Online First

The articles listed below have been accepted for publication after successfully passing the review process. They will be included in future issues of the journal.

José María Larrú

Divergency in poverty among Spanish Autonomous Communities: an empirical analysis

The paper analyzes the changes in poverty (both monetary and non-monetary) in the Spanish Autonomous Communities in the period 2008-2021. Through statistical methodologies, it identifies the existence of absolute divergence in poverty and conditional divergence in per capita income and inequality. The research finds statistical significance with poverty, the unemployment rate, minimum income transfers from the Autonomous Communities and the number of pensions per inhabitant. Neither of the educational variables considered were found to be statistically significant.

 

Keywords: Spanish Autonomous Communities; convergence; inequality; poverty
David Garnés-Galindo, Manuel Ruiz-Marín, María Luz Maté-Sánchez-Val

Unveiling the pandemic's impact: Did COVID-19 drive business failures? A Cutting-Edge Analysis with Spatial Autoregressive Modelling

The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of Covid-19 on business behavior and its spatial effect among companies. Four specifications have been developed to analyze the pandemic’s influence on key variables determining business behavior: liquidity, indebtedness, profitability, and efficiency. This study has focused on the province of Barcelona, Spain, from which a database of failed and non-failed companies has been compiled, both before and after the pandemic. The models have been estimated using the spatial Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR) methodology, and each equation was estimated following a spatial Differences-in-Differences model. The results confirm that the emergence of Covid-19 has had a significant impact on companies’ financial ratios, worsening their positions in terms of liquidity, indebtedness, and efficiency, with the existence of a spatial contagion pattern.

 

Keywords: Business failure; covid; Differences-in-Differences; current ratio; debt ratio; profitability; efficiency; spatial dependence
Aleix Calveras, Jenny De Freitas

The impact of all-inclusive offerings in a tourism destination’s competitiveness

This study analyzes the impact of all-inclusive offerings on a destination’s competitiveness. When the rise in all-inclusive offerings causes a negative externality on complementary services, it creates a market-size effect. This results in an excessive supply of all-inclusive offerings in the market. Imposing different taxes on all-inclusive and non-all-inclusive offerings is more effective than a cap on the supply of all-inclusive offerings. Taxes can implement the optimal allocation. We expect the market-size effect to be harmful to competitiveness in mature destinations.

 

Keywords: All-inclusive; competitiveness; hotel industry; externalities; regulation
Mercy Orellana, Joselin Segovia, Rodrigo García Arancibia

Returns to education in Ecuador: The role of family social capital and territorial differences

In this study we aim at estimating the economic return to education with a territorial perspective. Furthermore, we aim at identifying the effect of the family’s social capital, proxied by language of parents, on the economic returns to education. Results show that education provides different returns to individuals that differ by their family backgrounds, with a significant disadvantage on children whose parents speak an indigenous language. We observe that the territory can contribute to these disparities by up to 7%.

 

Keywords: Social capital; language; education; economic returns; territory
Marcos Valdivia López

Multiplicadores Locales de Empleo en las Ciudades de México: contribuciones del empleo manufacturero, comerciable y creativo

This research estimates local employment multipliers for Mexican cities. To classify tradable and non-tradable sectors, the study employs both the traditional manufacturing/non-manufacturing classification and an alternative classification based on an employment concentration index that includes services. The findings indicate that manufacturing generates significant multipliers, at the upper bound of those estimated in other regions. However, the alternative classification yields much lower, and more reliable, multipliers. Additionally, the study reveals that creative and technological employment sectors produce larger multipliers compared to the average trade/manufacturing sector.

 

Keywords: Regional labor markets; local employment multipliers; tradable sector; creative employment; econometrics
Matxalen Legarreta-Iza, Unai Villena-Camarero, Elena Martinez-Tola

Ecosistemas Locales de Cuidado de larga duración: una propuesta de evaluación

Demographic change and aging are general trends that have led to an increase in the demand for long-term care. The covid-19 pandemic bought this need for care to the forefront of the political agenda. In response, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the Basque Government have begun to support innovative public-community initiatives called Local Care Ecosystems. This article describes the design of an evaluation process guided by Theory of Change, which was developed by the pioneering initiative Pasaia Zaintza HerriLab [Pasaia Care Local Laboratory] for the development of a Local Care Ecosystem in the local municipality of Pasaia, Gipuzkoa. The paper provides useful insights for evaluating other public-community care initiatives and contributes to promoting a culture of evaluation within the institutions.

