Growth In Spain Research Articles

Optimal government size and economic growth in Spain. Evidences through the Armey Curve (1980-2016).

This study analyzes the effect of public expenditure on economic growth for the Spanish economy, in the period between 1980 and 2016. The Armey curve is used as an analytical tool to describe the relationship between the two variables indicated. The two objectives of this study are check if there is a quadratic relationship of this kind between the two variables for the Spanish economy, as predicted by the model, and there, calculate their optimum. The empirical findings indicate the existence of a significant relationship inverted U-shaped between the two variables in the Spanish economy, obtaining an optimal public expenditure in Spain of 40.07% of GDP, 5.07% lower than the size of the public sector by 2016. Based on these results, an economic policy proposal could be the need to reduce the percentage of public expenditure with the goal of attaining greater efficiency in the Spanish economy.

Tourism demand and economic growth in Spain: New insights based on the yield curve

This study examines for the first time the dynamic relationship between tourism growth and expected macroeconomic conditions of the destination country using a DCC-GARCH model. The focus is on the Spanish economy in which monthly tourist arrivals data from 1998 to 2017 were collected for five key origin countries and around the world. To capture expected macroeconomic conditions, the Spanish term structure of interest rates is used. The results suggest that the tourism-expected economic growth relationship is time varying without any country-specific differences in the behaviour of the correlations. Importantly, positive correlations reportedly coincides with a regime shift in the Spanish economy; whereas negative correlations are evident when expected economic conditions are stable. It is also shown that the aforementioned relationship is influenced by key geopolitical and economic events (the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Global Financial Crisis and the ECB's quantitative easing programme). Finally, policy implications derived from the main findings are discussed.

A proposed new approach to light rail safety management in Spain and other countries

The light rail transit (LRT) has experienced considerable growth in Spain since 1994; to date, this has led to the installation of more than 200 km of light rail lines and LRT operations in 11 metropolitan areas. Nevertheless, its institutional and regulatory framework have not been developed accordingly. Thus, in this paper, an approach for managing the LRT safety in Spain is proposed. The approach is based on the French model and could be applied to any other country that is interested in improving its LRT safety management.The paper explains the current situation of LRT safety management in Spain and provides a critical review. A comparison of the situations in several European countries is presented. Moreover, the paper presents details pertaining to the French framework and tool as the most adequate model for managing the LRT safety; a critical review is also included in order to propose ways for improving it.Finally, the main points of the proposed LRT safety management approach include the following: (1) development of a National Light Rail Safety Act, which would create the National Light Rail Safety Body; (2) implementation of a light rail safety database, which is created through the codification of light rail lines in homogenised sections from the safety point of view and the standardised light rail accident/incident reports, to be filled in by light rail operators directly; (3) management of the database by the National Light Rail Safety Body in order to improve safety based on the conclusions obtained.

Tourism in the Blue Growth strategy: a model proposal

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to be a first approximation to analyze tourism along with the concept of Blue Growth in Spain and Portugal. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to validate a model, which relates nautical tourism to the three perspectives of Blue Growth: economic, social and environmental. The first section introduces the importance of the maritime and marine industry within the European Union. The next section analyzes the concept of Blue Growth and the different policies that have been prepared for their development, paying particular attention to tourism. The following, describes tourism in general and nautical tourism and finally establishes the methodology used for the development of the research, and conclusions as well as future lines of research.

Correction to: The Determinants of Local Employment Growth in Spain

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The maps on the right-hand side in Fig. 1 have the wrong titles. NUTS 2 regions should be Local Labour Markets.

Planificación turística, promoción y sostenibilidad ambiental: el caso de España

En el mercado turístico actual, la alta competencia existente entre los destinos lleva a sus responsables a invertir dinero, tiempo y esfuerzo en tratar de transmitir una buena imagen, para lo cual se desarrollan importantes estrategias de promoción. En el caso objeto de estudio del presente trabajo, España, la promoción turística del país llevada a cabo a nivel internacional desde el gobierno central ha jugado un papel importante en el desarrollo y crecimiento de España como destino turístico, que desde hace años ocupa puestos líder en rankings internacionales. El boom turístico de los años 50 supuso para España un alto nivel de ingresos y popularidad, pero también serios perjuicios en el entorno cuando todavía no se prestaba atención a la sostenibilidad de la actividad turística. Poco a poco, las estrategias promocionales en España se fueron adaptando a las necesidades del mercado y a la importancia de que el turismo fuera sostenible. Para que el desarrollo turístico de un destino sea sostenible es necesaria la implantación de planes estratégicos adecuados, y este trabajo permite, gracias al estudio de un caso real, analizar la influencia de la promoción turística en la evolución de un destino turístico hacia la sostenibilidad.

