This paper analyzes the relationship between human capital and convergence with a model that takes into account the different effects of human capital accumulation on regional convergence. As an input, human capital produces convergence due to both decreasing returns and public intervention on...

This article analyzes the efficiency of Comunitat Valenciana (Spain) local governments and their main explanatory variables. The analysis is performed in two stages. Firstly, efficiency is measured via (nonparametric) activity analysis techniques. The measurement techniques also enable the...

Increased competition and the attempts of European banks to increase their presence in other markets may have affected the efficiency and credit risk. The first of this aspects is based on the incentive to the banks to reduce cost in order to gain in competitiveness. The second is associated to...

Hypothesis testing and statistical precision in the context of nonparametric efficiency and productivity measurement have been investigated since the early 1990s. Recent contributions focus on this matter through the use of resampling methods?i.e., bootstrapping techniques. However, empirical...

The expansion and intensification of banking competition, which has occurred inSpain during the last ten years, has allowed banks and savings banks to define theircompetitive strategies with more freedom. This paper analyzes the similarities andthe differences in their product mix along with its...

The last few years have witnessed a rapid evolution in the literature evaluating mutual fund performance using frontier techniques. The instruments applied, mostly DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) and, to a lesser extent, FDH (Free Disposal Hull), are able to encompass several dimensions of...

This paper ana1yzes the behavior of productive efficiency in the Spanish Regions for the period 1964-1989. From a growth accounting approach, it describes the regional evolution of total factor productivity (TFPs), based on a private input production function. A more strict efficiency measure is...

This study analyzes the links between efficiency and the decentralization of competencies among Spanish local governments for years 1995 and 2000. The aim is pursued by considering a two-stage activity analysis model in which the performance of eachmunicipality is first evaluated against other...

Several studies have shown that the contrarian strategy, or the forming of a zeroinvestmentportfolio that buys the stocks that have performed poorly in the past (losers) andsells those that have performed well (winners), creates abnormally positive returns in thefuture. Many hypotheses have been...

We consider a continuous spatial economy consisting of pure exchange local economies. Agents are allowed to change their location over time as a response to spatial utility differentials. These spatial adjustments toward higher utility neighborhoods lead the spatial economy to converge to a...