UB Economics – Working Papers [ERE]
URI permanent per a aquesta col·leccióhttps://hdl.handle.net/2445/10407
"UB Economics - Working Papers" dóna continuitat des de finals del 2013, als "Documents de Treball de l’Espai de Recerca en Economia (ERE)" de la Facultat d’Economia i Empresa de la Universitat de Barcelona, col·lecció que va néixer l’any 2001.
En aquesta col·lecció, trobareu tots els "Documents de Treball de l’ERE" fins el número 300 que apareixen sota el format "Col.lecció d’Economia", una numeració que tindrà continuitat a partir del número 301 sota el títol d’"UB Economics - Working Papers".
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Document de treballThe relationship between high-stakes assessments and anxiety: Consequences for academic performance(2025) Oliete, Natalia; Valbuena, Javier; Choi Mendizábal, Álvaro B. (Álvaro Borja)The use of high-stakes assessments has become widespread in educational systems. While they can potentially boost student achievement, they may also increase anxiety levels, which could negatively affect their academic performance. These effects might not be uniform, varying across schools and among distinct student profiles. In this paper we examine the relationship between anxiety and performance and investigate how high-stakes assessments influence students' anxiety levels and academic outcomes. We conduct our analysis at the average level and by several individual characteristics, estimating a series of models using data from an international sample of countries. This allows us to shed new light on the winners and losers of the policy, and to get a deeper understanding of the role of anxiety. The study provides first international evidence by exploiting novel cross-country information on high-stakes testing. Our results extend previous research by revealing a strong negative correlation between student anxiety and academic performance, regardless of whether the country implements high-stakes testing. Furthermore, the heterogeneity analysis by socioeconomic level indicates that students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds exhibit a stronger negative association between anxiety and performance.- Document de treballSocioeconomic Inequality in Unmet Long-Term Care Needs(2025) Andrés, Raquel; Stoyanova, Alexandrina PetrovaEurope’s rapidly ageing population poses critical challenges for long-term care (LTC) systems, particularly guaranteeing equitable access. While socio-economic disparities in LTC utilisation are well documented, inequalities in unmet needs—the gap between required and received care—are less studied. Using the 2019 European Health Interview Survey for Spain, we quantify the care gap in hours and classify unmet needs as full, partial, or none. (...)
- Document de treballDo fiscal rules affect growth?(2025) Delalibera, Bruno R.; Brum, Angélica; Pereira, LucieneOver the past three decades, many countries have adopted fiscal rules. This paper studies their impact on economic growth using an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth, where the government imposes both a debt rule and a budget balance rule. The model shows that fiscal rules are not neutral: their design and interaction, through an endogenously adjusting tax rate, directly shape savings, capital accumulation, and long-term growth. The model identifies conditions under which a balanced growth path exists and highlights the possibility of multiple steady states. (...)
- Document de treballWhat Happens When Some Agents Over-Demand in Claims Problems(2025) Yin, Xiuxia; Calleja, Pere; Izquierdo Aznar, Josep MariaIn claims problems, we explore three characterizations of the constrained equal awards rule based on how allocations respond to an agent increasing its claim. In the first one we ensure that over-demanding by an unsatisfied agent does not harm others. In the second one we require that such over-demanding leaves the entire allocation unchanged. Finally, in the third one we weaken this last condition by protecting only the initially fully compensated agents.
- Document de treballTrickle-Down Economics, Merit, and Redistribution: An Experiment with the Poorest and Richest US Americans(2025) Brunetti, Roberto; Grimalda, Gianluca; Marino, MariaDespite growing income inequality, demand for redistribution has remained stagnant, which is particularly puzzling for the poor. We investigate whether attitudes toward “trickle-down” economics and preferences for fairness affect demand for redistribution. We involve US residents in the bottom (N = 1, 200) and top (N = 1, 146) 20% of the income distribution in experimental redistributive decisions from high-income real-life entrepreneurs to low-income recipients. (...)
