Juan Luis Jiménez

Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria | ULPGC · Departamento de Análisis Económico Aplicado (DAEA)

The literature presents mixed fndings regarding the economic conditions under which cartels form and collapse, and regarding how stable they are across frm-specific and industry-wide business cycles. The relationship between cartel life cycles and business cycles has been insufciently analyzed to date. In this paper, we study in depth whether co...

This paper analyzes the financial implications on local public budgets of disseminating information about the prosecution of political corruption at the local level. We build a database from a wave of corruption scandals in Spain to use a quasi-experimental design and find that after corruption is revealed, both local public revenues and expenditur...

This paper contributes to the literature on how firms change their advertising strategies after a corporate scandal by providing both a theoretical model and an empirical evaluation based on the idea that advertising acts as a quality signal that is modulated by the number of competing substitutes in the market. This result is new in this literatur...

This paper analyses the effects of AirBnb on the size of local tourism markets using AirBnb occupancy rates and hotel overnight stays in order to explore the causal relationship in several Spanish cities. A dynamic panel data model is applied at the city level (2014–2017). Our findings show a positive relationship between the increase in the number...

This chapter empirically examines the impacts of the arrival and consolidation of the high-speed rail (HSR) on the tourism industry of the most depopulated provinces in Spain, by evaluating the increase in the number of visitors, average stays, occupancy rates, and hotel beds. Our results confirm that HSR is not necessarily able to promote the tour...

RESUMEN El presente trabajo realiza una revisión de la literatura académica en economía más reciente sobre la efectividad de los programas de detección de cárteles por medio de la delación (programas de clemencia), cuando se cumplen más de veinticinco años de su primera implementación en el año 1993 por parte de Estados Unidos. Desde entonces, más...

Spanish premium oil operators have been accused of coordinating gasoline price cuts on Mondays. The objective of this practice, known as the “Monday effect” was to lower the official prices of automotive fuels - that was collected on Mondays - so as Spain was not at the top of the European price ranking. This behavior presumably ceased in May 2013...

We examine changes in the advertising strategies of car manufacturers after the Dieselgate scandal broke in 2015, exposing that the Volkswagen Group had cheated about their pollutant emissions in some of its brands. Using a theoretical model, we first show that advertising can be a credible means to transmit information to environmentally concerned...

Since 1978, an important process of decentralization in terms of regional competences has been taking place in Spain. In consequence, the behaviour of the regional and local administration has obtained an increasing relevant role. This process has a direct impact on the performance of politicians both at local and regional level, and on the results...

Las plataformas online de alquiler de viviendas turísticas han experimentado un crecimiento destacado en España durante el último lustro, al igual que alrededor del mundo. Ello ha modificado en buena medida las pautas de consumo alojativo turístico y, en adaptación a ello, la normativa de aplicación. En el presente trabajo realizamos una aproximaci...

La figura del indulto, a pesar de su legalidad, genera controversia desde la perspectiva jurídi­ca y social. En este trabajo, y utilizando una muestra de los indultos concedidos en España entre diciembre de 1995 y enero de 2013, perseguimos ahondar en el análisis de este tópico a través del estudio de la proporcionalidad de los indultos, entendida...

While it may seem obvious from common sense that retail fuel prices should be higher in touristic rather than in nontouristic cities, the related empirical literature has failed either to clearly support this assumption or to qualify and quantify the effect of tourism on retail fuel prices. Using a selfcreated data set that includes prices across a...

Students’ academic performance is a key factor in evaluating the efficiency and quality of university degree programmes. Not only do personal characteristics and the students’ own performance affect these results, but so does the university’s academic organization. Based on a database that contains the overall results by course and exam period in t...

Literature explaining the gap between official and actual vehicle efficiency and CO2 emissions focuses on descriptive analysis to calculate this gap without examining causality. In this paper, we explore this discrepancy in detail by drawing on a database from Emissions Analytics Ltd. that provides on-road emissions measurement on more than 650 veh...