Does Foreign Direct Investment Generate Economic Growth? A New Empirical Approach Applied to Spain

abstractIt is often asserted with confidence that foreign direct investment (FDI) is beneficial for economic growth in the host economy. Empirical evidence has been mixed, and there remain gaps in the literature. The majority of FDI has been directed at developed countries. Single-country studies are needed, due to the heterogeneous relationship between FDI and growth, and because the impact of FDI on growth is said to be largest in open, advanced developed countries with an educated workforce and developed financial markets (although research has focused on developing countries). We fill these gaps with an improved empirical methodology to check whether FDI has enhanced growth in Spain, one of the largest receivers of FDI, whose gross domestic product growth was above average but has escaped scrutiny. During the observation period 1984–2010, FDI rose significantly, and Spain offered ideal conditions for FDI to unfold its hypothesized positive effects on growth. We run a horse race between various potential explanatory variables, including the neglected role of bank credit for the real economy. The results are robust and clear: The favorable Spanish circumstances yield no evidence for FDI to stimulate economic growth. The Spanish EU and euro entry are also found to have had no positive effect on growth. The findings call for a fundamental rethinking of methodology in economics.

Brand of Spain: perception within the country and abroad

The goal of the study was to analyze the perception of the territorial brand of Spain at home and abroad. The theoretical basis of the study is the concept of the national brands index S. Anholt. The study was done with the application of the methods of comparative analysis of empirical data obtained from international and Spanish studies in the area of territorial branding. The research materials are made in the area of territorial branding, representing various approaches, sampling and methodology: the S. Anholt Index of National Brands (Nation Brand Index); Ranking Country RepTrack and researching the external and internal image of Spain at the Royal Institute of Elkano. The ranking analysis showed that in 2016 the reputation of the most authoritative states suffered, but Spain’s reputation began to be evaluated better and for the first time it became part of a group of countries with a stable reputation. The growth of Spain’s reputation in the world is due to the fact that in 2015 the tone of publications about Spain in the international media system had changed - a direct association with the economic crisis had left the narrative. The results of the research in the field of territorial branding confirm the thesis of Carlos Espinosa, the High Commissioner of the state project «Brand Spain» (Marca España), that in Spain the country’s brand is estimated lower than abroad, but at the same time the positive dynamics of the perception of Spain’s image indicate the effectiveness of this project and the competitiveness of the brand of Spain at the present stage. Contrary to the economic and political difficulties that Spain has faced over the past 20 years, regular work to design and promote the brand of Spain has been and has yielded positive results.

Economic Recession in Spain: Exploring the Root Causes, Consequences and Recoveries for the Sustainable Economic Growth

Spain is currently facing its worst financial and economic crisis in the last fifty years. The Spanish economic recession began in 2008 during the world financial crisis of 2007-08. The main cause of Spain's crisis was the burst of the housing bubble. The recession has implied a strong increase of the unemployment rate in Spain that surpassed 25% in 2012, the highest rate in western economies in that year. Therefore, this research aims at exploring the root causes, consequences and recoveries of the economic recession for the sustainable economic growth in Spain. In this study we systematically examine previous research on these topics of economic recession. This study also provides a theoretical basis for further studies on economic recession existing in other developed countries.

The impact of delayed maternity on foetal growth in Spain: An assessment by population attributable fraction.

Delayed childbearing is considered a risk factor for maternal-foetal health. As in other higher-income countries, in Spain age at maternity has steadily increased during the last two decades. To quantify the impact of the delay in the age at maternity on small for gestational age (SGA) categories of <3rd, 3rd-5th and 5th-10th percentiles. 2,672,350 singleton live births born to Spanish mothers in 2007-2015 were analysed. Adjusted relative risk was calculated to estimate the adjusted partial population attributable fractions (PAFp) for mothers aged 35-39 and ≥40 years for each category of SGA considering the interaction between age at maternity and parity. Primipara 35-39 years old mothers have the highest PAFp in the three categories of SGA, with the maximum value for SGA <3rd percentile (2.57%, 95% CI 2.25, 2.88). PAFp for both primipara and multipara ≥40 years old mothers were less than 1%. PAFp for primipara older mothers increased significantly in 2007-2015 for the three categories of SGA, more clearly among those aged 35-39 years. The contribution of multipara mothers of both age groups did not increase significantly during the period. Delayed maternity is a significant adjusted risk factor for SGA, contributing to the increase of its prevalence. However, results also suggest a limited clinical impact of delayed maternity on foetal growth. Positive changes in maternal profile associated with the shift in maternal age might contribute to explain the limited impact of mothers aged 35 years and older on negative birth outcome in Spain.

