Francisco Requena

A Cointegration Analysis of Car Advertising and Sales Data in the Presence of Structural Change

Abstract This paper examines whether there is a long‐run stable equilibrium relationship between advertising and sales across the market segments of the UK car industry over the period 1971–2001. In order to achieve this goal, we allow for structural breaks in the series using cointegration techniques. The results show the existence of long‐run equilibrium relationships in all six market segments, although in four of them the relationship is not stable. In general, one structural change is detected in the late 1970s and another in the early 1990s, coinciding with two economic recessions. When we do not account for structural changes, the estimated long‐run elasticities of advertising on sales are seen to be substantially downwardly biased. Finally, a noticeable increase is observed in long‐run elasticities in most car market segments during the nineties with respect to previous decades.

Complementarity between Local Knowledge and Internationalization in Regional Technological Progress

Trade, foreign direct investment, and inter-regional R&D spillovers facilitate competition, the spread of knowledge, and the adoption of more advanced technologies, which in turn hastens total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The spread of these efficiency gains from internationalization requires a sufficient local knowledge to enable them to be adapted to the domestic productive environment. Thus, higher local knowledge and internationalization will lead to TFP growth, and the greater the complementarity between variables the higher the TFP growth. We test the complementarity hypothesis using Spanish regional data over the period 1980-1995 in which both regional local knowledge and internationalization experienced a notable increase. Copyright Blackwell Publishing, Inc. 2006

Rethinking Regional Competitiveness: Catalonia's International and Interregional Trade 1995-2006

Studies of competitiveness tend to focus on a local economys global interactions, particularly its international trade. But for countries that are at least mid-sized (such as Spain), interregional trade tends to be as large as or significantly larger than international trade. The case of Catalonia illustrates the importance of interregional flows in truly analyzing and devising strategies for a regions external competitiveness. Accounting for interregional trade changes and performing analyses of Catalonias overall merchandise trade balance, which sectors generate external surpluses as opposed to deficits, and who Catalonias key trading partners are, and the use of a gravity-model approach to estimate external border effects at the regional level for Catalonia and the rest of Spain, reveal significant variations by sector and by trading partner, generally higher external border effects for exports than imports, and declines in border effects over time - but with a discernible flattening in recent years.

Testing Heckscher— Ohlin—Vanek Model Using Spanish Regional Data

The authors conduct an empirical study of the Heckscher—Ohlin—Vanek (HOV) model of trade using regional data rather than country data. Findings for Spanish regions suggest that relaxing the assumption of world factor price equalization alone is not enough to improve the performance of the HOV model. The supposition of world identical and homothetic preferences must also be relaxed. The authors also test whether Spanish regions share the same production techniques. Allowing for productivity-adjusted factor price equalization across regions or region-specific input—output matrices contributes very little toward improving the HOV models predictive power, suggesting that the state of technology and choice of techniques is similar across Spanish regions.

Cities export specialization

ABSTRACT We analyse whether more populated cities have an export specialization different from the one of less populated cities. Using very detailed product-level export data for Brazilian urban areas over the period 2000–2013, we show that more populated cities export proportionately more skill-intensive and complex goods than less populated cities. This result is consistent with the larger diversity of skills and the higher share of skilled workers in more populated cities.

Why firms set different export prices? Evidence from Spain

ABSTRACT Using firm-level export data for the 2010–2014 period, we investigate the variation of export prices across and within Spanish manufacturing firms. We find that more productive firms set higher export prices. However, this result is not robust to controlling for other firm-level characteristics and alternative productivity measures. We show that firms set higher export prices in more distant markets and in destinations with high GDP per capita, and lower export prices in large and low-competition markets. These latter results suggest that firms adjust the quality of their products to destination characteristics.

The Variation of Export Prices Across and within Firms

This paper uses transaction-level trade data to analyze the differences in export prices across and within Spanish firms exporting manufactures in the 2010–2014 period. The transactional nature of the database uncovers sizable differences in the price that an exporter charges for the same product and destination. These differences are related with the number of goods covered within each product category, the exported quantity per transaction and the number of transactions carried out by firms.