Blanca Martinez

Mobbing and its determinants: the case of Spain

The objective of this article is to analyse empirically the problem of mobbing in Spain. Based on the fifth Spanish survey on working conditions, we find that during 2003, around 5% of workers declared being mobbed at their workplace. Some personal, job characteristics and working conditions are found to be significant at explaining the probability of being a mobbing victim. Finally, we find differences in the variables affecting such probability depending on the victims gender.

The Development problem under embodiment

This paper studies technology adoption in an optimal growth model with embodied technical change. The economy consists of the final good sector, the capital sector, and the technology sector which role is the imitation of exogenous innovations. Scarce labor resources are allocated to the technology and final good sectors. The final good is allocated to consumption and to the capital sector. The authors analytically characterize the long run optimal allocations. Using a calibrated version of the model, they find that an acceleration in the rate of embodied technical change should not be responded by an immediate and strong adoption effort. Instead, adoption labor should decrease in the short run, and the optimal technological gap is shown to increase either in the short or in the long run. The state of the institutions and policies around the technology sector is key in the design of the optimal adoption timing.

Growth vs. level effect of population change on economic development: An inspection into human-capital-related mechanisms☆

This paper studies the different mechanisms and the dynamics through which demography is channeled to the economy. We analyze the role of demographic changes in the economic development process by studying the transitional and the long-run impact of both the rate of population growth and the initial population size on the levels of per capita human capital and income. We do that in an enlarged Lucas–Uzawa model with intergenerational altruism. In contrast to the existing theoretical literature, the long-run level effects of demographic changes, i.e. their impact on the levels of the variables along the balanced growth path, are deeply characterized in addition to the more standard long-run growth effects. We prove that the level effect of the population rate of growth is non-negative (positive in the empirically most relevant case) for the average level of human capital, but a priori ambiguous for the level of per capita income due to the interaction of three transmission mechanisms of demographic shocks, a standard one (dilution) and two non-standard (altruism and human capital accumulation). Overall, the sign of the level effects of population growth depends on preference and technology parameters, but numerically we show that the joint negative effect of dilution and altruism is always stronger than the induced positive human capital effect. The growth effect of population growth depends basically on the attitude to intergenerational altruism and intertemporal substitution. Moreover, we also prove that the long-run level effects of population size on per capita human capital and income may be negative, nil, or positive, depending on the relationship between preferences and technology, while its growth effect is zero. Finally, we show that the model is able to replicate complicated time relationships between economic and demographic changes. In particular, it entails a negative effect of population growth on per capita income, which dominates in the initial periods, and a positive effect which restores a positive correlation between population growth and economic performance in the long term.

Mobbing and workers' health: an empirical analysis for Spain

his paper analyzes empirically the impact of mobbing on the health of workers in Spain. Based on the Sixth Spanish Survey on Working Conditions, we first describe the differences in health among mobbed and not mobbed workers, sing two different indicators: the workers self-perception that work affects health and the presence of bad health symptoms. The descriptive evidence shows that mobbing victims perform worse on such health indicators. We estimate the effect of being mobbed on the probability of suffering from health problems, taking into account the potential endogeneity of mobbing. Our estimates show that being a mobbing victim increases significantly the probability of having bad health, independently on the indicator used. Moreover, when bad health is measured by the perception indicator, we find that the effect of mobbing is underestimated if endogeneity is not accounted for.

Replacement, adoption and economic dynamics: lessons from a canonical creative destruction model

In this paper, we provide a first inspection into how structural technology adoption costs affect economic fluctuations. To this end, we choose a simple extension of a canonical creative destruction model. We analytically characterize the optimal replacement–adoption policies, and study numerically the induced dynamics. Our model predicts that the countries supporting the highest adoption costs are those which display the longest and sharpest business and employment fluctuations, and the lowest convergence speeds to their steady state equilibria. Moreover, as the position of the workers in the labor market weakens, the fluctuations are shown to get even sharper.

Global Dynamics and Imbalance Effects in the Lucas-Uzawa Model: Further Results

In this paper we use a new analytical approach to the Lucas-Uzawa model (Boucekkine and Ruiz Tamarit, 2007) to extend the existing results on the dynamics, and notably on the imbalance effects arising in the model. The approach does not only allow to extend the traditional analysis to any initial conditions and for all variables in level, but it also permits a more general investigation of imbalance effects.

Capital Maintenance versus Technology Adoption under Embodied Technical Progress

We study an optimal growth model with one-hoss-shay vintage capital, where labor resources can be allocated freely either to production, technology adoption or capital maintenance. Technological progress is partly embodied. Adoption labor increases the level of embodied technical progress. First, we are able to disentangle the amplification-propagation role of maintenance in business fluctuations: in the short run, the response of the model to transitory shocks on total factor productivity in the final good sector are definitely much sharper compared to the counterpart model without maintenance but with the same average depreciation rate. Moreover, the one-hoss shay technology is shown to reinforce this amplification-propagation mechanism. We also find that accelerations in embodied technical progress should be responded by a gradual adoption effort, and capital maintenance should be the preferred instrument in the short run.

Optimal Population Growth as an Endogenous Discounting Problem: The Ramsey Case

This paper revisits the optimal population size problem in a continuous time Ramsey setting with costly child rearing and both intergenerational and intertemporal altruism. The social welfare functions considered range from the Millian to the Benthamite. When population growth is endogenized, the associated optimal control problem involves an endogenous effective discount rate depending on past and current population growth rates, which makes preferences intertemporally dependent. We tackle this problem by using an appropriate maximum principle. Then we study the stationary solutions (balanced growth paths) and show the existence of two admissible solutions except in the Millian case. We prove that only one is optimal. Comparative statics and transitional dynamics are numerically derived in the general case.

Machine Replacement, Technology Adoption and Convergence

In this paper, we introduce adoption costs in a canonical vintage capital model. Adoption costs take the form of a direct loss in production during a fixed period of time. We explicitly characterize the optimal machine replacement policy as a function of the adoption period. Using an explicit numerical method, we study the dynamics of the model. In particular, we find that while an increase in the adoption costs lowers the long run level of output, it also rises the magnitude of short run fluctuations and decreases the convergence speed to the steady states.

Explaining transactions in time banks in economic crisis

This article studies the services exchanged in a particular Spanish time bank. Using data from users and transactions, we analyse the users’ profile as well as the determinants of providing and receiving different services. Our results show that the representative user is a Spanish female, not married, middle aged, highly educated and unemployed. We also find differences in the personal characteristics driving the supply and demand of services.