Francisco José Goerlich

INEQUALITY IN SPAIN 1973-91: CONTRIBUTION TO A REGIONAL DATABASE

This paper provides the methodology and results of a database of inequality indices for the fifty provinces and seventeen regions of Spain on the basis of the Household Budget Surveys for the years 1973/74, 1980/81 and 1990/91. The inequality indicators considered are the indices of Gini, Theil (0), Theil (1) and Atkinson (1), as well as the distribution by deciles of the population. These indicators are drawn up for three variables: total income, total expenditure, and exclusively monetary expenditure. The variables are also expressed in terms of households, per capita and per capita equivalent. All are available on the Internet (http://www.ivie.es). Copyright 2001 by The International Association for Research in Income and Wealth.

A population density grid for Spain

This article describes a high-resolution land cover data set for Spain and its application to dasymetric population mapping (at census tract level). Eventually, this vector layer is transformed into a grid format. The work parallels the effort of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, in collaboration with Eurostat and the European Environment Agency (EEA), in building a population density grid for the whole of Europe, combining CORINE Land Cover with population data per commune. We solve many of the problems due to the low resolution of CORINE Land Cover, which are especially visible with Spanish data. An accuracy assessment is carried out from a simple aggregation of georeferenced point population data for the region of Madrid. The bottom-up grid constructed in this way is compared to our top-down grid. We show a great improvement over what has been reported from commune data and CORINE Land Cover, but the improvements seem to come entirely from the higher resolution data sets and not from the statistical modeling in the downscaling exercise. This highlights the importance of providing the research community with more detailed land cover data sets, as well as more detailed population data. The dasymetric grid is available free of charge from the authors upon request.

Three (marginal?) questions regarding convergence

This paper focuses on three (marginal?) questions surrounding the analysis of economic convergence and uses Spanish provinces as a means of illustration. The three questions in hand are as follows. Given that the geographical units of analysis are usually quite different in economic size, is the weighting of economic units relevant in convergence analysis? The average per capita income of a given region, or country, is the first moment in the distribution of income, but what about the second moment, inequality, have we converged in inequality? An aggregate welfare index must take into account, at least, the evolution of the first two moments of the distribution of income, and so does the adjustment for inequality make important differences in the evolution of average per capita income? The answer to the first two questions is yes, but to the third it is clearly no.

Intertemporal and interprovincial variations in income inequality: Spain, 1973-1991

Goerlich F. J. and Mas M. (2002) Intertemporal and interprovincial variations in income inequality: Spain, 1973–1991, Reg. Studies 36, 1005–1015. The paper presents the main findings on personal income distribution for the Spanish provinces over the period 1973–91. The information comes from the three structural Household Budget Surveys and has been elaborated by the authors on a homogeneous base (available at: http://www.ivie.es). It starts by reviewing the information provided by some dispersion statistics, including kernel density functions, applied to the provincial Gini indices and Lorenz percentiles. It goes on to test, making use of an ANOVA model, two propositions related with intertemporal and interprovincial variations in inequality. The penultimate section, before the conclusions, deals with the estimation of β-convergence equations in inequality.

Interest rate, expectations and the credibility of the bank of Spain

This paper tries to precisely date the change of monetary policy regimeoccurred in Spain along the year 1984 moving away from controlling monetaryaggregates into interest rate targeting. The most likely date for the changeis estimated and, surprisingly, there is evidence that agents learn quiterapidly about the new intermediate target. A week after the change, the termstructure of interest rates shows how market agents attribute much moreinformational content to interest rate changes than they did before. Two typesof transitions are tried, namely, using a one step and a gradual logisticswitching function. Este documento pretende establecer la fecha exacta del cambio en lapolitica monetaria -del control de agregados monetarios al control de tipos deinteres- que tuvo lugar en Espana a lo largo del ano 1984. Se determina lafecha mas probable del cambio, y se observa que, sorprendentemente, losagentes asimilan rapidamente este nuevo objetivo. Alrededor de una semanadespues del cambio, la estructura de los tipos de interes muestra como losagentes de mercado atribuyen mucho mas contenido informacional a los cambiosen los tipos de interes que anteriormente. Se suponen dos tipos de transicion:un ajuste instantaneo y otro gradual segun una funcion logistica.

La concentration spatiale de la population espagnole de 1900 à 2001: confirmations empiriques

Cet article traite de l’evolution de la densite de la population en Espagne au cours du XXe siecle. Exploitant une base de donnees demographiques homogene a l’echelle des municipalites – construite a partir des onze recensements effectues entre 1900 et 2001 – les auteurs examinent, sous divers points de vue, les caracteristiques generales de la concentration de la population. Les resultats corroborent l’hypothese d’une concentration progressive de la population de l’Espagne au fil du temps, processus qui se poursuit encore aujourd’hui. L’apport essentiel de l’article est qu’il confirme par une analyse quantitative des phenomenes que les specialistes ont deja bien decrits en des termes plus generaux.

A ROC analysis-based classification method for landslide susceptibility maps

A landslide susceptibility map is a crucial tool for land-use spatial planning and management in mountainous areas. An essential issue in such maps is the determination of susceptibility thresholds. To this end, the map is zoned into a limited number of classes. Adopting one classification system or another will not only affect the map’s readability and final appearance, but most importantly, it may affect the decision-making tasks required for effective land management. The present study compares and evaluates the reliability of some of the most commonly used classification methods, applied to a susceptibility map produced for the area of La Marina (Alicante, Spain). A new classification method based on ROC analysis is proposed, which extracts all the useful information from the initial dataset (terrain characteristics and landslide inventory) and includes, for the first time, the concept of misclassification costs. This process yields a more objective differentiation of susceptibility levels that relies less on the intrinsic structure of the terrain characteristics. The results reveal a considerable difference between the classification methods used to define the most susceptible zones (in over 20% of the surface) and highlight the need to establish a standard method for producing classified susceptibility maps. The method proposed in the study is particularly notable for its consistency, stability and homogeneity, and may mark the starting point for consensus on a generalisable classification method.

Drivers of Agglomeration: Geography vs History

This paper focuses on the influence of two classical drivers of population agglomeration: geography and 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 municipalities, and their status as the administrative centre of the area. In first instance we examine localization patterns, at a small geographical scale, according to these characteristics and present empirical evidence of the progressive population concentration along the coast, on the plains and in the regional (provincial) capitals; a process that has not finished in the present days. Next, we show that both drivers of population agglomeration, geography and history, are relevant for Spain and that they show an increasing explanatory power in accounting for population concentration. From a quantitative point of view the capital status factor shows the most prominent role. An exercise of conditional convergence shows that, even in the absence of these factors, we would have seen a significant amount of population concentration but at a smaller rate. Our reference is the census population data for Spanish municipalities for the period 1900-2001. Given the important changes in municipality structure, the eleven censuses have been homogenised according to the municipal structure of the 2001 Census.

A note on the distribution of the least squares estimator of a random walk with a linear trend

It is widely known that the Dickey-Fuller (1979) t-statistic obtained from a regression with a linear trend is asymptotically normal if the DGP is a random walk with a linear trend. This note shows that this result may be of little use in small samples, especially when the slope coefficient is not large, extending in this way the study of Hylleberg and Mizon (1989) for the drift case. Departures from the Dickey-Fuller distribution are detected, however, quite soon for moderate sample sizes.