 

Keywords: Local Care Ecosystems; long term care; public-community initiatives; evaluation; Theory of Change
Raquel Martínez-Buján, Paloma Moré, Antía Eijo Mejuto

Commercial dynamics in home care provision: brokering agencies, digital platforms and worker cooperatives

This article analyses the market dynamics of long-term care provision in households. Specifically, it focuses on exploring the rise of three new business actors in the sector, namely brokering agencies, digital platforms and care workers’ cooperatives. Through a qualitative methodology based on semi-structured in-depth interviews and participatory workshops with key informants, the business models of these commercial actors and their impact on working conditions in the sector are analysed, given the contrasting philosophies with which each of them manages the services provided. The document studies the impact of these actors on the care market and on the processes of formalisation and professionalisation of the sector.

 

Keywords: Home care; domestic service; worker cooperatives; digital platforms; brokering agencies
Noelia Teijeiro Cal

Self-managed collaborative housing for older people: motivations, challenges and demands

This article explores the rise of collaborative housing among older adults in Spain. These initiatives, emerging from social movements, reflect a grassroots model of living that aims to redefine the aging process through collective self-management of this life cycle. Using a qualitative methodology, five cohousing communities in different regions, including rural areas facing demographic challenges, are studied. The article addresses the relationship between the concept of “commons” and feminist theories of social reproduction. These housing arrangements will be examined in terms of their dynamics, demands, limitations, and interactions with both public and private sectors.

 

Keywords: Collaborative housing; community; aging; care
Rafael Garduño-Rivera, Neil Reid, Haoying Wang

Mexico's Minimum Wage Data: Trends, Policies, and a Research Agenda

The decline of the real value of the minimum wage amid trade liberalization in Mexico has raised concerns about its policy effectiveness and unintended consequences. The literature has examined the impact of minimum wage adjustments on employment levels, worker earnings, poverty, and inequality. However, findings from different sample periods and regions still need to be reconciled. It is necessary to understand the mechanisms connecting minimum wage to other market components. This research note first explores Mexico’s minimum wage data from 1980 to 2023 to grasp its spatial and temporal trends. We then discuss several future research directions to explore mechanisms through which minimum wage potentially works, including the welfare effect of the policy, the informal sector, and interactions between different policy tools.

 

Keywords: Minimum wage; income inequality; policy effectiveness; trade liberalization; Mexican Economy
Francesca Centofanti, Roberto Basile, Francesca Licari, Jacopo Pitari

The effect of internal migration on regional growth in Italy: a dynamic spatial panel data analysis

This study assesses the effect of internal migration on regional growth in Italy at the NUTS-3 level over the period 2002-2019. The composition of the internal migration flows of the working-age population in Italy during the sample period appears substantially heterogeneous in nationality and labor skills. The analysis considers this heterogeneity, estimating various specifications of the dynamic spatial model and controlling for the endogeneity of migration variables through a control function approach. The evidence suggests that the internal migration of Italian citizens has a positive direct and spillover impact on regional growth, slowing down the convergence process. On the contrary, there is no evidence of a significant effect of internal migration of foreign citizens. Taking the skill composition of internal movements of Italian citizens into account, the adverse impact on convergence is magnified, thus corroborating the skill-selective hypothesis. Finally, the diverging impact of internal migration increases with the distance of migration flows.

 

Keywords: Regional growth; convergence; migration; spatial dynamic models
María José Baeza-Rivera, Camila Salazar-Fernández, Diego Manríquez-Robles, Alfonso Urzúa

Acculturative stress in South American immigrants: A proposal for evaluation

Migration brings significant challenges to health and quality of life when acculturation exceeds migrants’ personal resources, causing acculturative stress. Despite its high prevalence, there are few instruments to assess it in Latin America. The aim of this study was to develop an instrument to measure acculturative stress based on a sample of 283 migrants in Chile. Twenty-five items were developed and grouped into three factors. Findings show excellent psychometric properties of reliability, validity, and cultural relevance. The instrument is appropriate for intraregional migrant populations in Latin America.

