Documents de treball (Institut de Recerca en Economia Aplicada Regional i Pública (IREA))

URI permanent per a aquesta col·leccióhttps://hdl.handle.net/2445/54514

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Modelling sociodemographic determinants of healthrelated quality of life (HRQoL) loss among older adults in Spain using discretised beta regression
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2026) Santolino, Miguel; El Ferjani, Ibtissame
Purpose: This study aims to identify the main factors associated with health-related quality of life (HRQoL) loss among older adults in Spain by modelling EQ-5D-5L health utility outcomes using alternative regression frameworks. Methods: Data comes from the population-based health survey conducted in Catalonia (Spain) for 2024. The survey includes sociodemographic, health, and lifestyle information from 1,227 individuals aged 60 years and older. To account for the discrete and bounded nature of HRQoL scores, we use the discretised beta regression (DBR) to analyse factors associated with HRQoL loss, a modelling approach not previously applied to health utility outcomes. The performance of the DBR is compared with traditional zero-one inflated regression models. Results: The DBR model showed higher predictive accuracy. Greater perceived HRQoL loss was associated with economic hardship, weak social support, sex, obesity, disability and limited mobility. Ageing initially appears to be associated with a greater loss (mean=0.16, q5=0.12, q95=0.25), but this relationship was no longer supported once disability was accounted for (mean=0.03, q5=-0.02, q95=0.07), indicating that the observed deterioration with age is largely mediated by functional decline rather than ageing itself. Conclusion: DBR provides a theoretically grounded alternative to conventional regression methods commonly applied in HRQoL analysis and is particularly well suited to the distributional properties of the EQ-5D utility decrements. Perceived HRQoL loss in later life is not primarily driven by chronological age, as differences in HRQoL loss among older adults are linked to persistent social and economic inequalities rather than ageing itself.
Pioneering Privatization: The Rise and Fall of State-Owned Enterprises in Meiji Japan
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2026) Bel i Queralt, Germà, 1963-; Kurosawa, Takafumi
The policy of large-scale privatization in Meiji Japan has largely gone unnoticed in the publicprivate debate in the fields of public economics and public policy. However, it has received much more attention in both analyses of economic history by Japanese scholars, and those of industrial development by international scholars. Existing analyses of the Meiji privatizations have generally focused on their effects on Japan's industrial development. While there is a consensus that privatization was a factor driving the country's rapid industrialization, opinions are more divided about whether the privatization of SOEs in the 1880s reflected state failure. A quite frequent view was that it reflected poor management and therefore failure. However, more recent analyses do not share this pessimistic view, because there was in practice no private alternative to direct government investment in capital and technology immediately after the Meiji Restoration. Fiscal motivations for the sale of state-owned enterprises within the deflationary program promoted by Matsukata Masayoshi (1881-1885) are widely accepted, although almost all sales were actually implemented only after fiscal stabilization had been achieved. As for the objectives of privatization policy, the only broader analysis in the literature is that of Yasuzō Horie in 1939, who considers political aspects alongside economic issues. Little else has been systematically investigated on the ideology and political economy of the privatization process. Our research contributes to the literature by conducting a systematic analysis of the drivers of the Meiji privatization, paying attention to ideological and political factors, along with economic motivations. The disposal of state enterprises in Meiji Japan should not be understood simply as the liquidation of failed public businesses by a fiscally strained government. Nor should it be reduced to a single ideological turn, whether toward laissez-faire or toward any undifferentiated model of state-led development. What this article has shown instead is a staged historical process in which assets of different origin were transferred under changing political, fiscal, and institutional conditions.
Linguistic Distance and Job Quality in a Bilingual Labour Market
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2026) Cappellari, Lorenzo; Di Paolo, Antonio; Tawiah, Thompson Ogajah
In this paper, we investigate the relationship between language background and labour market outcomes in the bilingual labour market of the Spanish region of Catalonia. The empirical analysis draws on repeated cross-sectional data that allow us to construct a quantitative measure of linguistic distance based on respondents’ native language, computed with respect to Catalan, the local language of Catalonia. As labour market outcomes, we consider employment probability and occupational quality, proxied by an indicator for holding a high-skilled job and by an ordinal measure of occupational skill level. The results indicate that, conditional on place of origin and a set of predetermined individual characteristics and controlling for origin-specific trends in years since migration, linguistic distance is not associated with employment. However, it is negatively related to both the likelihood of holding a high-skilled job and occupational skill levels. We analyse the role of language skills as a mechanism, showing that oral and written proficiency in Catalan are key drivers of the negative relationship between linguistic distance and occupational quality. Moreover, this relationship does not appear to be confounded by proficiency in Spanish, and the overall results are robust to a battery of robustness checks. Finally, the analysis of heterogeneous effects reveals an employment penalty associated with linguistic distance among females, and shows that its association with occupational quality is entirely driven by highly educated workers.
