Sara Fernández-López

• PhD. in Economics and Business
• Professor (Associate) at University of Santiago de Compostela

Previous literature has focused on either the direct or indirect contribution of cultural and creative industries (CCI) firms to the innovation capability of the wider economy, while the reverse approach, that is, the effect of region on CCI firms’ innovation, has been completely neglected. In this paper, it is argued that the innovative performanc...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the driving forces of both the decision to participate in individual pension plans and the amount of money allocated to such plans. Moreover, this paper evaluates the potential role that income plays, which has not previously been considered in depth in the financial literature. Design/methodology/app...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to adopt a behavioural approach to explain how the internet use influences stock market participation (SMP) decisions. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the literature on sociability and SMP, this paper analyses whether virtual sociability affects SMP decision in a sample of 34,715 individuals in 14 Euro...

Evidence suggests that a significant percentage of the university spin-offs (USOs) have a low growth capacity, putting in question the use of public funds to promote this kind of entrepreneurship. In addition, previous studies of the USOs’ growth have not dealt with the dynamic nature of firm growth, which might have led to questionable results. Th...

Previous research on the effect of risk preferences on stock market participation (SMP) has applied an individual-based approach without modelling how contextual factors may influence individuals’ attitudes. By adopting an ‘interactionist approach’, this article explores the role of the region’s risk attitudes in the SMP decision, together with ind...

Este artículo tiene como objetivo principal investigar la presencia del efecto Dunning-Kruger en emprendedores, con un enfoque específico en su nivel de competencias contables y financieras, es decir, su alfabetización financiera. El efecto Dunning-Kruger es un fenómeno psicológico que se manifiesta en la incapacidad de las personas para evaluar co...

This paper analyses the determinants of default risk in a non-profit Uruguayan microfinance institution when a regulatory change in favor of full financial inclusion occurred in the country. Different definitions of delinquency are also used, including some that refer to a default of a structural nature. The empirical study shows that the socio-dem...

Small enterprises (SEs) represent the majority of the businesses worldwide, playing a leading role in job creation and economic development. The success of these firms substantially depends on the financial knowledge of their owners/managers. Previous literature in the field of household finances has indicated that financial literacy declines as in...

Purpose The ongoing evolution of the Internet and the subsequent digitalisation of financial services, along with the ever-increasing innovation of financial products, have rendered consumers more vulnerable to a wider range of fraud in the banking sector and, particularly, to consumer financial fraud (CFF). This paper aims to analyse the factors t...

As is the case with any economic activity, the challenge of guaranteeing the economic and financial sustainability of the newspaper industry is recurrent, and the challenge is redoubled in periods of industry transformation, as has occurred in the media business, where there are various levels of disruption, particularly in terms of the financing m...

In the aftermath of the 2007–08 financial crisis, the worsening financial conditions of households increased concerns about their financial vulnerability (FV). In this context, policymakers embraced the notion of financial knowledge to foster sound financial behaviors among individuals and households, aiming to mitigate the detrimental effects of F...

Life insurance enhances households' capacity to absorb financial shocks and protects against personal risks that no one likes to contemplate. This is even more important in times of economic hardship such as now, when many Europe countries and particularly Spain are going through difficult times due to rising inflation, the war in Ukraine, and the...

Previous research has related household financial fragility (FF) and the employment status of the household members by focusing only on the labour income channel. In contrast, the literature has scarcely addressed the study of this relationship from a psychological perspective that could be related to the theory of bounded rationality. This article...

Las empresas de reducida dimensión desempeñan un papel notable en la economía y en su gestión influyen diferentes factores, como la tenencia de conocimientos financieros adecuados. A partir de datos de la Encuesta de Competencias Financieras en las Pequeñas Empresas, este artículo analiza si el tamaño, sector y carácter exportador de los negocios s...

Purpose This paper provides empirical evidence for how gender diversity in top management teams (TMTs) and collaboration with university and technological centres lead to innovation outcomes. The authors review past research on these concepts and illustrate their individual and joint effects on process innovation specifically in the unique context...

La vulnerabilidad financiera (VF) de los hogares ha ganado interés entre los responsables políticos durante las dos últimas décadas. Además, la VF parece estar más extendida entre el género femenino. Siguiendo a Arellano y Cámara (2021), el 55,7% de las mujeres españolas padecía en 2017 una elevada VF, frente al 44,28% de sus homólogos masculinos....