- Document de treballFinancial Incentives to Fertility: From Short to Long Run(2025) Rodríguez Román, F. Javier; Cruces de Sousa, LidiaAre financial incentives effective in increasing fertility rates? Empirical evidence suggests they are, primarily in the short run (around implementation). Can such policies also increase the total number of children in the long run? We address this question by using a structural life-cycle model of fertility and labor supply, calibrated to replicate the short-run effects of a cash transfer paid at childbirth implemented in 2007 in Spain. (...)
- Document de treballThe toys that made us: The role of game in gender gaps(2025) Bianchi, Daniel; Choi Mendizábal, Álvaro B. (Álvaro Borja); Jerrim, JohnEarly gender gaps condition future educational decisions and labor market and social outcomes. There is extensive evidence reporting the existence of significant gender gaps in mathematical and scientific competencies at age 15. It has been suggested these patterns may explain why men tend to make a clean sweep on STEM careers. This has led to a debate on which factors may be driving gender gaps in educational outcomes. While some authors point to the existence of differences in psychological traits by gender, others focus on external factors, such as socioeconomic characteristics, parental values and educational trajectories. (...)
- Document de treballMitigating Generative AI Hallucinations(2025) De Chiara, Alessandro; Manna, Ester; Singh, ShubhranshuWe theoretically investigate whether AI developers or AI operators should be liable for the harm the AI systems may cause when they hallucinate. We find that the optimal liability framework may vary over time, with the evolution of the AI technology, and that making the AI operators liable can be desirable only if it induces monitoring of the AI systems. We also highlight non-trivial relationships between welfare and reputational concerns, human supervision ability, and the accuracy of the technology. Our results have implications for regulatory design and business strategies.
- Document de treballSectoral markups, factor substitution and factor-augmenting technical progress(2025) Alonso Carrera, Jaime; Freire Serén, María Jesús; Raurich, XavierWe measure sectoral price markups, elasticities of substitution between capital and labor, and rates of factor-augmenting technical change in the United States from 1947 to 2010. Our approach utilizes the user cost of capital to decompose firms' operating surplus into capital payments and profits, enabling a direct computation of sectoral price markups. The results reveal that these markups are time-varying and exhibit a positive trend since 1980 in both manufacturing and services, mirroring the observed behavior of markups in the aggregate economy. Additionally, we estimate the elasticities of substitution and the rates of technical progress for each sector. We find that the estimated values of these technological parameters vary significantly depending on the assumption regarding the market structure of sectoral goods: perfect or imperfect competition.
- Document de treballReconciling marginalism with the core in two-sided markets with money(2025) Robles Jiménez, Francisco Javier; Van den Brink, René; Núñez, Marina (Núñez Oliva); Robles Jiménez, LauraIn two-sided markets with money, core stability and marginalism are often in conflict. We reconcile them with two main results. First, we show that in the assignment game (Shapley & Shubik, 1972), the Banzhaf value is core stable if and only if the game is exact. This is surprising for two reasons: (i) the Banzhaf value is generally not efficient, and (ii) although exactness suffices for the Shapley value to be stable, it is not necessary. Consequently, stability of the Banzhaf value implies stability of the Shapley value, but not vice versa. Second, we consider a family of intra-sector Shapley and Banzhaf values by applying each value separately to the game on the set of buyers assuming all sellers are available and to the game on the set of sellers assuming all buyers are available, and then taking any convex combination. We prove that all such convex combinations lie in the core if and only if the valuation matrix has a dominant diagonal. Under this condition, the equal-weight intra-sector Shapley and Banzhaf values coincide with the fair-division point. Together, these results deliver simple criteria under which marginalist solutions assign stable payoff vectors in the original market.
- Document de treballFrom Rivals to Allies? CEO Connections in an Era of Common Ownership(2025) Hutschenreiter, Dennis C.; Qianshuo, LiuInstitutional common ownership of firm pairs in the same industry increases the likelihood of a preexisting social connection among their CEOs. We establish this relationship using a quasinatural experiment that exploits institutional mergers combined with firms' hiring events and detailed information on CEO biographies. In addition, for peer firms, gaining a CEO connection from a hiring firm's CEO appointment correlates with higher returns on assets, stock market returns, and decreasing product similarity between companies. We find evidence consistent with common owners allocating CEO connections to shape managerial decisionmaking and increase portfolio firms' performance.
