Mario Izquierdo

Banco de España

This paper analyses information from survey data collected in the framework of the Eurosystem’s Wage Dynamics Network (WDN) on patterns of firm-level adjustment to shocks. We document that the relative intensity and the character of price vs. cost and wage vs. employment adjustments in response to cost-push shocks depend — in theoretically sensible...

Wage inequality in Spain decreased slightly between 1995 and 2006 despite significant changes in employment composition. Changes in the composition of the workforce would have increased inequality keeping constant wage structure, but changes in wage differentials are the most important factor determining the evolution of inequality. By subperiods,...

This paper presents estimates based on individual data of downward nominal and real wage rigidities for thirteen sectors in Belgium, Denmark, Spain and Portugal. Our methodology follows the approach recently developed for the International Wage Flexibility Project, whereby resistance to nominal and real wage cuts is measured through departures of o...

This paper evaluates the effect of subsidies to employment maintenance on the probability of mature-age workers staying in the firm. Implementing a quasi-experimental design provided by changes in Spanish labor market regulations, we are able to estimate that the end of subsidies had a small though statistically significant and negative impact on w...

This paper analyses the level of inequality in Spain and how it evolved over the course of the past crisis and the early stages of the current recovery. To this end, it first introduces the various dimensions of wage, income, consumption and wealth inequality, and studies how they have developed. The analysis shows less wage dispersion in Spain tha...

Large immigration flows during the 1995–2007 period increased the weight of foreigners living in Spain to 12 % of the total population. The rapid increase in unemployment associated with the Great Recession and the subsequent European debt crisis, substantially changed migration flows, so that, from the beginning of the 2010s, Spain experienced pos...

We estimate real wage cyclicality in the period compressed between 1987 and 2013 using a large administrative dataset of workers in Spain. Real wages are weakly procyclical in Spain and focusing on differences in different phases of the business cycle, we find that differences across expansions and recessions are significant, with an even lower rea...

Since the start of the Great Recession the unemployment rate in Spain has risen by almost 18 percentage points. The unemployment crisis is affecting all population groups, including the more highly educated; but it is even more acute for the foreign population, whose unemployment rate is close to 40%. This situation follows a period of very high im...

Between the start of the economic and financial crisis in 2008, and early 2010, almost four million jobs were lost in the euro area. Employment began to rise again in the first half of 2011, but declined once more at the end of that year and remains at around three million workers below the pre-crisis level. However, in comparison with the severity...

The distributive trades, consisting of wholesaling and retailing, are a key sector of the economy. As the main interface between producers and consumers, the sector is particularly important from a monetary policy point of view: this is where most consumer goods prices are ultimately set. Despite almost 20 years of the Single Market, mark-ups in th...

This paper seeks to estimate the potential output of the Spanish economy, using the production function methodology standard in the literature. According to these estimates, the growth of the potential output of the Spanish economy stood at around 3% in the period 2000-2007, owing to the marked increase in the population and in the participation ra...

This paper presents estimates based on individual data of downward nominal and real wage rigidities for 13 sectors in Belgium, Denmark, Spain, and Portugal. Our methodology follows the approach recently developed for the International Wage Flexibility Project, whereby resistance to nominal and real wage cuts is measured through departures of observ...

This paper builds a new dataset with detailed information on the universe of foreign government bonds issued in New York in the 1920s and uses these data to describe the behavior of the financial intermediaries which operated in the New York market during the period leading to the interwar debt crisis. The paper starts by showing that concerns over...

In this paper we use a new panel dataset to analyse the earnings assimilation of immigrants in Spain. We show that immigrants reduce the wage gap relative to natives by 15 pp during the first 5–6 years after arrival, but the earnings differential does not disappear completely. Earnings assimilation is not homogeneous across different nationalities,...

In this paper we use the Continuous Sample of Working Histories 2005 (MCVL2005) to analyze the earnings assimilation of migrants from outside the EU-15 in Spain. Using our panel dataset we show that immigrants reduce around the half of the initial wage gap respect to natives the first 5 to 6 years after arrival. However, no further reductions of th...

This paper analyses wage inequality in Spain from 1995 to 2002. Inequality has decreased slightly in this period although the fall has not been constant over the whole distribution. We use non-parametric techniques to distinguish the effect on inequality of changes in the composition of the labour force and changes in relative returns. We focus mai...

This paper presents a dynamic general equilibrium model designed to compute the aggregate impact of immigration, accounting for relevant supply and demand effects. We calibrate the model to the Spanish economy, allowing for enough heterogeneity in the demographic characteristics of immigrant and native workers. We consider an initial steady state c...

Chile has been at the forefront of pension reform, having switched in 1980 from a pay-as-you-go system to a fully funded privatized accounts system. The Chilean system served as a model for reform in many other Latin American countries and has also been considered by U.S. policy makers as a possible prototype for social security reform. Some of the...