Migration and inequality in Africa
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2026) Clavería González, Óscar; Puig, Claudia
This study examines the relationship between income inequality and net migration in Africa over the past two decades. Inequality is gauged by the share of income accruing to the top decile of the income distribution. Net migration rates from 54 countries between 2001 and 2021 are matched to inequality, controlling for origin country unemployment, income per capita, as well as foreign direct investment and economic uncertainty in a fixed-effects panel model. Overall, the results suggest that greater inequality is associated with higher migration rates, as opposed to foreign investment and uncertainty, which are found to be negatively associated with net migration. When replicating the experiment for the different regions—East, Middle, North, South and West Africa—, these results hold in all cases except in West Africa, where the coefficients are not found to be statistically significant. Increases in origin country income per capita are also found to be significantly and positively associated with net migration in North and South Africa, as opposed to country-level unemployment which shows a negatively association with net migration rates. As a robustness check, we replicate both analyses using the Gini coefficient as a measure of aggregate income inequality, obtaining very similar results. Overall, the analysis suggests that increasingly unequal distributions of income may lead to a greater number of people coming in than leaving, somehow contributing to the overall level of population growth in African countries. On the other hand, economic uncertainty, foreign direct investment and unemployment tend to have the opposite effect in most African regions.
A Light Bulb Goes On: Religiosity and the Adoption of electrical Technologies in 19th century France
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2026) Tsiachtsiras, Georgios; Petralia, Sergio; Miguélez, Ernest; Moreno Serrano, Rosina
This article studies how anti-scientific sentiment can shape the direction of technological change, focusing on the tensions between the Catholic Church and the French Republic in late nineteenth-century France. We construct a novel geo-referenced database of French patents filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (1838-1960) and combine it with historical measures of religiosity at the departmental level. We find that areas with higher shares of refractory clergy, those who refused to swear allegiance to the revolutionary state, produced significantly fewer electrical patents between 1890 and 1914. Crucially, this negative relationship does not extend to other technological fields or to overall patenting activity. Neither education nor migration explains this pattern. We also show that early electrical patenting predicts later activity in computer and communication technologies, consistent with path-dependent technological development. These findings suggest that conservative institutional environments did not suppress innovation broadly, but selectively discouraged disruptive technologies that challenged established norms, with consequences that persisted for decades.
Municipal tax incentives and solar PV adoption: Causal evidence from Catalonia
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2026) Teixidó-Figueras, Jordi; Van Raalte, Lynn
This paper estimates the causal impact of municipal property tax exemptions on the adoption of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in Catalonia. Using a balanced monthly panel of municipalities from 2015 to 2022, we employ a difference-in-differences (DiD) framework with staggered policy implementation. The exemption increased installed PV capacity by 36% and led to roughly one additional installation per treated municipality per month. Focusing on residential installations, we find that 80% of the tax exempt installations would have occurred even without the policy, implying an implicit abatement cost of €142 per tonne of CO2. Heterogeneity analysis shows limited variation across structural and socioeconomic contexts. Overall, the policy was moderately effective but only partially efficient, suggesting that more targeted design could enhance its cost-effectiveness.
