Marcos Herrera-Gómez, Sadit Ruano, Manuel Salvador Figueras
This research explores the impact of armed violence and corruption on the economic growth of Colombia’s departments from 1991 to 2017. Using models of spatial panels, statics and dynamics, we detect positive space-time indirect effects on departmental growth, including evidence of beta-convergence. Specifically, fiscal corruption exhibited a significant negative impact on short-term economic growth. Moreover, corruption primarily affected growth at the local level, with limited spillover effects observed from neighboring regions. Interestingly, our analysis did not yield statistically significant evidence regarding the impact of armed violence on economic growth.
Keywords: Economic growth; spatial dynamic model; fiscal corruption; armed conflict; beta convergence
Irene Lebrusán Murillo
This article aims to investigate the effects and potential that the creation of community and the promotion of bridging social capital can have on the adherence of the elderly population to projects aimed at improving their quality of life. To this end, it is based on the analysis of two practical projects carried out in the city of Zamora and which form part of the research on a model of quality of life in old age: the promotion of physical capacity and the tackling of unwanted loneliness through volunteering. The results are based on information from each of the experimental programmes and testimonies obtained from the researchers of each of these projects, fieldwork teams and participants (beneficiaries). the results show that activities that involve people in the pursuit of a common goal are effective ways of fostering social bonds and the idea of community.
Keywords: Old Age; ageing; quality of life; community; bridging social capital
Paula Cruz-García, Jesús Peiró-Palomino
The restructuring process of the Spanish banking sector initiated after the Great Recession of 2008 has led to a dramatic reduction in the number of bank branches. This paper analyzes the impact of branch closures on GDP per capita, labor productivity and employment per capita of the Spanish provinces in the period 2008–2018. The results show that bank branches have only a weak impact on employment, and no effect on productivity and GDP per capita. Therefore, if consumption and investment decisions of families and firms are affected by branch closures, the impact is not transferred to aggregate regional performance.
Keywords: Bank restructuring; branches; economic growth; Spanish provinces
Alberto Vaquero García, Santiago Lago Peñas, María Cadaval Sampedro, Patricio Sánchez Fernández
This paper aims to provide a comprehensive description of the evolution of public investment by the Autonomous Communities in Spain from 1984 to 2021, to identify patterns in investment policies and explain their underlying causes. Additionally, the paper evaluates the impact of savings, transfers, and deficits on public investment. The findings reveal distinct patterns in the level and dynamics of these variables across regions. Priority was given to essential welfare expenditures during the Great Recession, while the post-recession recovery displayed varied regional behaviors. The positive impact of European and national funds, such as the Interterritorial Compensation Fund, effectively revitalized investment and savings, which emerged as a key differentiating factor in chartered communities.
Keywords: Public investment; capital transfers; indebtedness; Autonomous Communities
Maryna Makeienko, Mariano Matilla-García
Spatial trend concept was proved to be useful to depict the systematic variations of the phenomenon concerned over a region based on geographical locations. We use three different geographical datasets to check if there exist potential leading deterministic spatial components and whether we can econometrically model spatial economic relations that might contain unobserved spatial structure of unknown form. Hypothesis testing is conducted with a symbolic-entropy based non-parametric statistical procedure, proposed in Garcia-Cordoba et al. (2019), which does not rely on prior weight matrices assumptions. Geographically restricted semiparametric spatial models are taken to perform a modeling strategy for cross-sectional data sets. The main question to be responded is whether the models that merely incorporate space coordinates might be sufficient to capture space dependence when applied to different types of data. Moreover, it is important to study what intrinsic characteristics of the economic problem or the dependent variable itself make feasible (and optimal) to use the specific methodological approach.
Keywords: Symbolic entropy; spatial trends; applied analysis
Rafael González-Val, Fernando Sanz-Gracia
This paper uses un-truncated city population data from three countries—the United States, Spain and Italy—to empirically test Proposition 1 put forth by Eeckhout (2004 American Economic Review, 94: 1429–1451). Eeckhout’s hypothesis was that the estimate of the Pareto exponent in a standard Zipf regression decreases with sample size, if the underlying city size distribution is lognormal. Using rolling sample regressions, we find that this proposition is only valid once we enter the lognormal body of the distribution; for the Pareto-distributed upper-tail, the estimated exponent does not vary with sample size.
Keywords: City size distribution; Zipf’s law; Pareto exponent; Pareto distribution; lognormal distribution; rolling sample regressions
Viviana Carriel, César Andrés Mendoza, Rodrigo Mendieta, Sofía Bravo
This paper investigates the relationship between informality and job quality in Ecuador, emphasizing the role of education as a mediating factor. Utilizing data from the National Survey of Employment, Unemployment, and Underemployment from 2014 to 2019, the study employs an Employment Quality Index to assess job quality. Through a detailed empirical strategy incorporating pooled ordinary least squares regressions, panel data analyses, and spatial models, the research unveils a negative impact of informality in employment quality. However, the findings indicate that education does not significantly influence this relationship at the regional level. These results highlight the necessity for targeted policy interventions that address the structural issues in the labor market.
Keywords: Employment quality index; informality; education; Ecuador
Daniel Prieto Sancho
This article proposes an approach to the imaginary that is constructed in the social understanding of a city that is cared for and cares for its citizenship, exploring whether the conceptual commitment to community care in the city can be understood within the hegemonic social representations that the population holds in this regard. Through a qualitative approach, we have explored the ways in which coexistence in the city is understood and the role that care and community play in it. The analysis of the discourses reveals a widespread understanding of a broken social bond that encourages the demand for institutional mediation between individuals and suspends the possibility of building community networks in an urban setting that fosters a shared perception of threat and distrust. These results suggest the need to address the reflection on the obstacle that hegemonic ideological frameworks pose for community initiatives that give meaning to urban coexistence in our culture.
Keywords: Community; the commons; caring cities; urban coexistence; individualism
Rodrigo Pérez Silva
The ability of local territories to create and attract human capital is key in generating progress at the local level. However, skilled workers not only tend to stem from certain regions, but to be attracted to them. This study analyzes interregional migratory movements in Chile, identifying differentials in local economic development as a factor that promotes selective migration of workers. The results indicate that regions with high levels of relative development attract more qualified migrants and expel the less qualified, thus reinforcing the initial concentration of human capital.
Keywords: Local economic development; interregional migration; skilled workers
Roberto Mauricio Sánchez-Torres
The Pacific is the region of Colombia with the greatest economic lag and the lowest living standards of its population. The objective of this study is to investigate poverty in the Colombian Pacific, taking as a reference the multidimensional approach, applying different identification methodologies and aggregation indicators. The main result is that despite the reduction in poverty between 2010 and 2018, it has not been systematic and has presented much more moderate levels than the situation in the rest of the country; in particular, the region has great deficiencies in education levels and access to health.
Keywords: Colombia; Colombian Pacific region; multidimensional poverty; quality of life; welfare economics