en el primer cuatrimestre del curso 2016/2017. Los análisis realizados muestran que la probabilidad de haber cursado la educación secundaria en centros públicos es significativamente inferior entre el alumnado universitario con nacionalidad española, quienes tienen padres con estudios terciarios y quienes residen en municipios grandes. Por otro lado, en relación con el objetivo principal del trabajo, las estimaciones muestran que el tipo de centro en el que se cursaron los estudios no universitarios no ejerce una influencia muy significativa en el rendimiento académico del alumnado universitario, aunque se obtiene evidencia parcial que sugiere un mejor desempeño de los estudiantes procedentes de centros públicos. Por otro lado, todas las especificaciones destacan la importancia de la nota media del bachillerato como factor explicativo del rendimiento académico en la etapa universitaria.

An evolutionary approach to the delimitation of labour market areas: an empirical application for Chile. Spatial Economic Analysis. Labour market areas (LMAs) are argued to represent a more appropriate policy framework than administrative units for the analysis of spatial labour market activity. This article develops LMAs for Chile by applying an evolutionary computation approach. This innovative approach defines LMAs through an optimization process by maximization of internal cohesion, subject to restrictions of minimum levels of self-containment and population. To evaluate the appropriateness of the LMAs, comparative analyses are performed between alternative delimitations based on different parameter configurations of the proposed method versus administrative boundaries and the most widely used method for official LMA delimitation, the travel-to-work areas method. Un enfoque evolutivo para la delimitación de las áreas del mercado laboral: aplicación empírica para Chile. Spatial Economic Analysis. Se argumenta que las áreas del mercado laboral (AML) representan un marco político más apropiado que las unidades administrativas para el análisis de la actividad del mercado laboral espacial. En este artículo se desarrollan las AML para Chile utilizando un enfoque de computación evolutiva. Este enfoque innovador define las AML mediante un proceso de optimización al maximizar la cohesión interna, sujeta a las restricciones de los niveles mínimos de autocontención y población. A fin de evaluar la idoneidad de las AML, se llevan a cabo análisis comparativos entre las delimitaciones alternativas basadas en diferentes configuraciones de parámetros del método propuesto frente a los límites administrativos y el método más utilizado para la delimitación oficial de las AML, el método de las cuencas de empleo. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [grant numbers CSO2011-29943-C03-02 and CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P, National R&D&i Plan] and the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research through its human capital development programme.

The article examines relative wages of immigrants in Spain, with a particular focus on the impact of the Great Recession. The empirical analysis is restricted to men and is based on matched employer-employee microdata and the decomposition techniques of Juhn et al. (1991, 1993) and Fortin et al. (2011). Our results show that the significant native-immigrant wage gap that exists both in terms of average wages and of differentials along the wage distribution is essentially explained by differences in the endowments of observed characteristics so that, in general, immigrants tend to receive a similar wage treatment than Spaniards with analogous observed attributes. On the other hand, the Great Recession has had a noticeable impact on the relative wages of immigrants, given that the significant increase of the native-immigrant wage gap observed during the previous expansionary period was mitigated during the economic downturn due to composition effects arising from the severe employment destruction pattern.

En esta investigación se examina si los resultados académicos del alumnado universitario están estadísticamente relacionados con el tipo de centro (público o de otro tipo) en el que los estudiantes cursaron la educación secundaria, y enlaza, por tanto, con una línea de trabajo cada vez más relevante en numerosos países pero en la que los trabajos referidos al caso español son aún muy escasos. La información utilizada en el análisis empírico proviene de una encuesta realizada al alumnado de segundo curso de los grados en ADE y Turismo-ADE de la Universidad de Alicante en el primer cuatrimestre del curso 2016/2017. Los análisis realizados muestran que la probabilidad de haber cursado la educación secundaria en centros públicos es significativamente inferior entre el alumnado universitario con nacionalidad española, quienes tienen padres con estudios terciarios y quienes residen en municipios grandes. Por otro lado, en relación con el objetivo principal del trabajo, las estimaciones muestran que el tipo de centro en el que se cursaron los estudios no universitarios no ejerce una influencia muy significativa en el rendimiento académico del alumnado universitario, aunque se obtiene evidencia parcial que sugiere un mejor desempeño de los estudiantes procedentes de centros públicos. Por otro lado, todas las especificaciones destacan la importancia de la nota media del bachillerato como factor explicativo del rendimiento académico en la etapa universitaria. Este trabajo ha sido desarrollado en el marco de la red “Análisis del efecto del tipo de centro de educación primaria y secundaria sobre el rendimiento académico del alumnado universitario” financiada por el Proyecto Redes de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria 2016-2017 de la Universidad de Alicante (BOUA: 28/11/2016).