Power to the People: The Local Economic Effects of Renewable Energy Communities in the UK
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2026) Bühler, Joël; Dilek, Gokhan
Local responses to renewable energy projects range from opposition that delays or blocks deployment to active support and participation. A common narrative underlying these behaviors emphasizes economic considerations: projects that impose local externalities without delivering local benefits tend to face resistance, whereas renewable energy communities (RECs) that are formed by citizens are argued to generate more local economic value than corporate plants. This paper examines these two related claims by comparing the local economic effects of community-owned and corporate-owned renewable energy plants. Using heterogeneity-robust difference-in-differences estimators and panel data for UK local authority districts, we estimate the income and employment impacts of community and corporate solar and wind projects. We find evidence of local economic benefits for some ownership–technology combinations, with substantial heterogeneity across ownership structures and technologies. Overall, the results point to a nuanced relationship between renewable energy deployment, ownership models, and local economic outcomes
Taking Back Control of Urban Water Distribution: The Effect of Remunicipalization on Water Bills
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2026) Bel i Queralt, Germà, 1963-; Bühler, Joël
Governments around the globe are considering taking back direct control as an option to reform privatized public services, particularly on the local level. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that remunicipalization of urban water leads to price reductions of about 3-6 cents per cubic meter in larger municipalities, but the effect does not extend to smaller municipalities. Given our finding of unchanged water usage, these reductions in large municipalities translate directly to consumers’ bills. As remunicipalization typically happens when a contract with a private firm expires, we investigate whether the threat of competition or remunicipalization arising from expiring contracts itself also leads to price reductions. After contract expiry without remunicipalization, water prices decline by 2-3 cents per cubic meter. Thus, while remunicipalization reduces prices particularly in larger municipalities, threats at contract expiry have a smaller, but more uniform price effect.
The Geography of the Green Transition: Performance, Vulnerabilities and Opportunities
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2026) Ritter, Sebastian; Royuela Mora, Vicente
As the EU races to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target, regional disparities in transition progress threaten to leave some territories behind. We introduce the Regional Green Transition Performance Index (RGTP), a novel composite measure capturing progress across seven pillars (environmental; energy; circular economy and waste; sustainable development; just transition; innovation and policy; and transport and mobility) for 232 European NUTS2 regions over 14 years. Drawing on 31 indicators, we map spatial patterns and dynamic processes. Furthermore, we argue that the green transition acts as a structural force whose potential effects on regional development can be expressed along two axes: vulnerability and opportunity. (...)
Proportionality between allocations in asset management
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2026) Vega Baquero, Juan David; Santolino, Miguel
Asset allocation refers to deciding the optimal participation of each asset within a portfolio. Therefore, these participations are a composition, and compositional methods should be used to treat the data and perform analysis over it. When trying to find relationships between parts of a composition, proportions have shown to be more suitable than correlations. In this paper, using a previous proportionality index as starting point, two new indexes are proposed and all of them are used to analyze the asset allocation in a portfolio composed of five stocks from the IBEX 35 (the Spanish stock market index). Results shed light on the connection between volatility, allocations and their proportionality.
Britaly? Identifying euro area historical analogues to the UK’s 2022 bond market shock
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2025) Andrada-Félix, Julián; Gómez-Puig, Marta; Sosvilla Rivero, Simón
Comparing the UK’s 2022 sovereign debt crisis with earlier European examples is crucial for a holistic understanding of how such crises emerge and evolve to better comprehend the warning signs of sovereign distress and the importance of coherent and credible economic governance. Both crises were marked by sudden and severe shifts in investor confidence. The UK government’s “mini budget” announcement on September 23, 2022, sent yields on UK gilts soaring at a daily rate not seen since the 1990s. Similarly, official disclosure by Papandreou’s government regarding the actual state of Greece’s public finances on October 20, 2009, caused daily sovereign debt yields in some euro area countries to rise to levels not seen since joining the euro. The primary objective of this paper is to conduct a comparative econometric analysis of the euro area sovereign bond market, with the goal of identifying past episodes similar to the turmoil experienced in the UK government bond market during September–October 2022. This comparative perspective aims to provide valuable insights for future crisis prevention in an increasingly interconnected global financial system. Specifically, we use daily data on 10-year government bond yields from January 3, 2000, to June 30, 2023, and apply both univariate and multivariate nearest neighbours’ techniques. (.../...)
