This paper assesses the impact on neighborhood population dynamics of a major urban renewal policy implemented in Catalonia (Spain) between 2004 and 2010. Some of the most deprived neighborhoods in the region received large investments in their public spaces and facilities with the aim of...

Investment by energy firms in innovation can have substantial economic and environmental impacts and benefits. Internal R&D is the main input and driver of the innovation process, but innovation involves other activities, including capital purchases and other current expenditures. While the R&D...

Organized crime uses political violence to influence politics in a wide set of countries. This paper exploits a novel dataset of attacks directed towards Italian local politicians to study how (and why) criminal organizations use violence against them. We test two competing theories to predict...

Portuguese and Spanish universities have adopted well-defined royalty sharing schedules during the last fifteen years. We investigate whether these inventor royalty shares have been effective at stimulating inventors' efforts and ultimately improving university outcomes. We base our empirical...

In this paper we look at the relative merits of two capacity utilization regimes in the merchant electricity transmission network: Must offer (Mo) where the entire capacity installed is made available for transmission and Non Must Offer (NMo) where some capacity could be withheld. We look at two...

To face the challenges posed by climate change, environmental R&D and innovation are critical factors if we hope to cut emissions; yet, investment in environmental R&D remains below the social optimum. The aim of this paper is to analyse the determinants of investment in environmental innovation...

This is a review of the so-called "Optimal tax systems" approach to the economic analysis of taxation. This approach acknowledges the bunch of instruments the public sector has to collect revenues, but also the multiple responses of taxpayers to them. In a way, this is a more realistic approach...

A lack of longitudinal data prevents many countries from estimating dynamic models and, thus, from obtaining valuable evidence for policy making in the field of education. This is the case of Spain, where recent education reforms have targeted secondary schools, but their design has been based...

This paper evaluates the effects of big-box openings on the closure of grocery stores at the municipality level. To estimate these effects, I use a discontinuity in commercial regulation in Spain as the source of exogenous variation for the period 2003 to 2011. More specifically, this...

The taxation of high-income earners is of importance to every country and is the subject of a considerable amount of recent academic research. Such high-income earners contribute substantial amounts of tax and generate significant positive spillovers, but are also highly mobile: a 1% increase in...