Administrative areas are arbitrarily designed and do not necessarily reflect the geographical patterns of socio-economic and labour market activity. Labour market areas (LMAs) are required to analyse spatial labour market activity and provide a framework to guide spatially-explicit employment policy development. This resource describes a data source of a set of recently created labour market areas for Chile. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [grant numbers CSO2011-29943-C03-02 and CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P, National R&D&i Plan] and the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research through its human capital development program.

The methods used to define functional regions for public statistics and policy purposes need to establish several parameter values. This is typically achieved using expert knowledge based on qualitative judgements and lengthy consultations with local stakeholders. We propose to support this process by using an optimization algorithm to calibrate any regionalization method by identifying the parameter values that produce the best regionalization for a given quantitative indicator. The approach is exemplified by using a grid search and a genetic algorithm to configure the official methods employed in the UK and Sweden for the definition of their respective official concepts of local labour markets. Los métodos utilizados para definir las regiones funcionales con fines de estadística y políticas públicas deben establecer una serie de valores de ciertos parámetros. Esto se logra generalmente utilizando conocimiento experto basado en juicios cualitativos y largas consultas con las partes interesadas locales. Se propone apoyar este proceso utilizando un algoritmo de optimización para calibrar los métodos de regionalización mediante la identificación de los valores de los parámetros que producen la mejor regionalización para un determinado indicador cuantitativo. El enfoque se ejemplifica mediante el uso de una búsqueda por cuadrículas y un algoritmo genético para configurar los métodos oficiales empleados en el Reino Unido y en Suecia para la definición de sus respectivos conceptos oficiales de los mercados laborales locales. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant numbers CSO2011-29943-C03-02 and CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P, National R&D&i Plan).

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine wage differences between part- and full-time workers distinguishing by gender by using a large Spanish matched employer-employee data set and an econometric decomposition that permits to decompose wage differences by quantiles of the wage distribution. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on cross-section matched employer-employee microdata from a large representative survey (the Encuesta de Estructura Salarial) which is carried out with a harmonised methodology common to all European Union member countries and that has been designed specifically to provide reliable evidence about characteristics of the wage distribution such us wage differentials associated with the type of working time. From a methodological point of view, the econometric decomposition technique proposed recently by Fortin et al. (2011) to decompose wage differences between part-time and full-time workers by quantiles of the wage distribution is applied. This methodology has the advantage over similar techniques that provides a detailed decomposition of wage differentials and has not been used before to examine the wage impact of part-time jobs. Findings The results show that the significant raw wage gap that part-time workers experience in Spain differs substantially along the wage distribution. In the case of part-time females, the wage disadvantage is mostly explained by their relative endowments of characteristics (and particularly by their lower endowments of human capital and their segregation into low-wage sectors) but a significant wage penalty still persists, increasing along the wage distribution. In the case of males the wage disadvantage is only found in the lower part of the distribution and it is due both to their worst endowments of characteristics and a significant wage penalty. Research limitations/implications The evidence for Spain shows that the part-time work tends to affect differently to the wages of males and females, with a higher part-time penalty for males, as predicted by the “flexibility stigma” hypothesis, and penalising low-qualified men in the lower part of the wage distribution and high-qualified women in the upper part of the distribution the most. Originality/value The analysis contributes to the literature by examining wage differences along the wage distribution for both genders using econometric decomposition methods, an aspect that to the authors’ knowledge has been examined only scarcely in the international literature with non-conclusive evidence and has not been examined in previous studies for the Spanish case. In this vein, Spain is a particularly interesting analysis case from an international perspective of the wage consequences of part-time jobs, given that in contrast with most other advanced countries a majority of part-time employment in this country is involuntary and this phenomenon is especially affecting disadvantaged groups.

