The labor contract usually assigns significant authority to the employer (hierarchical governance). The threat of hold-up of the employee by the employer, caused by this asymmetric distribution of decision rights, can be mitigated by a preference for reciprocity on the part of the employer or by...

This working paper comprises advance data from the book Measuring the Quality of the Justice System (I): lawyers and court representatives. It sets out the most important findings of the «Survey of expert users: lawyers and court representatives» conducted in the framework of the BBVA...

This paper develops a measure of social capital based on economic relationships and analyzes its effects on growth. Investment in social capital is modeled by using the conceptual framework for measuring physical capital services. The measure of social capital depends on expectations of income,...

Studies of banking competition and competitive behaviour both within and across countries typically utilise only one of the few measures that are available. In trying to assess the relative competitive position of banking markets in 14 European countries, we find that the existing indicators of...

The corpus of verbal representations is a front-line methodological instrument for studying semantic deterioration in pathologies involving conceptualsemantic- lexical impairment, especially semantic dementia and Alzheimer's. This paper presents a corpus of literal definitions for determined...

The rapid increase in nonmarital fertility in Spain reflects the growing dissociation between marriage and reproduction. Marriage, which had already lost its status as the legitimate context for sexual relations, is no longer the exclusive context for procreation. Whereas only two decades ago,...

Decisions about allocating resources in health care are complex, and their undertaking requires the use of sophisticated models and methods. The generalized allocation model is based on assigning a group of tasks to a series of resources with a minimum total cost to the system. Each resource is...

Este trabajo trata de sentar unas bases teóricas para abordar los cambios organizativos en nuestro sistema sanitario, teniendo en cuenta la trayectoria seguida, el escenario internacional y los cambios tecnológicos. La finalidad última del cambio organizativo es la de mejorar el estado de...

Rural municipalities show considerable heterogeneity in relation to their development potential, so the proper characterization of their socioeconomic status is a basic requirement in the design of rural development policies. This working paper shows, in the first place, how this task can be...

This working paper focuses on the influence of two classical engines of population agglomeration: geography versus history. Geography is identified by two co-ordinates: coastal position and altitude. The prominence of history is also captured by two characteristics: the initial size of the...