Credit,crisis and contract enforcement: evidence from the Spanish loan market

A number of theoretical and empirical studies have shown that the development of credit markets is affected by the efficacy of enforcement institutions. A less explored question in this context is how these institutions interact with turns in the economic cycle and the impact of different types of legal procedures on credit market performance. This paper fills these gaps by analyzing how differences in the availability of credit and the evolution of non-performing loans ratios may be partially explained by regional variations in the quality of loan contract enforcement during recent periods of sustained growth (2001–2007) and recession (since 2008) in the Spanish economy. This research concludes that a rise in the clearance rate of executions (i.e., when a judge enforces the repayment of a debt) increases the ratio of total credit to GDP. However, the declaratory stage of the procedure (i.e., when a debt is firstly verified by a judge) does not seem to be statistically significant. A possible explanation to this finding is that, throughout the economic cycle, a relevant proportion of the defaults that take place are strategic (i.e., defaults by a solvent debtor). Furthermore, it is observed that, in regions where declaratory procedures are more efficient, less credit is declared as non-performing. The latter effect, however, is only observed after the onset of the “Great Recession” in 2008. This may be related to the increase of non-strategic defaults during a downturn.     

基于DEA模型的汽车产业集群的效率研究

本文利用数据包络分析法的CCR和BBC模型,对我国长三角等六个主要汽车产业集群及六大汽车企业集团的效率进行了实证分析。结果表明,这六个主要汽车产业集群的效率是不相同的,并由此提出了若干政策建议。     

Age estimation by a dental method: a comparison of Lamendin's and Prince & Ubelaker's technique

Lamendin et al. (J Forensic Sci 1992;37:1373) developed a general technique to estimate age of adults at death using two dental features: periodontosis and translucency of the tooth root. Prince and Ubelaker (J Forensic Sci 2002;47:107) modified this method, creating a formula for each sex and for different ancestries, and obtained more precise age estimations. In the present study, the validity of each method was tested in 45 males and 34 females of Spanish Caucasian origin, and a novel formula, based on Prince and Ubelaker method, was specifically developed for a population of mixed racial origin (mestizo) from Colombia, and findings obtained were again compared with those yielded by Lamendin adult dental aging technique. The Prince and Ubelaker method proved more accurate than the Lamendin technique in the Spanish Caucasian population, and our Prince and Ubelaker-based formula was also more accurate than the Lamendin et al. In both populations, the Lamendin method showed a higher mean error in estimations of the age of youngest and oldest individuals. These findings confirm the need to create specific formulas for each human group in order to obtain more accurate age estimates.     

高校创业教育社会经济效果的微观分析

高校创业教育能够有效地培养受教育者的创业精神,提升其创业技能,可以通过产业结构变迁作用于经济发展,可以通过提高受教育者的创业概率而产生福利改善效应.尽管高校创业教育产生了积极的社会经济效果,但它的作用仍有待于得到社会各界的认可.     

十二生肖动物词群的词义分析

汉语中存在大量与十二生肖动物有关的词和相当于词的固定结构,它们是一类特殊的词义类聚。十二生肖动物词群的词义,既源自动物的自然属性,又源自汉民族的神话传说、文学作品和民俗心理。其语义特点是：词义引申借助隐喻手段、意义系统呈现有规律的发散状网络构成、意义与汉民族“托物寓情”的思维模式紧密相关。     

继承权放弃相关问题之探析

实践中绝大多数的继承纠纷源于继承人对遗产的争夺,但是放弃继承在实践中亦不鲜见,是继承法律制度研究的一项重要内容。我国关于继承权放弃的立法较为抽象和原则,实务中缺乏可操作性,有必要对继承权放弃的相关理论与实务问题进行阐述和探讨。     

Responding to the Structural Violence of Migrant Domestic Work: Insights from Participatory Action Research with Migrant Caregivers in Canada

This study explores international domestic workers’ response to employer abuse and exploitation following changes to Canada’s Live-in-Caregiver Program in 2014. This research followed an interpretive policy analysis research design, using feminist, participatory, and action research methods. University-based researchers, advocates, and peer researchers collaborated to develop and implement the project’s research and advocacy goals. Thirty-one caregivers in Toronto and Calgary participated in individual and/or focus group interviews to discuss access to permanent residence, working conditions and forms of support. Many shared examples of labor exploitation and psychological hardship due to precarious work conditions and long periods of family separation. Barriers to accessing services and fear of losing status led the majority of caregivers to rely primarily on informal networks for mutual aid and support. This paper identifies how changes in Canada’s temporary foreign worker program for live-in-caregivers exacerbates the structural violence of migrant care work, where the risk for abuse, exploitation, and risk of losing status is normalized. Migrant caregivers accept the precarious work conditions with the promise of permanent residence and the chance to improve their lives for themselves and their children. Towards envisioning improvements in social service delivery, our research highlighted the need for social services to increase outreach and safety planning for migrant workers who are vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, and the loss of legal immigration status. Our research also supports grassroots advocacy to call for all migrant workers to be granted permanent resident status upon arrival to ameliorate the structural violence of migrant labor.     

Mergers and difference-in-difference estimator: Why firms do not increase prices?

Difference-in-difference 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 conjectural variation model concludes that the existence of a collusive agreement before and after the merger accounts for this result, rather than the existence of efficient gains. This result may explain empirical evidence reported in the literature according to which mergers between firms do not have significant effects on prices.     

Socialisation to interdisciplinary legal education: an empirical assessment

This article provides novel empirical survey evidence on socialisation factors leading lecturers to implement interdisciplinary teaching in law. Recent debates on legal scholarship and higher education legal institutions advocate the introduction of interdisciplinary approaches to legal studies. Nevertheless, there is still little evidence of how this lecturing philosophy might be affected by socialisation with other disciplines. To address this, we analyse the case of external lecturers in the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, who constitute the majority of the teaching staff in this institution. To explain the adoption of interdisciplinary teaching, we rely on socialisation factors connected to their former higher education and socialisation in research and multidisciplinary environments.     

The reconstruction of business interests after the ISI collapse: unpacking the effect of institutional change in Chile and Uruguay

Abstract

This paper focuses on understanding the different evolutions of business’ associational paths in post-Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) Chile and Uruguay, offering an explanation at the crossroads of the institutional change and international trade literatures. The argument is that the different forms in which ISI institutions were transformed during the liberalisation period facilitated a greater mobility of factors to different degrees, triggering divergent enduring associational strategies on the part of business. The proliferation of narrow-based special benefits during the ISI fuelled preferences for the formation of sector-based coalitions oriented towards rent-seeking activities. Nevertheless, while ISI regulations were displaced in Chile during the military period, Uruguay followed a gradual process of layering of new rules alongside old ones. These diverging strategies, having different effect on established inter-sectoral regulatory distortions, propitiated alternative associational paths of local business.