En este artículo, se analizan los factores determinantes de los tipos de movilidad más significativos que afectan a los trabajadores: los desplazamientos cotidianos entre la residencia y el lugar de empleo, y los cambios de domicilio. También se explora la influencia que cada uno de estos fenómenos ejerce en el otro. Para ello, se estiman dos modelos alternativos mediante la técnica del logit multinomial. Los datos individuales utilizados se refieren al caso español y proceden del Censo de Población de 2011, con lo que se actualizan estudios previos realizados antes de la gran recesión. Una aportación significativa del artículo es el uso de los mercados locales de trabajo (MLT) españoles como unidad territorial de referencia. Cada uno de dichos mercados agrupa a municipios estrechamente ligados entre sí en términos de movilidad entre la residencia y el lugar de empleo, y están delimitados por fronteras que son cruzadas con poca frecuencia en el curso de dichos desplazamientos, lo que los convierte en unidades funcionales relevantes frente a la alternativa de utilizar referencias geográficas de naturaleza administrativa. El uso de los MLT permite distinguir, a partir de los microdatos censales recodificados por el INE, entre movimientos migratorios (variaciones de lugar de residencia entre MLT distintos) y simples movimientos residenciales dentro de un mismo MLT (que, por tanto, no hacen imprescindible un cambio de ubicación laboral en términos de accesibilidad). Los resultados corroboran que existe una relación significativa entre los dos tipos de movilidad considerados y que las mudanzas a una nueva vivienda tienden a alejar a los empleados de su lugar de trabajo, en vez de acortar dichos desplazamientos. This article discusses the determinants of two of the most significant types of workers' mobility: travel-to-work commuting and changes in the place of residence. It explores, in particular, the extent to which these phenomena influence each other. Accordingly, two alternative models are estimated using the multinomial logit technique. The individual data used come from the Spanish Population Census of 2011, which allows updating previous works that did not take into account the effects of the Great Recession. A significant contribution of the paper is the use of labour market areas (LMAs) as territorial reference units. Each of these areas brings together closely linked municipalities in terms of commuting flows and are delimited by boundaries that are infrequently crossed in the course of such trips; two features which make them relevant for this analysis in contrast with the alternative of using administrative territorial units as the reference geography. The recodification of the census microdata by the INE according to this territorial reference makes it possible to differentiate between migrations (change of residence involving different LMAs) and simple residential moves within a given LMA (which therefore make a change of workplace unnecessary due to the specific accessibility conditions in the LMA). The results confirm that there is a significant link between both types of mobility (commuting and migration/ residential mobility) and, in particular, that changes of residence seem to move workers away from their places of work rather than shortening their commuting trips. En aquest article s'analitzen els factors determinants dels tipus de mobilitat més significatius que afecten els treballadors: els desplaçaments quotidians entre la residència i el lloc de treball, i els canvis de domicili. També s'explora la influència que cadascun d'aquests fenòmens exerceix en l'altre. Per fer-ho, s'estimen dos models alternatius mitjançant la tècnica del lògit multinomial. Les dades individuals utilitzades es refereixen al cas espanyol i procedeixen del Cens de Població de 2011, amb la qual cosa s'actualitzen estudis previs fets abans de la gran recessió. Una aportació significativa de l'article és l'ús dels mercats locals de treball (MLT) espanyols com a unitat territorial de referència. Cada un d'aquests mercats agrupa municipis estretament lligats entre si en termes de mobilitat entre la residència i el lloc de treball, i estan delimitats per fronteres que són creuades amb poca freqüència en el curs d'aquests desplaçaments, cosa que els converteix en unitats funcionals rellevants davant l'alternativa d'utilitzar referències geogràfiques de naturalesa administrativa. L'ús dels MLT permet distingir, a partir de les microdades censals recodificades per l'INE, entre moviments migratoris (variacions de lloc de residència entre MLT diferents) i simples moviments residencials dins d'un mateix MLT (que, per tant, no fan imprescindible un canvi d'ubicació laboral en termes d'accessibilitat). Els resultats corroboren que existeix una relació significativa entre els dos tipus de mobilitat considerats i que les mudances a un nou habitatge tendeixen a allunyar els empleats del seu lloc de treball, en lloc d'escurçar aquests desplaçaments.

