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...

In this paper we analyze firms' ability to tacitly collude on pricesin an infinitely repeated duopoly game of vertical productdifferentiation. We show that firms collude if and only if their discountfactor is high enough, i.e. if they value future profits sufficiently. We alsoshow that a lower...

This study analyses the evolution of market power in the banking sectors of the European Union based on the estimation of Lerner indices. Using a panel of 18,810 observations of the banking industries of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom during the period 1992-99, the results...

Financial integration in Europe should affect the competition between markets and intermediaries and generate a convergence of both interest rates and margins among the different countries. This paper analyses the evolution of the convergence in interest rates and the level of competition and...

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 show that downstream mergers increase the incentives of an up-stream firm to invest in cost-reducing R&D. The upstream firm revenues increase with industry profits, which in turn increase with concentration downstream and this explains the positive link between concentration...