A nexus of linear and non‐linear relationships between tourism demand, renewable energy consumption, and economic growth: Theory and evidence

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between tourism development, renewable energy consumption, and economic growth in the United States, France, Spain, China, Italy, Turkey, and Germany using an innovative bootstrap panel Granger causality model. The results show that tourism development and economic growth are interdependent in Germany; whereas tourism development induces economic growth in China and Turkey, the reverse is true in Spain. Causal relationships between renewable energy and economic growth give credence to theories of renewable energy‐led growth in Spain and growth‐led renewable energy in China, Turkey, and Germany. Whereas the Italian and U.S. models demonstrate a bidirectional relationship, the Spanish, Italian, Turkish, and U.S. data show a causal link stemming from tourism development. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed within the realm of macroeconomics and sustainability.

Regional growth and convergence in Spain: Is the decentralisation model important?

This paper deals with the effects of political decentralisation on economic growth in Spain, an issue that has generated heated debates in recent decades. Our analysis of the last three and a half decades, a period characterised by the weak narrowing of the income per capita gap within regions, does not offer conclusive results on convergence and points to the importance of alternative factors. Several proxies were used to capture the decentralisation process. We also studied some potential interactions between decentralisation and other variables. All in all, our empirical evidence shows robustly that transferring more responsibilities to subnational governments does not significantly affect growth in any sense.

Productivity, taxes, and hours worked in Spain: 1970\u20132015

In the early 1970s, hours worked per working-age person in Spain were higher than in the United States. Starting in 1975, however, hours worked in Spain fell by 40%. We find that 80% of the decline in hours worked can be accounted for by the evolution of taxes in an otherwise standard neoclassical growth model. Although taxes play a crucial role, we cannot argue that taxes drive all of the movements in hours worked. In particular, the model underpredicts the large decrease in hours in 1975–1986 and the large increase in hours in 1994–2007. The lack of productivity growth in Spain during 1994–2015 has little impact on the model’s prediction for hours worked.

The Determinants of Local Employment Growth in Spain

During the last two decades, the Spanish economy has been growing both in terms of employment and economic activity, and the spatial distribution of both is very uneven. At a high level of disaggregation, when observing figures of local employment growth we find major changes between 1991 and 2001 and 2001–2011 decades. The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the main determinants of local employment growth in Spain, including socio-economic factors as well as the structural characteristics of the area. Using spatial auto-regressive models combined with incremental distances to different population size tiers, we account for the spatial relationship between areas and for the influence of the urban hierarchy. Our spatial units of analysis are Local Labor Markets, since they comprise workers and work places within the same functional region. Our results for Spain confirm how sensitive the empirical analysis is and how the direct and/or indirect effect of some structural and socioeconomic factors over local employment growth may vary along time. The two decades under study reflect two very different patterns of local growth, supporting the idea of designing a la carte local policies, which should be reassessed timely.

The effect of parent university on firm growth: an analysis of the Spanish and Italian USOs

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that the university context may partially determine the growth of university spin-offs (USOs), with a cross-national analysis and using an “interactionist” approach.Design/methodology/approachTwo samples of USOs, from Spain and Italy (531 and 952 firms, respectively), were examined over the 2005-2013 period. Multilevel modelling was applied to empirically test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results confirmed that the university context is a critical and effective element for explaining USOs’ growth. The university context affected USOs’ growth only for the Spanish firms, while for the Italian spin-offs the evidence does not report a significant determining influence of the university context. This finding may be interpreted as the localization externalities, determined by the Spanish universities, have a more effective impact at firm level compared with those generated by the Italian universities.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper provides evidence that the university context has a significant role in supporting USOs’ growth in Spain, but not in Italy. This finding, together with the fact that the Italian USOs showed lower growth rates over the period of analysis, may suggest that greater involvement by the Italian parent universities is needed to foster USOs’ growth. The main point to be underlined to decision makers is that policies aimed at fostering USOs need the active involvement of the parent university in the whole growth process of the nascent firm, rather than just in the USO creation process.Originality/valueA multilevel approach provides both methodological and theoretical contributions to the study of USOs’ growth, which was adopted as an “interactionist” approach is recommended by literature. In addition, a cross-national approach allows for exploration of the actual effect of the university on the growth of USOs, taking into account international differences.

