Yolanda Pena-Boquete

Labor conditions in the Spanish hotels and restaurants industry.

The tourism and hotels and restaurants industries fall within the service sector and employ many people with different skills and capacities. As in other sectors, it is important to monitor employment and working conditions in this sector. However, there has not been any empirical systematic research into employment and wage conditions in the Spanish hotels and restaurants sector, partly because of the complexity and size of the sector. All studies that exist on salary levels in the tourism industry emphasize the fact that the hotels and restaurants sector is among the lowest paid business sectors and it employs a large proportion of women and nonqualified labor. Such characteristics generate lower pay and greater risk of gender discrimination. The aim of this article is to analyze these two negative aspects of labor market conditions in the hotels and restaurants industry in Spain and to discuss regional differences comparing tourism regions and nontourism regions. We show that low-wage incidence in the hotels and restaurants industry disappears with the tourism development of the sector, that is, it is lower in the tourism regions. Nevertheless, gender discrimination does not depend on the tourism or nontourism characterization of regions.

The social benefits of WEEE re-use schemes. A cost benefit analysis for PCs in Spain

One goal of the new European legislation set out in WEEE Directive 2012/19/UE is the promotion of WEEE re-use schemes. However, some authors are rather sceptical about the contribution of WEEE re-use schemes to improve resource efficiency. In order to evaluate and to design adequate policy instruments, some authors recommend the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) as a compulsory first step. In this context, the main contribution of this paper is to enlarge the empirical literature by providing a CBA of re-use schemes versus recycling processes of PCs. The analysis is made for Spain by quantifying in monetary terms the social damages of environmental impacts such as climate change, human toxicity, particulate matter formation, metal depletion, etc. Our results suggest that promoting re-use against recycling (and consequently the need for manufacturing a new PC from raw materials) may reduce environmental costs by 45.20€ per PC. Those social benefits are mainly generated in the re-use preparation process and distribution activities, whereas the re-use scenario displays a worse performance in energy consumption. The difference in the distribution stage during the second life cycle originates from the fact that the ready to re-use product is produced locally, while the brand new product is manufactured and distributed from abroad, mainly Asia. These results provide valuable information to policymakers and think tanks willing to design support schemes for re-use over recycling operations.

Household Asset‐Holding Diversification in Australia

We explore asset holding diversification by Australian households, in particular, the household asset diversification participation decision (whether or not to diversify at all) is jointly estimated with the decision of how much to diversify. In so doing, recent literature on the modelling of proportions is combined with the growing body of research concerning household financial decision making. Our findings are consistent with the participation of households operating in diverse financial markets being constrained by ineffective information conduits, influencing the decision of whether or not to diversify. We further find that short term concerns over job security or health are associated with less participation in, as well as a lower extent of, asset holding diversification.

The impact of health on wages: Evidence from Europe before and during the Great Recession

This paper adds to the empirical literature of health as a potential endogenous explanatory variable in wage equations by addressing problems such as unobserved heterogeneity, sample selection and measurement error (in the health variable) in one comprehensive framework. Moreover, by using European individual-level panel data from before and during the Great Recession (GR) — which started in Europe in 2008 — we gain insights into whether and how the current crisis has altered the relationship between health and wages. Our results provide empirical evidence of measurement error in the self-reported health variable when estimating its impact on wages for men, and of selectivity bias in wages for both men and women. We also show that in the period prior to the GR, working-age men (20-64 years old) who are in relatively better health (measured by a one-unit increase in a health index) have, on average, a 9 percent higher hourly wage rate. This effect is concentrated (and largest) among older workers (50-64 years old). Instead, during the GR the positive impact of health on wages disappears. One possible explanation for these findings is that presenteeism (i.e. attending work even though being sick) — which has become more common during the GR — may have reduced the impact of (poor) health on wages. With regard to working-age women (20-59 years old), we do not find evidence of an effect of health on wages, both before and during the GR.