Keywords: Stress; acculturation; assessment; migration
Christel Keller Garganté, Sara Moreno Colom

Local policies to promote care communities: the case of VilaVeïna

The aim of the article is to analysis the VilaVeïna project promoted by the Barcelona City Council to develop neighbourhood care communities. Specifically, the manuscript analyses to what extent VilaVeïna fits into the proposals for the transformation of public care policies and services from the perspective of the commons. On the one hand, it analyses the initial conceptualisation of the community in the design of VilaVeïna and its materialisation in the practices involved in its implementation. On the other hand, this analysis puts in dialogue the elements that characterise the project within the framework of the community with the conceptual proposal of the commons (Zuriña, 2020; Blanco et al., 2017). To reach these objectives, we present a case study based on interviews with political and technical profiles, as well as interviews and focus groups with users of the service. The results show up the progress made by this public policy in building communities of care and the limitations in achieving a radically communitarian resource defined from the perspective of the commons.

Keywords: Community; care; public policies; common goods
Clara María Karis, María Laura Zulaica

Green spaces as determinants of quality of life in urban and periurban areas: analysis of uses and preferences in an intermediate Argentine city

Latin American cities show accelerated processes of expanding growth with direct consequences on the quality of life of their inhabitants. In this context, the article analyzes the uses of public green spaces and the preferences of the population in an intermediate Argentine city and its periurban area, based on data from a survey conducted among visitors of these spaces. The results indicate that the evaluated aspects are associated with the natural and sociocultural attributes of these spaces and the characteristics of the respondents, highlighting the interaction and differences between objective and subjective variables of quality of life, especially in the urban-rural gradient.

 

Keywords: Green infrastructure; survey; cultural ecosystem services; case study; periurban area
Margarita Barañano Cid, Pedro Uceda Navas

Elders, circles of care and territory. Care networks in vulnerable neighborhoods of Madrid

The care that involves older people in vulnerable Madrid neighborhoods is favored by the prolonged permanence of this age group in these spaces and by the existence in them of broader networks of this activity, both in terms of concern, reception and care provision. The circulation of care includes their homes and also other neighborhood supports. Through qualitative analysis, it is confirmed that family care is more present in the narratives referring to the most peripheral and aging neighborhoods, with more permanence and home ownership.

 

Keywords: Elders; care networks; care circles; vulnerable neighborhoods; residential permanence
Marina Sagastizabal Emilio-Yus, Amaia Eiguren Munitis

An intergenerational public-community care initiative in the Basque Country, Spain: bringing together two at risk groups: children and elderly people

Contemporary society is older and more diverse than ever before. In the face of increasing demand for care provision, there is an urgent need for new social responses. Intergenerational projects represent a step in this direction, through the construction of community spaces that strengthen both the relational dimension of care and promote social cohesion. The particular case study addressed in this paper is an intergenerational public-community project in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. This project facilitates the generation of networks of mutual care between at risk children and elderly people. Using a qualitative methodology, this paper analyses some of the achievements and limitations. The conclusions suggest a need to further support and sustain projects of this type, which promote a more inclusive society for people of all ages.

 

Keywords: Intergenerational; public-community care; elderly people; children; Basque Country
Félix Arrieta, Martín Zúñiga, Bakarne Etxeberria

Reorganizing care: Leadership(s) in the construction of local ecosystems in the Historical Territory of Gipuzkoa

The main objective of this article is to analyze the different care ecosystems developed in the Territory of Gipuzkoa, emphasizing the leadership, relationships and distribution of functions that occurs among the different agents that participate in their implementation. The methodology has been eminently qualitative, developed through a total of 12 in-depth semi-directed interviews with professionals from the public sphere (politicians and technicians) and Third Sector entities. The results show that, although the development of care ecosystems is recognized as a succesful political strategy in the territory, and a clear space of social and political consensus, its extension and consolidation may be in question.

 

Keywords: Ecosistems; care; governance; leadership
María José Magliano, María Victoria Perissinotti

Between the public and the common. Community kitchens and public policy in the face of the challenges of the pandemic in the city of Córdoba, Argentina

This article analyzes the relationship between public policy and the management of the common in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. Based on a qualitative methodology that combines in-depth interviews and documentary analysis, it reflects on the community “know-how” that supports the management of the common in urban peripheries. It shows that, in the context of the Covid-19 health emergency, this “know-how” was mobilized by women from popular sectors to respond to new challenges, while at the same time it was “incorporated” by different public policies to support the strategies of sustainability of life.

 

Keywords: Management of the common; community kitchen; public policies; State; Argentina