Causes and Consequences of Block Share Purchases. Evidence from Spanish Non-Financial Firms

The structure of Spanish capital markets doesnot facilitate an efficient market forcorporate control through takeover process,which assumes that inefficient management isreplaced by competing teams. The ownershipstructure of listed companies is highlyconcentrated, with extremely low floating stockfor some companies. At the same time animportant number of companies have introducedanti-takeover provisions in their statutes.There is another way of disciplining managementthrough the exit solution: by transferring theownership of significant blocks of shares, amarket for partial corporate control, asalternative to the takeover market. Theobjective of this paper is to test empiricallythe causes and consequences of block purchasesin Spain for non-financial listed companies.The main results are: i) There is no evidencethat previous poor performance of the companiescauses block increases; ii) Block increasesoccur more frequently in companies with lowerownership concentration. After the blockincrease, on average, the ownership of thelargest shareholder increases. iii) After blockincreases there are significant board changes,for both executive board members and also fornon-executives. (iv) The transfer of blocksoccurs more frequently for smaller companies.We conclude that agency theory predictionsabout the disciplining role of partial takeoveractivity are not fully supported. They arecontingent on institutional characteristics ofthe corporate governance system.     

Modeling Technology as a Dynamic Error Components Process: The Case of the Inter-country Agricultural Production Function

In this paper, we propose a dynamic error-components model to represent the unobserved level of technology. This specification implies a well-defined common factor dynamic model for per capita output that can be tested explicitly. The model is applied to data on aggregates of agricultural inputs and outputs for groups of countries from the OECD, Africa (AF), Latin America (LA) as well as centrally planned countries, over a period of 31 years. We find that the proposed model fits the data better than alternative static specifications and satisfies the implied common factor restrictions in two of the samples. The results suggest that although technological change seems to have been a faster process for less developed countries relative to the OECD countries, it has not been fast enough to reduce appreciably the enormous differences in average technological levels that still persist between them.     

Inequality and deprivation within and between groups: An illustration of European union countries

This paper broadens the approach of Hey and Lambert (Q. J. Econ. 95,567–573 1980) regarding relative deprivation to the case in which individuals compare themselves with individuals belonging not only to their own group, but also to other groups. In this way, we obtain the average deprivation of a population in relation to another. This allows us to establish a correspondence between the decomposition of the Gini coefficient based on a partition of the population, and the decomposition of deprivation into two components. One quantifies deprivation within the subpopulation and the other deprivation between populations. An empirical illustration is given, based on the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish Government–MCYT, (SEC2001-1668) and would like to thank Jacques Silber and two anonymous referees for their suggestions.     

Medical tourism in the Caribbean

Although travel for medical reasons has a long history, it has more recently evolved from a cottage industry to a worldwide enterprise. A number of countries are positioning themselves to attract visitors who are willing to travel to obtain health services that are more accessible, less expensive, or more available than in their countries of origin. This has in turn given rise to medical packages that combine tourism with health. Several Caribbean nations - including Cuba, Barbados, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico - hope to expand their revenues in this new market. Each country has selected specific service niches and promotes its services accordingly. While Cuba has been promoting its services to other countries for several decades, medical tourism is just beginning in the other islands. Ultimately, these nations' economic success will hinge on their comparative advantage vis-à-vis other options, while their success in terms of improving their own health care depends on the extent to which the services for tourists are also available to the islands' populations.     

Urban growth,policy and planning of public space

Under the pressure of the urbanizing tsunami, town planning and urban policies in Spain have given a residual treatment to public spaces in recent urban development. This work proposes a brief but comprehensive sociological analysis about social and morphological traits of public spaces – like paradigmatic social space – in order to show the city's irreplaceable role in citizen socialization processes. The network of streets and places, the city in this sense, make up the scenes of man's sociability. In this perspective, planning ought to be geared towards and for the city and redeem a civic impetus that pursues developing the whole instead of subjecting it.     

Visualising Gender Wage Differences in the European Union

The purpose of this article is to illustrate differences in the gender wage gap in 13 EU member states, using figures taken from the Household Panel for 2000. The methodology is based primarily on the kernel density functions of men's and women's wages. A range of situations can be observed from the Mediterranean countries (with a smaller gender pay gap) to the very specific cases of Austria and the UK and to northern European countries where the gender pay gap is chiefly the result of a larger proportion of men at higher‐paid levels. We also offer conclusions on the relevance of public employment, part‐time employment and short‐term hiring to explain the gender wage gap in each of the countries studied.     

A calibrated imputation method for secondary data analysis of survey data

In practical survey sampling, missing data are unavoidable due to nonresponse, rejected observations by editing, disclosure control, or outlier suppression. We propose a calibrated imputation approach so that valid point and variance estimates of the population (or domain) totals can be computed by the secondary users using simple complete‐sample formulae. This is especially helpful for variance estimation, which generally require additional information and tools that are unavailable to the secondary users. Our approach is natural for continuous variables, where the estimation may be either based on reweighting or imputation, including possibly their outlier‐robust extensions. We also propose a multivariate procedure to accommodate the estimation of the covariance matrix between estimated population totals, which facilitates variance estimation of the ratios or differences among the estimated totals. We illustrate the proposed approach using simulation data in supplementary materials that are available online.     

Skill premium effects on fertility and female labor force supply

In the last twenty years the United States has seen a positive relationship between female labor supply and total fertility rates, which differs from the pattern observed over the preceding years. We construct a general equilibrium overlapping generations model capable of generating this changing relationship between fertility and female labor supply. We argue that skilled biased technological change in recent decades has increased the skill premium and has therefore decreased the relative cost of (unskilled) child care services. The positive effect of the increase in female mean wages on fertility rates, and the inducement for labor force participation provided by the reduction in the relative cost of child care services, generated the positive relationship between fertility rates and female labor force participation in the last two decades.All correspondence to Amaia Iza. This paper has benefited particularly from comments by Juan Carlos Conesa, Pedro Mira and Sara de la Rica. We also acknowledge countless conversations with María Paz Espinosa and useful comments from Jaime Alonso, Jose María Da-Rocha, Tim Kehoe, José Victor Rios-Rull, when the paper was presented at the IV Workshop of Dynamic Macroeconomics held in Vigo (Spain, July 1999) and in Universidade de Vigo (October, 2000). We also thank an anonymous referee whose comments enabled us to improve the paper considerably. Financial support from Universidad del País Vasco 9UPV 00035.321-13511/2001, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia PB097-0620, MCYT BEC2000/1394 and Instituto de la mujer (Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales) MTAS 33/00 is gratefully acknowledged. Any remaining errors are the authors responsibility. Responsible editor: Junsen Zhang.     

On the Relationship Between Antisocial and Anti-Environmental Behaviors: An Empirical Study

According to relevant literature, anti-environmental behaviors such as wasting natural resources are a type of antisocial behaviors. However, there is limited empirical evidence showing a significant relationship between those kinds of negative actions. The aim of this study was to investigate such relationship. One hundred and fourteen persons living at a Mexican city responded to a questionnaire investigating their tolerance to antisocial behaviors (hitting somebody, stealing objects, cheating, etc.). Direct observations of people engaging in water waste actions were also conducted. These included observations of the time the individuals invested in washing their cars, washing their households' sidewalk and washing the portion of street in front of their houses. Results of a structural model indicated that a significant relationship between people's tolerance to antisocial actions and their waste of water exists, as anticipated. Implications of these findings for research in conservation behavior are discussed.