Public debt and economic growth in Spain, 1851–2013

In this paper we investigate the long-run relationship between public debt and economic growth in the Spanish economy for the period 1851–2013. We develop a cliometric analysis of the debt–growth nexus using novel time series methods. We find some support for a negative relationship between both variables, but no clear evidence of a debt threshold. The estimated long-run elasticity in a one-break model shows a tendency to decrease over time from a nonsignificant 0.011 to a −0.070, indicating that a 10 percentage increase in the public debt-to-GDP ratio is associated with 0.70 percentage points lower real economic growth. Indeed, we find for the first subsample (1851–1939) either “decoupling” or “saturation,” while in the second subsample (1940–2000) the long-run elasticity coefficient becomes negative and significant. When we extend our analysis up to 2013, we find a break in 1971 coinciding with the twilight of Franco’s dictatorship and the Spanish transition to democracy.

Betting exclusively for private labels: Could it have negative consequences for retailers?

Abstract Private labels have experienced significant growth in Spain in recent years. The size and composition of product assortments has been impacted by the development of own retail brands, in many cases discarding national brands. Some retailers experienced problems arising from these decisions, being forced to reintroduce some of these brands, suggesting the need to have extensive knowledge about the expected consequences of these decisions on brand management, both in terms of volume of sales and image. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between different consumer attitudinal variables and a number of variables related to consumer perception of the store and purchasing behavior, in assortments composed exclusively of private labels. By means of an experiment based on an online survey, the model's causal relationships are established using structural equations to conclude that the image of stores that only offer their own brand is mainly configured by price consciousness and the attitude toward the private label. The private label purchase intention is strongly influenced by the store image and a favorable attitude toward the brand, and loyalty strategies should be aimed at securing a clear perception of providing real value.

Urban Sprawl and Northern European Residential Tourism in the Spanish Mediterranean Coast

Residential tourism from Northern European countries has influenced the process of urban development in the Spanish Mediterranean coast. We explain the recent urban growth in Spain (or “Spanish house bubble”) and then show the main characteristics of the influx of citizens from other European countries richer than Spain, especially into the Spanish Mediterranean coast and specifically into the Costa Blanca region. Finally we demonstrate the relationship between the development of residential tourism and the growth of urban sprawl in the Spanish Mediterranean coast and we analyze some of its consequences for the region..

Heterogeneity in the Determinants of Population Growth at the Local Level

Formal modeling of local population growth has usually tended to focus on identifying patterns that are presumed to hold universally. However, as Glaeser, Ponzetto, and Tobio highlighted, these laws are reliable for long-term dynamics; but in some moments or for some places, the balance between the different factors may change, giving rise to different specific behaviors. In this article, we study local population growth in Spain with no intention of searching for universal patterns. Rather, we are interested in identifying how relevant the temporal and spatial heterogeneity may be, that is, to assess the even and uneven effects that population growth determinants can exert across time and space. The geographically weighted regression (GWR) approach applied in this article for two different decades, 1991–2001 and 2001–2011, captures the spatial heterogeneity. Results on the spatially differentiated population growth factors are compared with the global ordinary least squares (OLS) estimators for both decades. Essential factors in urban and regional economics such as size (initial population) or distance (either to the big cities or to the coast) can have different effects on population growth across both space and time, corresponding to the global estimated effects for some areas but diverging from these in others. Using GWR estimation procedures, we can identify changes in the sign or in the intensity of a factor’s effect across space, such that some factors could enhance population growth in one place but reduce it in another. Only after all spatially differentiated local effects have been analyzed and taken into consideration can appropriate national or regional policies be designed à la carte to promote, retain, or deter population growth.

Growing Like Spain: 1995-2007

Spanish GDP grew at an average rate of 3.5% per year during the 1995-2007 expansion, well above the EU average of 2.2%. However, this growth was based on factor accumulation rather than productivity gains as TFP fell at an annual rate of 0.7%. Using firm-level administrative data for all sectors we show that deterioration in the allocative efficiency of productive factors across firms was at the root of the low TFP growth in Spain, while misallocation across sectors played only a minor role. We show that within-industry misallocation of production factors increased substantially over the period in all industries. Absent such deterioration, average TFP growth would have been around 0.8% per year, in line with the growth of the technological frontier. Cross-industry variation reveals that the increase in misallocation was more severe in sectors where the incidence of regulations is greater. In contrast, sectoral differences in financial dependence, skill intensity, innovative content, tradability and the intensity of capital structures appear to be unrelated to changes in allocative efficiency. All in all, the observed high output growth together with increasing firm-level misallocation in all sectors is consistent with an expansion driven by a demand boom rather than by structural reforms.