En este artículo se estiman regresiones hedónicas y se construyen los correspondientes índices hedónicos de precios para ordenadores de sobremesa y portátiles vendidos en España durante la década de los años 90. Los resultados indican que estos índices de precios muestran reducciones de precios muy notables, del 38 por 100 en media anual entre 1990...

Rapid technological progress in recent years has exacerbated the problems that arise in measuring price changes and, consequently, economic magnitudes at constant prices when changes in the quality of products occur. A natural means of tackling these measurement problems is to use hedonic price indices. This survey focuses on the use of hedonic met...

The plutocratic gap is defined as the difference between the inflation measured according to the current official consumer price index (CPI) and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. During 1992–97, the pluto-cratic gap in Spain averaged 0.055 percentage points a year. Since positive and negative gaps cancel out, howev...

The plutocratic gap is defined as the difference between the inflation measured according to the current official consumer price index (CPI) and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. During 1992-97, the plutocratic gap in Spain averaged 0.055 percentage points a year. Since positive and negative gaps cancel out, howeve...

This paper shows that the richer households are significantly more affected by the quality-change bias (QCB) in the CPI. The empirical analysis combines the detailed information pertaining to the size of the QCB for the US with household-specific CPIs for Spain.

We examine whether the spread of an exporting strategy can be characterized as a diffusion process using a general framework that accounts for attrition and changes in the pool of potential adopters and allows the diffusion rate to vary according to firm and market characteristics. Our findings indicate that the diffusion of exporting is described...

En este trabajo se analiza la evolución reciente de los flujos brutos de trabajadores de la economía española, utilizando dos fuentes estadísticas: la Encuesta de Población Activa y los registros administrativos del INEM. Ambas fuentes de información proporcionan diferencias notables tanto en el nivel como en la evolución de los flujos brutos, que...

This paper shows that the richer households are significantly more affected by the quality-change bias (QCB) in the CPI. The empirical analysis combines the detailed information pertaining to the size of the QCB for the US with household-specific CPIs for Spain.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on firm productivity using an establishment-level panel of Spanish manufacturing industry that spans the period 1990-1994. The key question concerns the elements that enable domestic firms to capture the positive spillovers associated with the presence of foreign firm...

The main goals of this study are to measure quality improvements in automobile sector in Spain and to estimate the quality bias in car price index released by INE. In order to do that, we propose an alternative methodology to estimate hedonic regressions. This methodology involves classifying the "indicators" of quality of an automobile in "sub-ind...

We define the plutocratic bias as the difference between inflation measured according to the current official CPI and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. We estimate that during the 1990s the plutocratic bias in Spain amounts to 0.055 percent per year. However, positive and negative biases cancel off when averaging o...

Documentos de Economía (Fundación Caixa Galicia)

Documentos de Economía (Fundación Caixa Galicia)

This paper provides some evidence on the distributive consequences of economic integration by analyzing the Portuguese and Spanish experiences with EU accession. Despite the coincidence in the moment of accession to EU and other institutional similarities, inequality trends have been different in the two countries in the last two decades. Some stud...

This paper contrasts the different regional effects of an homogeneous monetary policy and studies the local characteristics that underlie these differential responses. To this purpose, we use Spanish regional data and estimate a structural vector autoregression model using SUR techniques to characterise regional responses. Results provide evidence...

. In this paper we address the issue of the distributional consequences of the quality change bias (QCB) in the CPI. In particular, we assess the conjecture raised by some critics of the Boskin commission report that new products and goods a#ected by quality e#ects are disproportionately consumed by the rich. Our analysis begins with the observatio...

. We define the plutocratic bias as the di#erence between the inflation measured according to the current o#cial CPI and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. (i) We estimate that during the 1990s the plutocratic bias in Spain amounts to 0.055 per cent per year, or about one third of the classical substitution bias est...

En este artículo se estiman regresiones hedónicas y se construyen los correspondientes índices hedónicos de precios para ordenadores de sobremesa y portátiles vendidos en España durante la década de los años 90. Los resultados indican que estos índices de precios muestran reducciones de precios muy notables, del 38 por 100 en media anual entre 1990...

La medición de la inflación es un elemento fundamental en una economía moderna, debido a que la tasa de incremento de los precios se toma como referencia a la hora de fijar salarios, pensiones, alquileres, etc. Así, la tasa de inflación acaba determinando en cierta medida la evolución de las rentas particulares y también las públicas. Por ello, el...

We define the plutocratic bias as the difference between the inflation measured according to the current official CPI and a democratic index in which all households receive the same weight. (i) We estimate that during the 1990s the plutocratic bias in Spain amounts to 0.055 per cent per year, or about one third of the classical substitution bias es...