This article examines the origin of the cross-country heterogeneity of the gender wage gap in nine European countries using a unique harmonized international matched employer–employee dataset. Our novel findings suggest that cross-country differences in the intensity of female segregation into low-paying workplaces is a relevant source of international differences in the size of the gap and that international disparities in the characteristics of wage structures are not very influential. On the other hand, the evidence is not fully conclusive with respect to the influence on the variations of the gap of different macroeconomic, social and institutional country-specific features considered previously in the literature. This study benefits from funding support of the project European Labour Market Analysis using Firmlevel Panel Data and Linked Employer–Employee Data financed by the EU under the VI Framework Programme.

El crecimiento y expansión de las cadenas hoteleras ha llevado a que éstas sitúen su mirada en la internacionalización de sus actividades, desarrollando estrategias de inversión extranjera directa en diferentes países. En este trabajo se presentan los principales resultados de un estudio de casos de seis grupos turísticos vacacionales españoles implicados en el proceso de internacionalización, seleccionados por su relevancia y diferentes estrategias de comportamiento. ABSTRACT: The growth and expansion of hotel companies has led to concentrate on the internationalization of their activities, developing strategies of FDI in different countries. This paper presents the main results of a study of six cases of Spanish holiday tourist groups involved in the internationalization process, selected for their relevance and strategies of behaviour.

This paper presents a new approach to the delineation of local labor markets based on evolutionary computation. The aim of the exercise is the division of a given territory into functional regions based on travel-to-work flows. Such regions are defined so that a high degree of inter-regional separation and of intra-regional integration in both cases in terms of commuting flows is guaranteed. Additional requirements include the absence of overlap between delineated regions and the exhaustive coverage of the whole territory. The procedure is based on the maximization of a fitness function that measures aggregate intra-region interaction under constraints of inter-region separation and minimum size. In the experimentation stage, two variations of the fitness function are used, and the process is also applied as a final stage for the optimization of the results from one of the most successful existing methods, which are used by the British authorities for the delineation of travel-to-work areas (TTWAs). The empirical exercise is conducted using real data for a sufficiently large territory that is considered to be representative given the density and variety of travel-to-work patterns that it embraces. The paper includes the quantitative comparison with alternative traditional methods, the assessment of the performance of the set of operators which has been specifically designed to handle the regionalization problem and the evaluation of the convergence process. The robustness of the solutions, something crucial in a research and policy-making context, is also discussed in the paper. This work was supported by Spanish National Plan of R+D+i from Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia) for the project Local Labour Markets: New Methods of Delineation and Analysis (No. SEJ2007-67767-C04-02), and the European Social Fund (ESF) and the University of Alicante.

The main objective is to evaluate learning-teaching technical efficiency.A three-stage Data Envelopment Analysis with contextual variables is used.Super efficiency between efficient units is examined.The key performance indicators and their influence have been identified.The results also reveal that contextual variables are significant. This study evaluates the technical efficiency of the learning-teaching process in higher education using a three-stage procedure that offers advances in comparison to previous studies and improves the quality of the results. First, it utilizes a multiple stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with contextual variables. Second, the levels of super efficiency are calculated in order to prioritize the efficiency units. And finally, through sensitivity analysis, the contribution of each key performance indicator (KPI) is established with respect to the efficiency levels without omission of variables. The analytical data was collected from a survey completed by 633 tourism students during the 2011/12, 2012/13 and 2013/14 academic course years. The results suggest that level of satisfaction with the course, diversity of materials and satisfaction with the teacher were the most important factors affecting teaching performance. Furthermore, the effect of the contextual variables was found to be significant.

This article considers the role that diverse spatial variables play in explaining overeducation. Unlike previous analyses of the Spanish case, we have directly tested the links between current mobility (commuting and migration) and overeducation, and in contrast to previous literature, we have included a direct measure of potential spatial flexibility at an individual level (worker availability to migrate, in response to the needs of his/her firm). Regional labour market conditions are also considered in the analysis. Our results show that the links between overeducation and spatial variables vary depending on the specific sub-group of wage earners considered, based on gender and education. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P (National Plan of R&D&I).