Research on consumer financial vulnerability (CFV) was especially encouraged in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, becoming a phenomenon of global interest to academics and policy makers. This paper reviews the existing academic literature on CFV with the aim of mapping out four research fields (i.e., the concept, the measures, the me...

The idiosyncrasies of family firms (FFs) may enable or hamper their ability to exploit the region’s knowledge spillovers. To the date, this issue has not been addressed by the literature. The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to explore whether FF nature influences on firm innovative performance by acknowledging the fact that firm innovati...

Working capital management (WCM) is a critical matter for the growth of firms, especially small and medium‐sized manufacturing companies faced with liquidity shortages whose current assets account for a significant part of their investments. These characteristics describe most companies in the fish processing industry. Using a sample of more than 1...

The end of the economic crisis initiated in 2008 was not the end of the newspaper crisis. The shifts introduced by digitalisation are increasingly deeper, and advertising spending on newspapers continued to fall during the economic recovery. To study how the firms adapted to this declining market, this article performs an in-depth financial analysi...

In recent years, households have become increasingly indebted, which constitutes a matter of concern. Based on a sample from the Spanish Survey of Financial Competences , this paper examines the relationship between self-control and consumer borrowing behaviour and, in so doing, it proposes a new multi-item scale of individual’s self-control in fin...

Resumen El objetivo de la investigación es determinar el nivel de fragilidad financiera de los hogares gallegos, así como analizar si sus características sociodemográficas, económicas y conductuales se asocian con esta problemática, desde una perspectiva comparada con respecto al resto de comunidades autónomas. Partiendo de los datos de la primera...

Las pequeñas empresas suponen la práctica totalidad del tejido empresarial español e internacional. Pese a que estos agentes son esenciales para la creación de empleo, también son los que más sufren la inestabilidad del contexto económico, en parte, por la moderada alfabetización financiera de sus gestores. Utilizando una muestra de 1.120 pequeñas...

Purpose The present study examines the potential relationship between financial capability and household financial vulnerability for a sample of Spanish individuals. Design/methodology/approach The methodology combines a literature review deepening on the two concepts addressed in this paper – financial vulnerability and financial capability – and...

In the current knowledge economy, firms hardly innovate alone; the collaboration with other partners has become crucial for successful innovation. Literature has recently focused on two modes of collaboration: the learning-by-doing, by-using and by-interacting (DUI) and science and technology-based innovation (STI). Nevertheless, collaboration seem...

Digitalisation led to a structural crisis in the newspaper industry, undermining revenues from both readers and advertisers. Economies of scale play a central role in the newspaper business, but in a context of falling incomes, the major route to take advantage of them is the reduction in the asset size and operating costs. The digital business mod...

This paper develops a tool to predict the percentage of compliance in the repayment of microloans granted by non-profit microfinance institutions (MFI) of the Uruguayan government. The database consists of 1,357 microloans granted by the Program for the Strengthening of Productive Entrepreneurs (PFEP) of the Uruguayan Ministry of Social Development...

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate whether the venture capital (VC) availability influences the technology entrepreneurship (TE) in Latin America by adopting a comparative approach with high-income economies. By applying panel data methodology in a sample of 21 Latin American countries over the period 2006–2017, we find a positive effect...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First is to analyse the role of the university as a contextual determinant of technological entrepreneurship. Second is to study how a set of regional factors can shape the effect of universities on technological entrepreneurship. A comparative analysis between South-American and high-income countries is carrie...

España es uno de los principales productores de conserva de pescado de Europa y este es un sector económico de gran relevancia para su economía. En los últimos años parte de las compañías del sector, en su mayoría pequeñas y medianas empresas, está sufriendo problemas de liquidez y bajas rentabilidades que pueden estar asociados, en parte, a la ges...

Previous research on the firm growth of the university spin‐offs (USOs) and its drivers yields inconclusive results. Recently, the literature on the high‐growth firms (HGFs) has relied on regression quantile methods to study how the effects of growth determinants may differ along the firm growth distribution. This study builds a bridge between the...

Regional report of thel Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for Galicia 2020-2021.

Universities have created USOs to exploit the research knowledge and contribute to the economic development of their regions in the last decades, leading to an extensive literature on the topic. However, this growing literature has widely overlooked the links between firm size and survival. This paper explores simultaneously the role of size and ot...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the linkage between households' social interactions and credit context and how these interactions may influence household borrowing decisions. Design/methodology/approach Based on a sample of 45,907 individuals referred to 18 countries, drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, different p...