- Document de treballProject Choice and Social Image Concerns(2025) Cerrone, Claudia; De Chiara, Alessandro; Manna, Ester; Saroglou, TheoEmployees' desire to impress their employer may lead to suboptimal choices, such as performing tasks that are out of their depth. In this paper, we formalise this intuition in a principal-agent setting and we experimentally analyse its practical relevance. Through a theoretical model, we show that an agent's desire to appear competent to their employer (social image concerns), can result in inefficient project selection. We test this prediction using a laboratory experiment and find that social image concerns increase the likelihood of suboptimal project choices when agents are male and the principal-agent interaction is not anonymous. Our findings have implications for organisational design.
- Document de treballParental education and the transition to master and PhD studies in Spain(2024) Vilalta-Bufí, Montserrat; Dopeso-Fernández, Roberto; Kucel, AleksanderIn a context of full equality of opportunity, bachelor graduates’ decision to pursue further studies should not be affected by social origin. Using Spanish data, we analyze the role of parental background on the decision to study for a master degree and a PhD degree. We find that parental background may increase up to 10 percentage points the probability of studying for a master degree and close to 2 percentage points the likelihood of studying for a PhD. We use the KHB method to decompose the parental background effects into direct and indirect ones (Karlson et al., 2012). Indirect effects collect parental background’s influence via previous studies. Our results show that the parental background effect is not mediated by previous studies’ characteristics. Parental education directly affects the probability of studying for a master and PhD degree for bachelor graduates. In contrast, we find negligible effects of parental background on the likelihood of studying for a PhD degree for the master graduates. Since not all master programs give access to PhD studies, we argue that the decision to pursue a PhD is likely taken just after bachelor studies. We conclude that equality of opportunity in Spain can be improved by promoting master and PhD study paths during bachelor studies to all students, with particular emphasis on females and those students with parents without university education.
- Document de treballInflation and pandemic in Spain(2024) Tariffi, LeonardoThis paper shows what the main inflation macroeconomics drivers in Spain are. Even if there has been a less than two-digit inflation in the last three decades, it can be emphasized the fact that the inflation rate has raised and declined rapidly in recent years because of its fundamental determinants. Main reasons behind the behaviour of the consumption price index are related to higher prices in the energy sector and a higher government expenditure, particularly after the post-pandemic economy re-opening. Proxy variables such as oil prices free on board in the European Brent market, the 12 months Euribor interest rate of the Economic and Monetary Union, the nominal gross domestic product, the government expenditure of the public administration, and fiscal deficits in terms of the gross domestic product are those variables in which the consumer price index depends on. Changes on interest rates have managed to stabilized inflation rates once again, thereby diminishing the percentage change in the consumer price index.
- Document de treballMonotonic transformation of preferences and Walrasian equilibrium in allocation problems(2024) Robles Jiménez, Francisco Javier; Núñez, Marina (Núñez Oliva); Robles, LauraThis paper investigates (non-)manipulability properties and welfare effects of Walrasian equilibrium rules in object allocation problems with non-quasi-linear preferences. We focus on allocation problems with indivisible and different objects. The agents are interested in acquiring at most one object. We show that the minimum Walrasian equilibrium rule is the unique rule that is non-manipulable via monotonic transformations at the outside option among the set of Walrasian equilibrium rules. Analogously, we also show that the minimum Walrasian equilibrium rule is also the unique Walrasian equilibrium rule that is non-manipulable by pretending to be single-minded. On the domain of quasi-linear preferences, we introduce a novel axiom: welfare parity for uncontested objects. On this domain, this axiom is enough to characterize the minimum Walrasian equilibrium rule among the set of Walrasian equilibrium rules.