This paper empirically investigates the causal relationship between local government transparency and political corruption in a sample of Spain's 110 largest municipalities. After implementing a two-stage probit estimation procedure, our evidence indicates that transparency is inversely related to the likelihood of local political corruption. This...

El presente trabajo realiza un análisis de la evolución que ha tenido lugar en la detección y sanción de los cárteles en España para el período comprendido entre los años 1989 y 2017. Para ello se ha utilizado la información disponible en todas las resoluciones sancionadoras de cárteles que han sido publicadas por la autoridad de la competencia de...

On the basis of information collected from all the published European Commission's decisions in cartel cases between 1962 and 2014, this paper identifies different stages in the supra‐nationalization of cartel policy at the European Union (EU) level. It analyzes major competition policy reforms, strategies and initiatives taken by the European Comm...

Public Service Obligations are a key mechanism for countries to improve connections among islands and remote regions with the Continent. While Public Service Obligations are allowed by the European Commission, they represent an interference with free market competition, and impact on the entrance of competitors, prices and service frequency. This s...

Some European governments subsidize their residents when they travel at sea. This paper seeks to analyze the impact on prices of maritime passengers’ subsidies in Europe. Following a review of the scarce academic literature on this topic and the subsidy scheme in Europe, a sample of firms’ prices and other characteristics of 40 European routes for...

During the recent years of economic boom in Spain, political corruption at the local level boomed as well. In fact, it increased from 7 publicly denounced cases from 1999 to 2003 to at least 180 in the legislative period (2007–2011). In this paper, we explore this phenomenon in two related ways: how it has affected voting results and political part...

In this paper we estimate a pricing equation using data, at route and airline levels, for five European countries where a significant proportion of the territory is located on islands; France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. By using two complementary empirical strategies, instrumental variables and matching procedures, we find that the impositi...

Corruption is a major problem, and not only in developing countries. It impedes economic growth, weakens the rule of law and undermines the legitimacy of institutions. Although it has been studied at national level from different perspectives, there is a recent growing body of research on local corruption. As far as we know, these latter studies fo...

This paper examines the influence of network airline bankruptcy (and consequently its market exit) on prices and route frequencies. Specifically, the 2011 case of Spanair is analyzed, using Spanish route data for the period 2006–2013. The study finds that the Spanair bankruptcy led to a reduction in prices on those routes where its services were re...

This paper analyses from an empirical point of view the relationship between the provision of high-speed rail services (HSR) and the evolution of tourism at the local level in Spain. We have built a database of 124 municipalities during the 2005–2012 period to study the effects of the introduction of new HSR corridors on the number of visitors and...

Are tourist municipalities a breeding ground for corruption? Before the 2008 economic crisis, Spain experienced an economic boom, together with a surge in political corruption at the local level. In a tourism-oriented economy – tourism represents above 11% of country GDP – where most of the tourism activity is focused on certain municipalities, und...

The fight against cartels started in European Union since its foundation in 1957 and the passing of the Regulation empowering the Commission to enforce competition rules since 1962. However, anti-cartel policy was very ineffective in its early years from 1962 to 1980. It also had a lot of enforcement problems to uncover cartels until 1995. It was i...

The difference-in-difference (DiD) is one of the most popular approaches to evaluate causal effects of programs or policies. The idea is very simple: a treatment group is affected by an external change in one period, and the main aim is to evaluate how this treated group changes after the policy, regarding a control group that is not affected. So i...

This paper examines the impact on prices of various regulatory changes in residents’ flight subsidies implemented in Spain in recent years. It draws on a large sample of domestic routes for the period 2003–2013 to estimate a price equation that accounts for the panel data and the potential endogeneity of specific explanatory variables. Price differ...

Passenger satisfaction has become a key factor for the operation of an airport. In recent years, a wide range of studies have analysed airport quality from many viewpoints but predominantly based on explicit and visible aspects of airport performance. Our paper suggests that passengers' assessments may also include implicit evaluation of features t...

The pardon is a legal, although controversial, instrument with a long history that persists in many different judicial systems across the world. The juridical literature often considers it to be a perversion in the separation of powers within the State, and the motivations behind it are always under scrutiny. In this paper we seek to establish whet...

