This paper develops a model which integrates the foral or cupo system applied to the Basque Country and Navarre, with the common system applied to the other fifteen Spanish autonomous communities. This approach contributes to the understanding of the relationship between foral, non-foral and...

The recent recession has generated a tremendous increase in unemployment rates in Spain. In this paper we use a very rich repeated cross-section dataset on workers’ job conditions, together with regional unemployment rates, to investigate whether peers’ unemployment affects individuals’...

The present work defines a measure that allows one to determine the actuarial cost of delivering a monetary unit of pension in the case of a pay-as-you-go system. This cost is connected with the system's actuarial viability. The basis is the model used by Devesa & Devesa (2008b) to determine the...

This paper searches for the determinants of government-funded R&D. The goal is to disentangle whether the efficiency considerations overwhelmingly emphasized by the theoretical literature are indeed the main driving force behind public R&D expenditures. Another goal of the paper is to assess...

The main idea upon which this paper is based is that outlined by Samuelson (1958) -that a pensions system, financed by way of transfers between generations, will only be viable in the long term if the internal rate of return of the system does not exceed the growth rate of salaries plus the...

The aim of this paper is to examine the sensitivity of total factor productivity (TFP) to foreign competition in the case of a European country. Using the Olley and Pakes (1996) method, we calculate the TFP of Spanish manufacturing firms and study the impact of EU tariffs, foreign competition...

Competition has long been regarded as productivity enhancing. Understanding the mechanism by which competition affects innovation and productivity is therefore an important topic for economic policy. The main contribution of this paper is to disentangle the relationship between competition and...

In this paper we propose a growth model in which the combined effect of human capital and technology adoption is the key factor in replicating and explaining growth miracles. Using standard technologies and parameterization, we show that the calibrated model generates output growth paths...

This paper presents a computable general equilibrium model of endogenous (stochastic) growth and cycles that can account for two key features of the aggregate data: balanced growth in the long-run and business cycles in the short-run. The model is built on Schumpeter's idea that economic...

This paper compares transitional dynamics in two alternative R&D non-scale growth models; one includes endogenous human capital, whereas the other does not. We show that focusing on the speed of convergence to discriminate between the two models can be misleading. Our analysis suggests that a...