- Document de treballA General Equilibrium Model with Real Exchange Rate [WP](2024) Tariffi, LeonardoI first write a partial equilibrium model “á la Rogoff” where there are relative prices of non-tradable goods in terms of prices of tradables goods. I find that the behaviour of the real exchange rate shows structural breaks in the short term. Secondly, I explain that any change in the real exchange rate is transitory in the long run. I obtain a general equilibrium model after I add a utility function to the partial-equilibrium model. In the general equilibrium model, an increase occurring in consumption of tradables is going to keep the RER constant over the time
- Document de treballInformation Acquisition in Deliberative Democracies(2024) Domènech i Gironell, Gerard; Lorecchio, Caio Paes Leme; Tejada, OriolWe examine the impact of deliberation on political learning and election outcomes. A rational, common-valued electorate votes under majority rule, after potentially acquiring costly private information and sharing it freely through public deliberation. Our findings suggest that deliberation can lead to free-riding on information gathering, but also encourage the emergence of informed political experts. Overall, deliberation may legitimize purely electoral outcomes and yield more accurate decisions. However, deliberation may also reduce electoral accuracy. We provide conditions for these results and contribute to the understanding of the strengths and limitations of deliberative democracies.
- Document de treballRegulating a Social Media Platform in the Data Economy(2024) Mohan, GoonjThis paper studies regulation of a social media platform (SMP). I consider a user network with data externalities and an SMP that earns revenue from data-based personalized advertising. The SMP offers a price for user data and users simultaneously accept or reject the offer. Under a microfounded model I show that sharing moderate amount of user data maximizes user welfare. However, externalities reduce price for data and all data is shared in equilibrium. A strict consent policy like GDPR overcorrects this imbalance, burdens users with complete data-control and decreases user welfare. Data minimization moderately shifts data-control to users and increases user welfare.
- Document de treballFarmers' Adaptive Investments and Groundwater Resource Impact in a Changing Climate(2024) Frutos Cachorro, Julia de; Sbragia, LuciaThis is a preliminary version of the paper and may be subject to further revisions. Please do not cite without permission from the author(s) Abstract: One of the many effects of Climate Change is increased drought making water availability scarcer in more regions of the world, and primarily affecting the agricultural sector. In this context, we study farmers' adaptation to Climate Change by developing a two-period discretetime theoretical model of exploitation of a groundwater resource that studies the impact of adaptive investments as a response to climate change on farmers' profitability and the sustainability of the groundwater resource. In particular, we consider that the resource users, the farmers, may belong to different groups: adapters and non-adapters, and analytically solve the game under four scenarios: full cooperation, cooperation within groups, cooperation only within adapters and full non-cooperation between all farmers. Theoretical results show that under full cooperation, adaptation is not beneficial for the environment, meaning that lower final stock levels are obtained when farmers adapt compared to when they do not. Those results could also be observed numerically when there are strategic interactions among groups and/or among all farmers, i.e., when farmers do not cooperate. In contrast, numerical results suggest that the impact of adaptation could be positive for the resource and for the overall profits of the farmers when only the adapters are cooperating. Finally, defining the profitability (or scope) of cooperation as the difference between overall profits under full cooperation and noncooperation, preliminary results suggest that the number of investing farmers would be a key element in estimating the scope of cooperation.
- Document de treballThe Partition Lattice Value for Global Cooperative Games(2024) Alonso-Meijide, José Mª; Álvarez-Mozos, Mikel; Fiestras-Janeiro, M. Gloria, 1962-; Jiménez-Losada, AndrésWe introduce a new value for global cooperative games that we call the Partition lattice value. A global cooperative game describes the overall utility that a set of agents generates depending on how they are organized in coalitions without specifying what part of that utility is each coalition responsible for. Gilboa and Lehrer (1991) proposed a generalization of the Shapley value to this family of games that may imply a big loss of information. Here we take an alternative approach motivated by how the Shapley value distributes payoffs in unanimity games. More precisely, we consider that each link in the lattice of partitions represents a contribution and use them to define our value. The Partition lattice value is characterized by five properties. Three of them are also used in the characterization of the Gilboa-Lehrer value and another is weaker that the fourth and last property of their characterization. The last property of our result is new and describes how are payoffs distributed among the coalitions in global unanimity games.