This paper analyses from an empirical point of view the relationship between the provision of high-speed rail services (HSR) and the evolution of tourism at the local level in Spain. We have built a database of 124 municipalities during the 2005-2012 period to study the effects of the introduction of new HSR corridors on the number of visitors and...

This paper details the forensic analysis of the cartels fined in Spain by the different competition authorities during the last 25 years, and it shows that not only the number but also the characteristics of the detected cartels have changed substantially since the passing of the 2007 Spanish competition law. In the last 8 years, not only more cart...

This paper studies – both from a theoretical and empirical perspective – a case of contestability in the Canary Islands' domestic air transport market. We show how after the exit of its rival in an initially duopolistic market, the remaining airline did not increase its prices in order not to provoke the entry of new rivals. According to our view,...

There is no honour among thieves. This aphorism concisely expresses why the leniency programmes in competition policy have become one of the most effective instruments in the fight against the cartels. In this work we describe the dissemination, evolution, and effects of the aforementioned programmes in the two decades since its implementation arou...

In late 2011, the Spanish terrorist organization ETA announced the end of armed violence after more than forty years of illegal activity. While the existing literature has already established the negative impact of terrorist actions on international tourism in a particular region, this paper aims to determine whether ETA’s final ceasefire and defin...

In this paper we study how an incumbent supermarket reacts when entry by a new operator is announced but does not know the product variety that the entrant will offer. We use a database obtained from a special survey for supermarkets in Gran Canaria to estimate how incumbents reacted to entry in the products sold and not sold by the new entrant (LI...

The Spanish Federation of Municipalities has, particularly since 2008, been vocal about a “chronic deficit” situation caused by high public expenditures in tourist areas. Within this context, new strategies to increase revenues have been proposed, including the introduction of tourist taxes. This paper contributes to this debate by determining if t...

This paper empirically studies the competitiveness of selected Short Sea Shipping (SSS) corridors by comparing the generalised costs of different alternatives to move cargo from Spain to several European destinations either by road or by using a SSS multimodal corridor. In the context of fair and efficient intermodal competition promoted by Europea...

Price is no longer the sole variable affecting consumer choice in the airline sector. Service quality, which has been analyzed from a range of perspectives, is of increasing importance in this market. Airlines provide a transportation service (typically for purposes of tourism) and so analyzing passenger assessments has become crucial in this compe...

High-Speed Rail (HSR) infrastructure is costly and requires high investment during the construction and operation periods, which is mainly financed with public funds. This economic effort is seldom set off, which leads to subsidies with the money collected from public debt growth or tax pressure increases. The question that immediately emerges is w...

Los programas de clemencia se han convertido en uno de los instrumentos más efectivos en la lucha contra los cárteles. En este trabajo describimos la difusión, evolución y efectos de tales programas en las dos décadas de su aplicación alrededor del mundo. De las regularidades empíricas extraídas del análisis de todas las decisiones de clemencia...

One of the pillars of the fight against climate change is reducing the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted into the atmosphere. In that regard, curtailing CO2 emissions from transport activities is a major objective. In its attempts of “decarbonising” transport, the European Commission set in 2009 different emission limits on the vehicles s...

In Africa, the main objective of the port sector is to improve trade competitiveness and to reduce government expenditures. Nevertheless, the reform process in African ports is complex due to some factors, which adversely influence their ability to further develop and affect port efficiency. This paper examines this process and the factors that are...

Using a dataset of consumption patterns in the island of Gran Canaria collected by the authors, this paper attempts to quantify some non-positive effects of tourism on destinations retail markets for goods and services. In particular, we empirically prove, controlling by factors such as population, size of supermarkets or number of competitors, two...

This paper examines whether airline prices on domestic Spanish routes are higher than those on international routes. We estimate a pricing equation for all routes originating from Gran Canaria, differentiating between national and international routes. A key difference between these route types is that island residents benefit from discounts on dom...