Partisan Climate Action, Utility Interests, and Policy Choice in the U.S. Power Sector
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2025) Peña Tello, Witson
This paper investigates how U.S. gubernatorial partisanship and electric utility interests jointly shape the adoption and stringency of three widely used electricity-sector climate policies: greenhouse gas cap-and-trade, emissions standards, and renewable portfolio standards. Using panel data for 48 states over 29 years, this study applies difference-indifferences and regression discontinuity designs that exploit within-state partisan alternation and quasi-random variation from close gubernatorial elections. The results indicate that Democratic governorships associate with higher probabilities of policy adoption and greater stringency than Republican ones. However, these partisan effects attenuate in states with fossil-intensive utility capacity and strengthen in renewable-rich states, particularly for discretionary and mandatory renewable portfolio standards. This work extends the empirical political economy literature by comparing instrument choice and stringency across three major electricity-sector climate policies and by evaluating how utility sector composition and reelection incentives moderate or amplify partisan influence. The findings highlight that electricity-sector decarbonization strategies need to account for both environmental externalities and the local political-economic conditions that shape feasible policy options.
Refrigeration, Diets and Human Health: Evidence from Ghana
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2025) Ntsiful, Enoch; Cohen, François
Little is known about household-level interventions to strengthen household resilience to food insecurity. Rapid electrification could enable refrigeration and transform how food is stored, prepared, and consumed. We provide the first causal evidence on how access to refrigeration affects food insecurity and dietary quality in a low-income country. Our identification exploits appliance breakdowns, comparing households with functioning and broken refrigerators purchased at the same time and similar prices. Losing access increases food insecurity by one third and reduces consumption of animal-sourced foods, lowering intake of vitamin B12. Refrigeration is an overlooked lever to improve diets and reduce micronutrient deficiencies.
Integrating Road Safety and Environmental Impact via Telematics: Modeling Traffic Accident Risk Using Vehicle Emissions
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2025) Yanez, Juan Sebastian; Guillén, Montserrat; Roszkowsk, Paulina; Nielsen, Jens Perch
Private vehicles harm public health by contributing to air pollution and traffic accidents, the leading cause of death among young adults. Despite these risks, drivers often ignore speed limits, while society increasingly prioritizes environmental protection. This tension between personal habits and collective responsibility highlights the urgent need for strategies to promote safer driving practices. Therefore, this paper introduces a novel approach to evaluating road crash risk using air pollutants as exposure measures, so drivers are simultaneously encouraged to reduce their environmental footprint and mitigate their road crash risk. We use a rich dataset of over 1,500 at-fault crash-related claims recorded over two years provided by an insurance company, merged with detailed telematics driving data for individual vehicles. We show that available emission factor models enable the integration of emission-based exposure measures to model road crash risk. Then, we provide empirical evidence that incorporating behavioral telematics data makes pollutant-driven models as efficient as traditional distance-driven ones. Our proposition has the potential to enhance road safety and reduce air pollution by directly linking environmentally conscious driving practices with reducing road crash risks.
Economic Complexity and the Resilience-Sustainability Strategy for Climate Change
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2025) Bistuer, David; Chuliá Soler, Helena; Uribe Gil, Jorge Mario
Previous development studies have documented a positive relationship between economic complexity and better environmental outcomes, as well as highlighted policy avenues that could leverage economic complexity as a roadmap for decarbonization and green growth. We build on this perspective by empirically demonstrating—using recent advances in explainable and causal machine learning—that economic complexity is also meaningfully linked to climate change resilience. Specifically, we show that more complex economies tend to be less vulnerable to climate change due to their stronger adaptive and coping capacities. These capacities are evidenced by stronger institutions, better long-term health outcomes, and, notably, a higher proportion of people employed in R&D. Our findings also reveal a positive association between exposure to climate risk due to geography and complexity, but only in cases of extreme exposure. While exposure to climate change itself is beyond the reach of policy intervention, vulnerability is not. By using an economic complexity framework combined with investments in knowledge intensive intangibles and large-scale long-term health interventions, policymakers can align the seemingly divergent goals of climate resilience and decarbonization, which is crucial, especially for developing nations.
Comportamiento predictivo de los analistas institucionales españoles durante los últimos 25 años
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2025) Clavería González, Óscar; Pons Novell, Jordi
En el actual entorno de incertidumbre económica, las predicciones de los agentes adquieren especial relevancia. El presente estudio se centra en las predicciones de eventos fijos realizadas por un panel de agentes institucionales durante los últimos 25 años. Las instituciones elaboran previsiones para la economía española con horizontes decrecientes durante un período de dos años, realizando revisiones cada dos meses durante este proceso. A partir de las predicciones de crecimiento económico, inflación y desempleo, así como de sus revisiones posteriores, construimos un panel de datos con los errores de previsión y la magnitud de las revisiones, tanto en relación con su previsión previa como con la previsión de consenso, entendida como la media de las previsiones. (.../...)
Environmental degradation, income and economic complexity: Evidence from European countries
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2025) Clavería González, Óscar; Sorić, Petar
Recent energy tensions caused by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have added to the pressure that global warming exerts for an energy transition towards low-carbon energy sources. This study combines two time series approaches with the aim of delving deeper into the relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth and to test the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, using information from 20 European countries between 2007 and 2021. Overall, the obtained results suggest the existence of a N-shaped nexus between emissions and income per capita. Additionally, we evaluated stability of this nexus and the potential existence of an asymmetric adjustment. In most countries we find asymmetries in the adjustment of emissions to positive and negative changes in income, but not so much in economic complexity. However, notable differences are observed between countries, which could be indicating their differentiated phase in the EKC curve.
Trickle-Down Economics, Merit, and Redistribution: An Experiment with the Poorest and Richest US Americans
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2025) Brunetti, Roberto; Grimalda, Gianluca; Marino, Maria
Despite growing income inequality, demand for redistribution has remained stagnant, which is puzzling for the poor. We investigate whether attitudes toward “trickle-down” economics and fairness affect redistribution demand. We involve US residents from the bottom and top 20% of the income distribution (N = 2, 346) in experimental redistributive decisions from high-income real-life entrepreneurs to low-income recipients. We find that entrepreneurs’ activities possibly generating trickle-down effects, such as employing 1,000 workers, are irrelevant to redistribution. Conversely, the desire to sanction the “undeserving poor” and, less importantly, to reward the “deserving rich” significantly affect redistribution. High-income and low-income participants’ decisions follow surprisingly similar patterns
Migrant Inventors and Environmental-Related Technologies: A Life Cycle Perspective in US MSAs
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2025) Viola, Salvatore; Moreno Serrano, Rosina; Miguélez, Ernest; Consoli, Davide; Perruchas, François
One important factor in addressing climate change is the development and deployment of environmental-related, or green, technologies (GT). Environmental-related technologies are distinct, requiring specific conditions to be developed which vary depending on their relative level of technological maturity. Recent studies have focused on the role of migrant inventors in creating these conditions and spurring regional diversification into new technological domains. Regional diversification helps regions avoid lock-in and even escape fossil fuel dependencies. While the contribution of migrants to science and innovation is well documented, less attention has been given to migrants and diversification, especially in the case of GT and along the technological life cycle. In this study, we investigate the role of US-based migrant inventors in regional GT diversification using patent data from the USPTO between the year 1990 and 2012. We find that migrant inventors are positively associated with regional GT diversification, partly as a result of their previous patenting experience as well as the specializations of their countries of origin. With regard to the technological life cycle, while geographically diffused technologies rely on corresponding inventor experience, emergent technological diversification benefits from inventors from specialized countries. These findings highlight the bridging role that migrant inventors in international knowledge transfer and their importance in regional diversification in particular environmental-related technologies.
Hot Property: A Spatial Analysis of Temperature and Housing Prices in Spain
(Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, 2025) Fernández-Pérez, Adrián; Gómez-Puig, Marta; Sosvilla Rivero, Simón
This study examines the impact of extreme temperatures on housing price dynamics in Spain, considering both direct and indirect effects across geographic space. Using panel data at the provincial level and a spatial econometric model, we find that an increase in the number of days with maximum temperatures exceeding 35 °C (95ºF) over the past year is significantly associated with a decline in both sale and rental prices within the affected province. However, we also identify a positive indirect effect on housing markets in more distant provinces, particularly in the rental sector, consistent with a pattern of temperature-induced house price premium in cooler regions. A central methodological contribution of this paper is the use of spatial econometric techniques to detect and quantify these spillover effects. By explicitly modelling spatial dependence, we can disentangle local impacts from broader geographic transmission mechanisms, revealing how climate stressors reshape housing demand across regions. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating climate-related factors into real estate market analysis and the design of adaptation policies.

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