The article examines the origin of differences between wages in the hospitality sector and the rest of the private sector in Spain. The evidence obtained for the 2002–2010 period shows that the wage disadvantage of hospitality presents an increasing profile along the wage distribution so that it is particularly relevant for those earning comparatively higher salaries. In contrast with other low-wage sectors, lower wages in hospitality are explained almost entirely by the specific characteristics of its workers and jobs (particularly their lower educational qualifications and their higher presence in low-skilled occupations), and not by the existence of lower rewards to those characteristics. Highly qualified individuals are however an exception since they suffer a wage penalty for working in the sector. Furthermore the analysis shows that pay inequality is substantially lower in the hospitality sector and that it is not due to the relative characteristics of its workers and jobs. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grants CSO2011-29943-C03-02 and CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P (National R&D&I Plan).

Due to confidentiality considerations, the microdata available from the 2011 Spanish Census have been codified at a provincial (NUTS 3) level except when the municipal (LAU 2) population exceeds 20,000 inhabitants (a requirement that is met by less than 5% of all municipalities). For the remainder of the municipalities within a given province, information is only provided for their classification in wide population intervals. These limitations, hampering territorially-focused socio-economic analyses, and more specifically, those related to the labour market, are observed in many other countries. This article proposes and demonstrates an automatic procedure aimed at delineating a set of areas that meet such population requirements and that may be used to re-codify the geographic reference in these cases, thereby increasing the territorial detail at which individual information is available. The method aggregates municipalities into clusters based on the optimisation of a relevant objective function subject to a number of statistical constraints, and is implemented using evolutionary computation techniques. Clusters are defined to fit outer boundaries at the level of labour market areas. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant number CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P, National R&D&i Plan 2013-2016).

Esta memoria recoge el trabajo realizado durante el curso académico 2016-2017 por un grupo de profesores de la Facultad de CC. Económicas y Empresariales de la Universidad de Alicante que integran la Red Docente “Metodologías docentes en Economía” y cuyo objetivo ha sido analizar los resultados del sistema de evaluación de las asignaturas y grupos en los que imparten docencia, así como las posibles diferencias de género existentes en las calificaciones de su alumnado. El criterio inspirador de la programación docente ha sido la evaluación continua del alumnado, entendida como elemento del proceso enseñanza-aprendizaje que informa al profesor sobre el proceso de aprendizaje de los estudiantes. En primer lugar, el trabajo describe las asignaturas objeto de estudio, así como los procedimientos y criterios de evaluación aplicados en cada una de ellas, especificando las diferentes actividades de evaluación diseñadas para valorar la adquisición de competencias, conocimientos y resultados del aprendizaje de las actividades formativas. A continuación, se presenta para cada asignatura los resultados de la evaluación, diferenciando entre las diversas actividades de evaluación diseñadas. Por último, se contrasta la hipótesis de existencias de diferencia de género en las notas obtenidas por los estudiantes de la UA cuyas calificaciones se han analizado.

La investigación examina, con carácter novedoso para España, las características relativas de los estudiantes universitarios que simultanean trabajo y estudios, así como el efecto potencial de trabajar sobre su rendimiento académico, a partir de una base de datos que combina datos individuales procedentes de una encuesta con otros obtenidos de registros universitarios. Los resultados muestran, por un lado, que la probabilidad de trabajar es mayor entre los estudiantes de mayor edad, los no nacionales y los que presentan una mayor motivación mientras que, por el contrario, ni el sexo, el nivel educativo de los padres o el nivel de renta del hogar resultan significativos en los modelos estimados mediante técnicas econométricas de elección discreta. Por su parte, los resultados obtenidos a partir de la estimación mediante técnicas de regresión de modelos en los que se consideran distintas medidas del logro académico sugieren que, en contraste con la propia percepción manifestada por los estudiantes en la encuesta, trabajar regularmente no tiene en general un impacto significativo en sus resultados académicos. Se comprueba, finalmente, que la duración de la jornada de trabajo tampoco influye significativamente en ninguna de las medidas del logro académico de quienes trabajan.

