Amaia Altuzarra

A model of the Spanish housing market

The Spanish housing boom of the early 2000s has raised enormous attention at an international level. To better understand what is happening in the housing market, the current Spanish boom needs to be put into context. Housing demand, the motor of the boom, was triggered by population growth, employment generation, increase of per capita income, and favorable financial conditions. Supply has reacted in a very flexible manner and 2006 witnessed historic levels in residential construction. Yet this boom seemed to be coming finally to an end in 2007, mainly driven by mortgage rate increases. The aim of this paper is threefold: (1) to identify the determinants of the rise of house prices in the last decade, (2) to discuss the likely future of the housing market, and (3) to build an econometric model of the Spanish housing market.

Evaluating the Relative Innovative Position of European Union Member Countries: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract This paper aims to provide empirical evidence about the relative positions of European Union member states on innovation and, more specifically, on innovation in manufacturing. These positions were obtained from the aggregation of different innovation variables using the principal component analysis. We do not provide, from the statistical viewpoint, a synthetic indicator, even if, from the economic perspective, the information we obtained was similar to what such an indicator would provide. Our unit of analysis is the sector in each country, what we will term ‘country‐sector’, covering both innovative and non‐innovative firms.

R&D and patents: is it a two way street?

ABSTRACT This paper provides empirical evidence on the link between firms’ R&D expenditure and patent registrations by applying the Granger causality test. We use a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1990–2013. We first, examine the R&D-patents relationship in the manufacturing firms as a whole and subsequently, manufacturing was broken down into three groups of firms according to the technological level of the industries to which the firms belonged: high and medium-high (HMHT), low medium (LMT) and low (LT) technology firms. For the entire panel, our results provide support for a bidirectional relationship between R&D and patents, supporting both the traditional view and the reverse causality approach (patents cause R&D). When the sample is split into the three technology levels, we also find strong support for a bidirectional relationship in HMHT firms and weak support in LT ones. We found no evidence of this bidirectional link in LMT firms.

Unemployment and labour force participation in Spain

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between the unemployment rate and the labour force participation rate in Spain. Cointegration analysis is performed for aggregate, male and female time-series. Results suggest that there is no a long-run relationship between the two variables for the aggregate and male cases. However, the findings support a long-run relationship between the two variables for the female time-series. Thus, the unemployment invariance hypothesis is supported in the two former cases but not in the latter.

Are there differences in persistence across different innovation measures

Abstract In this study we empirically examine the persistence across input and output indicators of innovation using a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms during the period 1990–2013. We use R&D as innovation input and technological innovation, product innovation and process innovation as output measures. We analyse the transition matrices and design an econometric strategy consisting of the estimation of various specifications using random effects dynamic probit models that account for state dependence, unobserved heterogeneity and endogenous initial conditions. Findings indicate the presence of true persistence in all our innovation indicators. They also show the existence of different degrees of persistence depending on the innovation measure used. Persistence in R&D increases around 20% the probability of conducting R&D. The highest persistence is associated with technological innovation. The probability of introducing a technological or process innovation is 28% higher for firms that have innovated in the previous year. When technological innovation is broken down into product and process innovation, the degree of persistence is higher for process innovation than for product innovation. This result is not unexpected considering the Spanish productive structure, which is made up mainly of low and middle-low technological sectors which are based on process innovations rather than on product innovations.