Un año más el equipo GEM Galicia presenta el informe de seguimiento de la actividad emprendedora en Galicia: Pero esta edición no es como las demás. La actual situación de crisis sanitaria, económica y social derivada de la pandemia de la COVID-19 ha provocado un complejo contexto para la elaboración del trabajo. Esto nos ha llevado a estructura...

Credit restrictions, such as those happening in the current context shaped by the crisis derived from COVID-19, make working capital management (WCM) a driving force behind SME performance. This paper analyses whether WCM policies affect the economic and financial profitability of Spanish companies in the fish canning industry. Spain leads the EU’s...

The current environment of high competitiveness has made innovative firms, especially job-creating ones, central to regional economic growth. Most of previous studies have not considered the interactions between internal and regional factors, and has focused on product innovation performance. This paper aims to fill both gaps in the literature on t...

Millennials are currently facing particular financial challenges that will condition the future financial well-being of the society as a whole, and the decision-making process happening in worse circumstances than those of preceding generations. However, few studies to date have deeply analyzed millennials’ financial behaviors, and particularly, ho...

La capacitación o competencia financiera de los individuos, resultado de la combinación de su cultura financiera y de la oportunidad de acceder a los productos financieros, supone un reto en las sociedades actuales y, particularmente, para ciertos colectivos de población como la generación millennial. Por esta razón, es importante conocer la compet...

It has been acknowledged that exporting and innovation activities become key performance drivers of firm growth. In this chapter, using dynamic panel data methodology with a sample of 3267 Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 2004–2014, we explore whether the effect of exports and technological innovation on firm growth differs depending on...

El ecosistema del emprendimiento en Galicia en el marco del proyecto GEM Resumen Objetivo: Aplicar el enfoque de ecosistema al análisis del entorno emprendedor en Galicia en base a la información proporcionada por el proyecto GEM. Diseño/metodología/enfoque: Basado en la información extraída de las opiniones de los expertos participantes del Proyec...

Análisis de la lfuga de talento en Galicia

A practical with common language, didactic manual for health garden with ancient techniques used by the Lenca indegenous tribe from Honduras. This manual describe Lenca techniques and plants for traditional medicine uses.

Informe anual sobre la actividad emprendedora en la comunidad autónoma de Galicia. Incluye un monográfico sobre el impacto de la Covid-19 en el emprendimiento tras los primeros meses de parón económico derivado de la pandemia.

Working capital management (WCM) is a key question for firms' profitability, especially for small and medium enterprises faced with severe financial restrictions and whose current assets account for a significant part of their investments. These features describe most firms in the livestock industry. However, studies on WCM related to these firms a...

University spin-offs (USOs) have become a common way to transfer new knowledge to society and create value, boosting economic growth. While innovative and export activities have been extensively researched as survival drivers in the organizational literature, the joint effects of both activities on firm survival has often been ignored, especially i...

La partición de la población española en iniciativas emprendedoras en fase inicial se mantiene un año más en torno a la cifra de seis personas por cada cien. Con estos resultados, España se posiciona por debajo de la media de las economías de la Unión Europea participantes en el proyecto GEM en lo que respecta al porcentaje de emprendedores potenci...

La utilización de fuentes de energía renovables ha aumentado en las últimas décadas, pero el acceso al capital es la principal barrera en el denominado financiamiento verde. Los proyectos del sector de energía renovable (proyectos RES) son generalmente más costosos, con mayor riesgo y un mayor plazo de recuperación. El crowdfunding se ha convertido...

Individuals’ financial well-being has been recognised as an important concern to reach individuals’ general well-being and societal welfare. In this context, understanding how individuals can ensure a good state of financial well-being is a critical question. However, previous studies have not paid enough attention to underlying the mechanisms by w...

Population ageing, together with the recent economic downturn and its aftermath, are giving considerable cause for concern as regards the future sustainability of public pension systems. Voluntary pension schemes emerge here as an alternative to supplement the public pension pillar, and therefore, understanding how individuals make their financial...

University Spin-Offs (USOs) are dynamically involved in the knowledge spillover process and incorporated in the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem. Drawing on the knowledge spillovers related concepts and entrepreneurial ecosystem approach, the paper aims to explore the hypothesis that the regional context may partially determine the USOs' growth v...

The creation of university spin-off firms (USOs) to commercialize the academic research outputs contributes to the economic development of the regions. These firms are often resource-constrained, which may hamper their growth. However, the involvement of venture capital (VC) partners in their management can partly counterbalance their traditional l...

