Government policies and behavior exert a strong influence on the investment climate through their impact on costs, risks and barriers to competition. Key factors affecting the investment climate through their impact on costs are: corruption, taxes, the regulatory burden and extent of red tape in...

This paper presents an overview of some new results regarding an easily implementable Wald test-statistic (EFDF test) of the null hypotheses that a time-series process is I(1) or I(0) against fractional I(d) alternatives, with d?(0,1), allowing for unknown deterministic components and serial...

Developing countries are increasingly concerned about improving country competitiveness and productivity, as they face the increasing pressures of globalization and attempt to improve economic growth and reduce poverty. Among such countries, Investment Climate Assessments (ICA) surveys at the...

In real life strategic interactions decision-makers are likely to entertain doubts about the degree of optimality of their play. To capture this feature of real choice-making, we present here a model based on the doubts felt by an agent about how well is playing a game. The doubts are coupled...

Most empirical studies show strong detrimental evidence that regulatory, and administrative, barriers to entry have on productivity and on firm growth. In this paper we evaluate and measure the total factor productivity (TFP) impacts of having; low quality physical infrastructures (electricity,...

In this article we provide a simple model of the marriage market where singles search for spouses. In our model economy men and women live for many years and they differ in their survival probabilities, in their fecundity, and in their earnings. We show that modelling the marriage decision in a...

This paper evaluates the effects of a labor market reform in Spain that removed restrictions on fixed-term or temporary contracts. Our empirical results are based on longitudinal firm-level data that covers observations before and after the reform. We posit and estimate a dynamic labor demand...

Juan Urrutia ha sido profesor de economía en las Universidades del País Vasco y Carlos III de Madrid. Su impulso a la investigación en el área de economía ha tenido un impacto decisivo en estas dos universidades. En este documento se recogen los textos de las intervenciones que se...

Si bien la corrupción ha sido tradicionalmente un tema de interés para diferentes disciplinas, desde la década de los ochenta el fenómeno ha recibido una atención sin precedentes. Desde entonces se ha producido una extensa literatura sobre diferentes aspectos de la corrupción, que utilizan...

En este trabajo se revisa la literatura sobre la ordenación de los centros de excelencia en economía en función de los artículos publicados en revistas especializadas que cuentan con un procedimiento de evaluación anónima. El objetivo es doble: (1) examinar la evolución durante los años...