Many studies have established that a small number of firms, known as fast-growth firms or Gazelles, create most of the new jobs. In spite of the importance of this topic from a policy-point of view, most of those studies are descriptive and limited to a comparison of the characteristics of the...

The impact of entry upon market performance depends not only on the number of entries and their size, but also on how long do the firms last. Consequently, there are an increasing number of papers, most of them focused on the United States and restricted to the manufacturing sector, aimed at...

We have constructed a new database aimed at the study of the relation between firm demography and labour productivity, with a large number of Spanish firms from both industry and service sectors. This database allows us to analyze in detail the degree of dispersion and persistence of...

This paper investigates whether the existence of knowledge spillovers, differences in the capacity of f rms to assimilate them and disparities in some human resource management practices are related with the decision to innovate of Spanish f rms. In order to do this, we employ data from the...

This paper tests the opportunity-cost theory using a panel of Spanish firms during the period 1991-2010. Under this theory, productivity-enhancing activities, such as R&D investment, should increase during downturns because of the fall in their relative cost – in terms of forgone output –....

This essay analyzes the impact of economic fluctuations on migration flows. To do so, the determinants of the inflows and outflows of migrants have been estimated. We find significant evidence on the effect that the macroeconomic fluctuations on the short run has on both flows, although the...

Traditional measures of labour quality might have the shortcoming of missing some features of the very important increase in labour utilization within European countries. In particular, we explore the case of Spain. Despite showing one of the most important increases in labour quality in the EU...

A concept of dynamic stability in infinitely repeated games with discounting is presented. For this purpose, one modification of the available theory is needed: we need to relax the assumption that the game starts in a given period. Under this new framework, we propose stable strategies such...

We estimate the effects of a significant increase in the minimum wage in Spain between 2004 and 2010 on the individual probability of losing employment, using a large panel of social security records. Our main finding is that older people experienced the largest increase in the probability of...

The response of human capital accumulation to changes in the anticipated returns to schooling determines the type of skills supplied to the labor market, the productivity of future cohorts, and the evolution of inequality. Unlike the US, the UK or Germany, Spain has experienced since 1995 a drop...