RESUMEN Propósito: Este trabajo estudia el ahorro para la jubilación en el colectivo millennial, tratando de averiguar si los factores tradicionales que determinan el ahorro para la jubilación de generaciones anteriores mantienen su efecto en el colectivo millennial o si bien pueden existir diferencias que requieran investigaciones más profusas. Me...

En este trabajo se testa empíricamente la validez de una propuesta de ecosistema para el estudio del emprendimiento tecnológico (ET) a nivel mundial. Aplicando metodología de datos de panel en una muestra de 65 países durante el periodo 2006-2013, los resultados muestran que factores como el financiamiento no convencional informal, la existencia de...

In recent years, especially after the recent economic downturn, household debt has increased in importance, due to its influence on the economy in general and on households’ wellbeing in particular. Therefore, the study of household debt turns out to be necessary in order to know what leads to its demand, and thus to avoid situations of over-indebt...

El Informe GEM analiza el emprendimiento desde la fase más reciente del proceso emprendedor, o “emprendimiento potencial” a la fase de consolidación de la empresa, pasando por las fases de puesta en marcha y primeros años actividad, lo que se define como “actividad em-prendedora (TEA)”. El emprendimiento potencial recoge aque-lla parte de la poblac...

La literatura reciente señala la existencia de una brecha o gap de género en materia de conocimientos financieros que es necesario abordar de cara a mejorar la preparación financiera de la población, y especialmente de las mujeres. Esta investigación tendrá como objetivo presentar un análisis preliminar de los conocimientos financieros -tanto perci...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate whether individuals’ planning horizon influences their decision to save privately for their retirement. Design/methodology/approach Focussing on Spain, this empirical research uses the fifth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)[1]. Logit models are estimated considering vari...

This paper explores how the entrepreneurial outcomes (patents, university spin-offs, research projects and R&D contracts) of universities relate to the availability and use of information and telecommunications (IT) solutions for knowledge management (KM) over the period 2011-2014. We hypothesize that entrepreneurial universities may benefit from a...

La población española involucrada en negocios que se encuentran en fases iniciales del proceso emprendedor vuelve a aumentar ligeramente en el último año, manteniendo así los niveles de participación por encima del umbral de seis personas emprendedoras en fase inicial por cada cien personas de la población adulta. De acuerdo con el indicador de ac...

Objetivo: El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar la influencia de la innovación en el crecimiento del empleo durante el período 2004-2014 centrándose en las empresas españolas cotizadas. Metodología: Este trabajo usa la regresión cuantílica para datos de panel como método de estimación. Resultados: Nuestros resultados revelan que, aunque...

This paper explores the role of gender in new technology-based firms creation and whether this role differs across developed and emerging countries. By using a sample of 244,471 individuals in 70 countries, the results firstly show a negative relationship between being a woman and setting up a technology entrepreneurial initiative, regardless the s...

There is an extensive literature on characteristics of “entrepreneurial” or “innovative” universities. As both terms have generally been used to refer to the same condition, different rankings of entrepreneurial universities use indicators universally recognized for innovative activity and primarily related to research and knowledge transfer (schol...

Research transfer depends mostly on the firm’s goodwill for cooperation. However, very few papers deal with the intentions and attitudes of firm’s representatives when they decide to cooperate with universities. Following an outside/in approach, this paper explores firms’ attitudes towards R&D cooperation by focusing on the determinants of both hav...

This paper studies the attitudes and decisions of research groups led by men or women towards the collaboration with firms in research and development joint projects. We worked with a sample of 420 research groups of eight regions of Spain, France and Portugal in a sequential process. First, we studied the interest of the research groups to collabo...

Research transfer depends mostly on the firm’s goodwill for cooperation. However, very few papers deal with the intentions and attitudes of firm’s representatives when they decide to cooperate with universities. Following an outside/in approach, this paper explores firms’ attitudes towards R&D cooperation by focusing on the determinants of both hav...

This paper advances the study of the researcher's motivators to collaborate with firms from a triple helix perspective. Based on a conceptual framework that relates the agency theory assumptions with those variables that literature considers as motivators of the researchers and firms to collaborate, we worked with a sample of 420 research groups of...

Since the studies of Schumpeter (1939), Solow (1957), or Nelson and Sidney (1982), innovation has been considered one of the major drivers of economic growth. This paper explores the relationship between firms' innovation and sales growth. Using an original dataset of 80 listed Spanish firms over the period 2004-2014, we firstly apply a panel data...

Environmental and sustainable projects face difficulties to attract capital and, recently, entrepreneurs have started to get funds directly from the “crowd”, instead or/in addition of traditional investors. The objective of this article is to explore the characteristics of the business models (BMs) used to fund renewable energy sources (RES) projec...

The establishment of spin-offs to commercialise university knowledge/technology is a potential mechanism to promote economic and innovative development. Nevertheless, University Spin-Offs (USOs) are usually resource-constrained, especially in obtaining funding, limiting their growth. Venture Capital (VC) investors play an important role in the fina...

University Spin-Offs (USOs) are actively involved in the knowledge spillover process and fully integrated in the regional innovation systems. Drawing on the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship and using a multilevel approach of analysis, we explore whether the region's knowledge spillover and the firm's absorptive capacity jointly determ...

Objetivo: Desarrollar una propuesta de ecosistema propio para el emprendimiento tecnológico (ET). Diseño / Metodología / enfoque: Partiendo del enfoque de ecosistemas, se sigue en un marco general desarrollado por Isenberg (2011) para el emprendimiento de alto crecimiento. Para identificar los elementos propios que constituyen el ecosistema de ET...

Un tema de creciente interés en el ámbito de la investigación económica es el de las Empresas de Alto Crecimiento (EAC), cuyo principal atractivo reside en su capacidad de creación de empleo y el dinamismo que aportan al crecimiento de la economía. Las estadísticas confirman a España como uno de los países OCDE con menos porcentaje de EAC, lo cual...

España presenta un reducido porcentaje de empresas de alto crecimiento (EAC) en comparación con otros países de la OCDE. Cabe preguntarse qué elementos impulsan la aparición del emprendimiento innovador y de alto crecimiento. Se analizan seis dimensiones del modelo de ecosistema de emprendimiento de alto crecimiento (Cultura, Talento, Conocimiento,...

La estacionalidad de la actividad oleica, incide que los flujos de caja por ventas de contado y a crédito. Sus plazos y recuperación de efectivo, afectan el rendimiento financiero de las empresas involucradas en dicha actividad. En el entorno empresarial se rumora que dicha actividad oleica es de baja rentabilidad, lo cual motiva esta investigación...

This paper analyses the individual determinants of technological entrepreneurship and whether they differ from those of the conventional entrepreneurship in South America. This paper contributes to the understanding of New Technology-Based Firms (nebts) to foster innovation-based economies in the region. Using logit models and the data from Global...

This paper advances the study of the researcher's motivators to collaborate with firms from a triple helix perspective. Based on a conceptual framework that relates the agency theory assumptions with those variables that literature considers as motivators of the researchers and firms to collaborate, we worked with a sample of 420 research groups of...

Purpose This study aims to determine that the factors that lead to university spin-offs (USOs) high-growth firms (HGFs). In recent years, HGFs have been a topic of growing interest in the field of economic research because of these companies’ capacity for job creation and the dynamism they bring to the growth of the economy. In parallel, companies...

This article explores the determinants of firms’ R&D cooperation with research groups understanding university–industry cooperation as a sequential process. In so doing, we study the determinants of both firms’ interest in and decision to engage in cooperation agreements. We applied both probit models and regression models for count data on a sampl...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that the female-owned university spin-off organizations (USOs) have a similar resource endowment and, as a consequence, growth rates similar to the male-owned USOs. Design/methodology/approach A unique and original longitudinal data set, which is an unbalanced panel, consisting of 120...

Un año más (y ya son una docena) tienes en tus manos el informe UNIVERSITIC, análisis global y minucioso de las TI en el Sistema Universitario Español (SUE). Como viene siendo habitual, está estructurado en tres capítulos, una introducción y distintos anexos y elementos complementarios. Aunque el núcleo central que da sentido y continuidad al infor...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the availability and use of IT solutions for strategic knowledge management (SKM) and the universities’ performance, measured in terms of scientific production. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) and the knowledge-based theory, the authors de...

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the determinants of firms’ attitudes to R&D cooperation with universities with the goal to propose a model of knowledge transfer university-firm. Design/methodology/approach: By understanding university-industry cooperation as a process, the model in this study is based on two factors: the “promoter of universit...

Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) firms are emerging into a knowledge-processing and knowledge-producing industry. Universities contribute to the creation of KIBS firms through university spin-offs (USOs), which represent an opportunity to boost knowledge spillovers from university to industry thanks to their cutting-edge research knowle...

Population ageing, together with the negative effects of the recent economic and financial crisis that some European countries are still facing, have threatened the sustainability of public pension systems. In this context, voluntary private pensions have emerged as the most feasible alternative to supplement the minimum provided by Social Security...