This paper identifies and then quantifies econometrically the impact of leniency programs on the perception of the effectiveness of antitrust policies in the business community using panel data for as much as 59 countries and 14-year span. We use the dynamics of the gradual diffusion of leniency programs across countries and over time to evaluate t...

The upward trend in fuel prices and the desire to reduce pollution levels mean that the electric vehicle has become an increasingly attractive alternative in recent years. The aim of this study is to examine the main barriers that the electric vehicle must overcome if it is to become a successful mode of transport and to review the main public poli...

Using a dataset from consumption patterns in the island of Gran Canaria collected by the authors, this paper attempts to quantify some non-positive effects of tourism on local destination retail markets for goods and services. In particular, we empirically prove, controlling by factors such as population, size of supermarkets or number of competito...

Difference-in-Difference (DiD) methods are being increasingly used to analyze the impact of mergers on pricing and other market equilibrium outcomes. Using evidence from an exogenous merger between two retail gasoline companies in a specific market in Spain, this paper shows how concentration did not lead to a price increase. In fact, the conjectur...

In this paper we examine whether airline prices on national routes are higher than those charged on international routes. Drawing on a database prepared specifically for this study, we estimate a pricing equation for all routes originating from Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain), differentiating between national and international routes. A key di...

This paper attempts to link the concepts of accessibility and the firm’s conduct in the regional retail market in Spain. We use a database that includes sale price, service station location, level of traffic and type of road. We show that accessibility has two main effects on final prices. The accessibility of own-brand gas stations increased their...

During the recent period of economic crisis, many countries have introduced scrappage schemes to boost the sale and production of vehicles, particularly of vehicles designed to pollute less. In this paper, we analyze the impact of a particular scheme in Spain (Plan2000E) on vehicle prices and sales figures as well as on the reduction of polluting e...

Petrol is an important factor not only in transport costs but also in household consumption. However, some doubts exist as to the level of competition in the worldwide retail petrol market. The international petrol market at the retail level has been studied from different perspectives in the economic literature, but studies of the issue in Spain a...

The creation of the European Higher Education Area has meant a number of significant changes to the educational structures of the university community. In particular, the new system of European credits has generated the need for innovation in the design of curricula and teaching methods. In this paper, we propose debating as a classroom tool that c...

The introduction of biofuels is one of the objectives of the European Union. For this reason, measures to promote the production and consumption of this product have been implemented, such as tax exemptions, fixing a minimum amount of mixture or the introduction of public transport that consume biofuels. In this paper, we test different factors tha...

Plans for the development of high speed railways lines (HSR) in Spain are widespread. At the beginning of 2010 four HSR lines were operating in routes where the air transport mode used to be dominant. In this paper we examine through econometric means the air carriers' reaction to these HSR entrances by using data at the route level. We test whethe...

Cartel detection is one of the most basic and most complicated tasks of competition authorities. In recent years, however, variance filters have provided a fairly simple tool for rejecting the existence of price-fixing, with the added advantage that the methodology requires only a low volume of data. In this paper we analyze two aspects of variance...

La adaptación a las directrices del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior (EEES) es uno de los mayores retos que afronta la universidad española en estos años. Este proceso, unido a la creciente importancia que ha cobrado la evaluación de la calidad, ha impulsado un importante movimiento de renovación pedagógica en la Educación Superior española. N...

Este trabajo analiza los factores que afectan a la calidad de los aeropuertos, utilizando una base de datos con 114 aeropuertos internacionales en todo el mundo, en la que incluimos variables de calidad percibida por los usuarios, aspectos institucionales de la política aeroportuaria y de gestión, así como la participación accionarial. Los resultad...

This paper studies the port-city relationship taking as parameters the port activity and the location on port-related businesses in the urban, especially on the waterfront. To do that we differentiated between hard activities (directly related to the Port) and soft (indirectly related). This has been applied to the Atlantic port of Las Palmas de Gr...

Market competition levels affect all agents of an economy: businesses, consumers and the State. Traditional analysis has evaluated the State's effects on the other agents, but no analysis has been conducted regarding the inverse relationship. Thus, the aim of this study is to estimate the tributary income losses that low levels of competition in th...