El artículo examina la evolución de la estructura salarial de los hombres en España en el período 2002-2010 sobre la base de los microdatos de la Encuesta de Estructura Salarial y de la metodología econométrica de descomposición desarrollada por Fortin, Lemieux y Firpo (2011). Se constata que mientras que los salarios reales crecieron moderadamente a lo largo de todo el período, con independencia del ciclo económico, la desigualdad salarial presentó, por el contrario, una evolución contracíclica. Se observan también cambios notables en los determinantes de la evolución de la estructura salarial, ya que mientras que en el período expansivo anterior a la crisis tuvieron un papel protagonista los cambios en los rendimientos salariales, con posterioridad se observan también efectos significativos asociados a las modificaciones en la composición del empleo. The article examines the evolution of the wage structure for men in Spain between 2002 and 2010 on the basis of microdata from the Encuesta de Estructura Salarial and a decomposition econometric methodology developed by Fortin, Lemieux and Firpo (2011). It is observed that real wages grew moderately over the entire period, regardless of the economic cycle, and wage inequality presented a counter-cyclical evolution, increasing significantly after the onset of the economic crisis. Significant changes in the determinants of the evolution of the wage structure are also observed over the period: while changes in wage returns were the most prominent determinants of the evolution of the wage structure during the boom, significant effects are observed during the crisis resulting from changes both in the composition of employment and in wage returns. Este trabajo se ha beneficiado de la financiación del proyecto CSO2011-29943-C03-02 del Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad.

In this article, we delimit local labor markets (LLMs) in order to analyze the internal structure and organization of Spanish metropolitan areas. LLMs are defined as self-contained and cohesive areas in terms of commuting flows. Unlike the conventional approach to polycentrism based on the analysis of commuting flows that begins with the identification of subcenters, our analytical strategy does assume any a priori structure and is compatible with the relationship between places of work and residence having other locational and spatial organization patterns. The analysis is performed at three different scales of detail linked to three self-containment levels for the LLMs delimited and three population groups (total, males, and females). The results show that metropolitan areas are complex, fuzzy, multidimensional spaces, where the conditions of spatial organization are manifested in different ways depending on the parameters and variables used. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [grant numbers CSO2011-29943-C03-01, CSO2011-29943-C03-02, CSO2014-55780-C3-1-P, and CSO2014-55780-C3-2-P (National R&D&I Plan)].

The objective of this article is to analyse the role played by the different components of human capital in the wage determination of immigrants in the Spanish labour market. Using microdata from the Encuesta Nacional de Inmigrantes, we find that human capital of immigrants acquired in Spain presents higher returns than human capital obtained in home countries, reflecting the limited international transferability of the latter. This result is reinforced by the strong heterogeneity observed in wage returns to different kinds of human capital across immigrants from different origins and, in particular, by the fact that immigrants with the higher returns to human capital acquired in their home countries are those coming from other developed countries and Latin America, the two regions more similar to Spain in terms of development and/or culture. This study received financial support from research projects ECO2013-41310-R, ECO2013-41022-R, and CSO2011-29943-C03-02.

House-building has been very intense in some European countries throughout the last 15 years but not in others. It has generated an expansion in the residential stock that has been explained as the result of some demand forces playing at the same time and boosting residential market mechanisms during this period. Although demand pressures have been similar across Europe, the new supply construction has reacted with distinct strength depending on the economies. This paper reviews the literature seeking for reasons to analyze the different reactions and the implication on house prices growth of development sector. It mainly classifies the literature between both the group that suggests stable supply elasticities in the short-long term and those sustaining that elasticities change dramatically, reflecting the developers reaction to market innovations. The differences in new housing supply responses across European countries remain a wide area for housing researchers to explain how housing prices react by region.

The article examines public-private sector wage differentials in Spain using microdata from the Structure of Earnings Survey (Encuesta de Estructura Salarial). When applying various decomposition techniques, we find that it is important to distinguish by gender and type of contract. Our results also highlight the presence of a positive wage premium for public sector workers that can be partially explained by their better endowment of characteristics, in particular by the characteristics of the establishment where they work. The wage premium is greater for female and fixed-term employees and falls across the wage distribution, being negative for more highly skilled workers., Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition