Manuel Artís

Job Losses, Outsourcing and Relocation: Empirical Evidence Using Microdata

Using microdata, we analyse the determinants of firm relocation and conventional outsourcing decisions as a way to reduce employment. The results for a sample of 32 countries show the relevance of factors not considered previously in the literature. Firms that are below average in quality or innovation have a higher propensity to externalise part of their production through outsourcing, while lower relative profitability and longer time to market for new products each imply a higher probability of relocation.

Human Capital Spillovers, Productivity and Regional Convergence in Spain

This paper analyses the differential impact of human capital, in terms of different levels of schooling, on regional productivity and convergence. The potential existence of geographical spillovers of human capital is also considered by applying spatial panel data techniques. The empirical analysis of Spanish provinces between 1980 and 2007 confirms the positive impact of human capital on regional productivity and convergence, but reveals no evidence of any positive geographical spillovers of human capital. In fact, in some specifications the spatial lag presented by tertiary studies has a negative effect on the variables under consideration.This paper analyses the differential impact of human capital, in terms of different levels of schooling, on regional productivity and convergence. The potential existence of geographical spillovers of human capital is also considered by applying spatial panel data techniques. The empirical analysis of Spanish provinces between 1980 and 2007 confirms the positive impact of human capital on regional productivity and convergence, but reveals no evidence of any positive geographical spillovers of human capital. In fact, in some specifications the spatial lag presented by tertiary studies has a negative effect on the variables under consideration.

Detection of Automobile Insurance Fraud With Discrete Choice Models and Misclassified Claims

The insurance industry is concerned with the detection of fraudulent behavior. The number of automobile claims involving some kind of suspicious circumstance is high and has become a subject of major interest for companies. This article demonstrates the performance of binary choice models for fraud detection and implements models for misclassification in the response variable. A database from the Spanish insurance market that contains honest and fraudulent claims is used. The estimation of the probability of omission provides an estimate of the percentage of fraudulent claims that are not detected by the logistic regression model.

Geographical distribution of unemployment in Spain

López‐Bazo E., Del Barrio T. and Artís M. (2005) Geographical distribution of unemployment in Spain, Regional Studies 39 , 305–318. This paper estimates the external shape of the regional distribution of unemployment rates and it studies intradistribution dynamics to analyse the extent of regional inequalities in unemployment rates in Spain over the last decades. It also assesses the contribution of disequilibrium and equilibrium factors in giving rise to spatial differences in unemployment rates. Besides the traditional regression analysis, the effect of those factors on the whole regional distribution is estimated. Results reveal the existence of large differentials across the Spanish provinces in unemployment rates, the geographical distribution of which is characterized by strong persistence. Most of the characteristics of the distribution are induced by the equilibrium component of unemployment, although the influence of market equilibrium variables vanishes over the period under analysis, whereas the unequal distribution of amenities is the major responsible of spatial inequalities in unemployment rates at the late 1990s.

Public infrastructure and the performance of manufacturing industries: short- and long-run effects

We present a theoretical framework for determining the short- and long-run effects of infrastructure. While the short-run effects have been the focus of most previous studies, here we derive long-run elasticities by taking into account the adjustment of quasi-fixed inputs to their optimum levels. By considering the impact of infrastructure on private investment decisions, we observe how, apart from the direct effect on costs in the short-run, infrastructure exerts an indirect source of influence in the long-run through their effect on private capital. The model is applied to manufacturing industries in the Spanish regions.

Modelling different types of automobile insurance fraud behaviour in the Spanish market

Abstract From a microeconomic point of view, the control of insurance fraud requires a detailed knowledge of the insureds’ behaviour. In this paper, we present discrete-choice models for fraud behaviour and we estimate the influence of the insured and claim characteristics on the probability of committing fraud. Data correspond to a Spanish sample. Correction for choice-based sampling is introduced in the estimation due to the oversampling of fraud claims. The structure of the Spanish automobile insurance market is also discussed. Our results differ according to the type of fraud behaviour that is under consideration.

Count data models for a credit scoring system

Credit scoring systems created for the evaluation of new applications are based on the available statistical information which is related to the behaviour of former clients with credit. Usually, financial institutions apply discriminant analysis techniques to create these systems but they lack of good properties due, for example, to the presence of non-normal variables. As an alternative, the future repayment behaviour is predicted by means of the expected number of unpaid instalments. The use of this latter variable suggests that appropriate models might be of interest, in which some covariant exogenous variables are included in order to specify the expected level of debt. At this point, prepayment is not explicitly considered. These models should be used as explanatory tools when evaluating the level of risk involved in personal credit transactions. Negative Binomial Distribution models are suitable when heterogeneity is taken into account. Some results related to prediction performance are shown for different model specifications in the case of data from a Spanish bank.

Changes in Wage Structure in Mexico Going Beyond the Mean: An Analysis of Differences in Distribution, 1987-2008

This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the relationship between wage inequality, employment structure, and returns to education in urban areas of Mexico during the past two decades (1987-2008). Applying Mellys (2005) quantile regression based decomposition, we find that changes in wage inequality have been driven mainly by variations in educational wage premia. Additionally, we find that changes in employment structure, including occupation and firm size, have played a vital role. This evidence seems to suggest that the changes in wage inequality in urban Mexico cannot be interpreted in terms of a skill-biased change, but rather they are the result of an increasing demand for skills during that period.

On the effectiveness of private and public capital

This study assesses the effectiveness of private and public capital investments in the performance of manufactures within the framework of the duality theory. The response of costs of production and input utilization to changes in the stocks of private and public capital is measured by the appropriate elasticities obtained from a cost function. Instead of considering private capital either as a variable or fixed input on a priori grounds, its nature is checked, that is, the study discriminates between a long- and a short-run situation. The empirical exercise is made for the manufacturing industries in the Spanish regions.

External Effects and Cost of Production

Recent studies (Romer, 1986; Lucas, 1988) have stressed the importance of factors external to the firm in the production process. Such externalities are assumed to have a direct effect on the level of production or to enhance the productivity of traditional inputs. Broadly speaking, we can identify two types of externalities. First, inputs that are not explicitly taken into account in the firm’s decision-making process although they contribute to the production process (for instance, the availability of human capital, public capital or infrastructure, and social capital). We will refer to these external effects as “external inputs.” Second, externalities that are relevant outside the economies giving rise to the externality, regardless whether these economies are understood as the economy of a specific industry or a specific country or region. This type of externality has recently been considered theoretically in growth models dealing with open economies.