Many airports suffer from peak-load demand problems. To meet unconstrained demand at peak periods, they often invest in extra capacity that may be under used at other times. We use data from the airport in Gran Canaria to illustrate that costs associated with the peak-load problem are not only those related to the new investment. This paper provide...

En este trabajo se estudia la relación Ciudad-Puerto tomando como parámetros la actividad portuaria y la ubicación de las empresas relacionadas con el puerto en la trama urbana. Se han seleccionado como indicadores la clasificación entre actividades hard (directamente relacionadas con el Puerto) y soft (indirectamente relacionadas). Aplicado al cas...

The introduction of biofuels is one of the objectives of the European Union. For this reason, measures to promote the production and consumption of this product have been implemented, such as tax exemptions and fixing a minimum amount of mixture. In this paper, we test the level of competition as a factor that can significantly affect the introduct...

La implementación del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior en España es uno de los mayores retos que ha afrontado la Universidad en este país. No obstante no se dispone de un plan oficial conjunto de adaptación, lo que ha conducido a cierta arbitrariedad en el proceso a cada Universidad. Este artículo realiza una base de datos de más de 140 casos...

La implementaci�n del Espacio Europeo de Educaci�n Superior en Espa�a es uno de los mayores retos que ha afrontado la Universidad en este pa�s. No obstante no se dispone de un plan oficial conjunto de adaptaci�n, lo que ha conducido a cierta arbitrariedad en el proceso a cada Universidad. Este art�culo realiza una base de datos de m�s de 140 casos...

Competition in airline markets may be tough. In this context, network carriers have two alternative strategies to compete with low-cost carriers. First, they may establish a low-cost subsidiary. Second, they may try to reduce costs using the main brand. This paper examines a successful strategy of the first type implemented by Iberia in the Spanish...

This paper analyzes competition in the retail gasoline market. We focus on the market of the Canary Islands because it offers two advantages over other markets: it is easy to define the relevant market and there are markets operating under monopoly and oligopoly conditions simultaneously. The latter feature of the markets allows us to estimate a co...

Various methodologies in economic literature have been used to analyse the international hydrocarbon retail sector. Nevertheless at a Spanish level these studies are much more recent and most conclude that generally there is no effective competition present in this market, regardless of the approach used. In this paper, in order to analyse the pric...

Many European governments still advocate a so-called ‘cultural exception’, intended to protect consumers and smaller bookshops, to keep their book markets isolated from competition. Other countries, with similar aims in mind, have chosen liberalization schemes instead. To reconcile these opposing views, this paper provides a theoretical framework t...

This paper analyzes competition in the retail gasoline market. We focus on the market of the Canary Islands because it offers two advantages over other markets: it is easy to define the relevant market and there are markets operating under monopoly and oligopoly conditions simultaneously. The latter feature of the markets allows us to estimate a co...

Este trabajo analiza la competencia en el mercado minorista de gasolinas. Para ello nos centramos en el mercado de las Islas Canarias porque ofrece dos ventajas inéditas respecto de otros mercados: la facilidad en la definición del mercado relevante (insular) y la existencia de mercados en monopolio y en oligopolio simultáneamente. Este último hech...

Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar cómo el proceso de descentralización de la política de defensa de la competencia emprendido desde el nivel nacional hacia los organismos regionales puede tener impli-caciones notables para determinadas decisiones empresariales, ya que el nivel de información y las posibilidades de captura regulatoria...

This paper shows what drivers the effectiveness of antitrust policy, by using internationally collated data on the perception of effectiveness of competition policy. It concludes that average antitrust effectiveness depends on per capita income and supranational policy leadership, such as the one at the core of the EU. Additionally, it shows that s...

De conformidad con la base quinta de la convocatoria del Programa de Estímulo a la Investigación, este trabajo ha sido sometido a eva-luación externa anónima de especialistas cualificados a fin de con-trastar su nivel técnico. La serie DOCUMENTOS DE TRABAJO incluye avances y resultados de investigaciones dentro de los pro-gramas de la Fundación de...